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Do we have an official preference for the use of l vs L for litre? -- Random832 ( contribs) 21:27, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Iletin I
(I wrote the drug name in “code” typeface so it could be read). Is that about as clear as mud? The expression is somewhat easier to read using a serif typeface: “1 l of Iletin I.” Sanserif fonts are poor for distinguishing between I
and l
and 1
(again, in “code” face). Expressions with uppercase L, like “2 L of Pepsi” are infinitely easier to interpret in sanserif faces.Setting aside the issue of prefixed forms, which I don’t think needs any proscriptions or prescriptions (lawmaking bodies do best when the legislate the least) I agree that the symbol for liter should be uppercase L. Greg L ( talk) 00:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
There is also the script small l (U+2113 ℓ) that was once used and still has currency in East Asian usages, but I could see using it on the English Wikipedia only in a rare case where both l and L might cause ambiguity. (The precomposed CJK characters, ㎕, ㎖, ㎗, and ㎘ use the script l form in most fonts.) Caerwine Caer’s whines 01:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree entirely with Greg L and Gary King. "l" for "litre" is hopelessly hard to discern unless the context is very well established. Tony (talk) 01:40, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree that this isn't WP:ENGVAR. Use the capital version, L, and not the lowercase case, l, because lowercase l is indistinguisable from uppercase I. Which is why I usually hate non-serif fonts. Headbomb { ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 02:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
The litre, and the symbol lower-case l, were adopted by the CIPM in 1879 (PV, 1879, 41). The alternative symbol, capital L, was adopted by the 16th CGPM (1979, Resolution 6) in order to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one).
If we want MOSNUM to be valuable and relevant, we’ve got to listen to what other editors are saying. You know, some of these editors at WikiProject Chemistry are highly educated chemists and don’t take kindly to being told what to do by novice editors who spend much of their time here on MOSNUM but who aren’t as informed as they ought to be in the practices observed in certain disciplines. Like I said above, legislative bodies govern best when they legislate the least. Tread lightly here, provide editing latitude, and fix only what’s really broken. If not that, then we really ought to solicit greater input from the WikiProject Chemistry editors (or move this discussion over there). Greg L ( talk) 22:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
ℓ
) and which produces ℓ should not be used for in-line text.As to I also fail to understand the significance of "in-line text",
I thought that would give editors the flexibility to use the script form in math-style text where the formula is set off from the body text and is not part of in-line text. Do you think that is a bad idea? What I’m trying to do is avoid writing a rule that would require wholesale changes in existing articles for no good reason.
As regards All the stuff about "juxtaposed in close proximity" creates a contradiction; it implies that a prefixed "l" and a nonprefixed "L" may be used in the same article so long as they are separated by a lot of text…
No, it doesn’t “imply” anything, that’s exactly what it says and means and there is no contradiction. In total, it says that if the two aren’t used in a way that would cause confusion, then there is no problem. Do you think that if the
Cyclohexane had some verbiage somewhere in the body text that mentioned “a 200 L chemical drum” that this is going to really confuse anyone because ml appears in the sidebar? Third-graders aren’t reading that article. And why are you so quick to condemn an SI-compliant style that is routinely used in chemistry if doing so—as the above rules mandate—wouldn’t cause confusion?
A quick scan of your last 500 edits shows that your interest in chemistry-related articles is slim to none. As an R&D scientist who worked alongside a Ph.D. biochemist for many years on fuel cells (and am currently working on a medical device), I certainly know enough about chemistry to realize that there is simply no reason for non-chemists here on MOSNUM who like adding rules to style guides to be messing around in disciplines in which they have limited understanding. And why would you be so quick to ignore the wishes User:Itub? Let’s take a look at HIS contributions. As if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in chemistry and should be ignored? Your being so quick to reject his wishes given his clear expertise in chemistry strikes me as a bit arrogant. The above three-rule set addresses the issue by proscribing the use of lowercase l for liter and also affords editors the flexibility to use an SI-compliant symbol so long as editors only exercise a little common sense in deciding if confusion might arise. Greg L ( talk) 19:23, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
You don’t trust chemistry editors to be able to use common sense in avoiding confusion? You think some non-chemists here on MOSNUM should tell them what they have to do because chemistry editors don’t understand their subject well enough to how to write chemistry symbols in their articles? I reject that notion. Utterly. I just don’t seem to have the stomach for writing restrictive guidelines that make blanket, radical changes in the practices of a discipline like chemistry unless we are fixing something that’s truly broken. Prescribing the U.S. convention (uppercase L) for the singular liter addresses an important issue and the BIPM recognized that. I also happen to think that we can point out that using ml and L in the same article certainly can be confusing and chemistry editors should look out for that and harmonize the style if necessary. I actually think chemistry editors can be trusted a bit to use their brains. Don’t you?
Let’s see if we can get Itub to weigh in here; he’s actually a chemist. Greg L ( talk) 20:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that this is a matter that needs resolving in the MOS. Other than NIST, I'm not aware of any standards body mandating one form over the other and any attempt on Wikipedia's part to codify seems a bit of bureaucratic overzealousness that is adequately dealt with already by rule #1 on units of measurements in MOSNUM: "Unambiguousness: Do not write so you can be understood, write so you cannot be misunderstood." Caerwine Caer’s whines 04:43, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm a chemist and I don't think I would agree that C is true. The upper case L is a quite common in chemistry literature. I don't like the lower case l, and I find that the curly l looks terrible. There was a fad at one point for using dm^3 in lieu of liter, and an even older fad for using c.c. (cm^3) in lieu of mL, but that seems to be non-mainstream now. -- Rifleman 82 ( talk) 08:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Guidance is redundant if there is no clear and present or significant problem. It is redundant if editors will not change what they do anyway. I searched Wikipedia and see no significant problem to solve. Evidence of a clear and present problem please. Lightmouse ( talk) 14:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
If I’m reading this right, there are 3 front runners. In order of increasing complexity, these are:
My own preference is #2, followed by #3. (The default is #1). What do others think? Thunderbird2 ( talk) 10:37, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I vote for #1. Do we need to clutter the page with this? Can we not let editors use common sense? My second preference is #3 (except if directly quoting a curly cousin). Both upper and lower case are valid according to SI. JIMp talk· cont 17:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
No, we should not have both in the one article (with the obvious exceptions). Yes, we are free to decide for ourselves. JIMp talk· cont 17:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Greg, yes, we're free to decide for ourselves, if we decide to go with your proposal (which is pretty sound), we can. And, yes, it does address the issue of consistency within articles. Of course, Beer bottle etc. have other problems besides "l" vs "L" but your proposal would address this. JIMp talk· cont 03:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me that it would be possible to express the intent of Greg L's proposals above using simpler language. How about something like this:
Note that I've deliberately left any modifiers like "in close proximity" out of the sentence advising against mixing the two symbols: that way editors are free to decide, on a case-by-case basis, the appropriate scope (one sentence, one section, one article, a cluster of related articles, one WikiProject...) within which consistency should be maintained. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 05:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I oppose. I'd rather have all-across L.
Headbomb { ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 02:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
What you are advocating would certainly be “pretty” but will piss others off for reasons I stated above—including the fact that it is an SI-compliant style and is commonly done that way. That’s why we see the use of ml here. Now articles that feature ml and µl will at least be using them consistently with no mixing. We’ll just have to look at that and accept it. Other than us editors here flailing our arms over this, I expect that few readers will notice that one article does it one way than another. I suspect medical articles will naturally gravitate towards mL and that’s the way it ought to be in my opinion. We can let editors and groups of editors decide what’s better for their articles. If what we have now creates more problems than it solves—and I don’t see how that can be since the guideline only deprecates the worst practices that common sense should have fixed long ago—it can always be repealed or revised. Greg L ( talk) 04:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
The internationally accepted unit symbols for the liter are both the uppercase L and the lowercase form (l). However, since "l" can be easily confused for "I" (uppercase "i" ) and the numeral 1 when using sans-serif typefaces, editors should use only the uppercase L for the unprefixed liter (e.g., editors should write "A 10 L tank" instead of "A 10 l tank"). For prefixed versions of the liter (the decimal multiples and submultiples such as the milliliter and microliter), either lowercase or uppercase are acceptable (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer").
- Do not use the unicode "script ell" character ℓ and its variants (㎕, ㎖, ㎗ and ㎘).
- Articles should use the uppercase "L" and the lowercase "l" consistently; i.e., do not write "This soft drink is availible in both 250 ml and 2 L bottles", but rather "This soft drink is availible in both 250 mL and 2 L bottles".
either lowercase or uppercase are acceptable (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer").
For prefixed versions of the liter (the decimal multiples and submultiples such as the milliliter and microliter), either lowercase or uppercase are acceptable (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer" are satisfactory) but the chosen style should be consistent so as to avoid the awkward mixing of styles.
Headbomb and Gerry Ashton: There was a widespread consensus that ml and mL should not be used in the same article. There are a number of articles on Wikipedia that mix both. A guideline must be clear that though either style is OK, only one style should be used in an article. Here is the wording I'm proposing:
It seems clear that the last bullet point does not sufficiently speak to the issue of mixing ml and mL. In accordance with the consensus view here, I insist that any guideline wording make this clear. Don’t bother reverting it to a version of the text that doesn’t accomplish this agreed-upon principle or I will simply delete the whole damn thing from MOSNUM until we can vote on wording here. I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish here Headbomb. You earlier were pressing for requiring only that mL be allowed on MOSNUM and your efforts here almost look like you are trying to cripple the guideline so that editors continue to mix styles in the article. The underlined sentence is simple and straightforward. Stop deleting it. Greg L ( talk) 20:00, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
While there seems to be a consensus to employ uppercase ell (L) for liter, it appears to me that there is no consensus on capitalization of the ell when it is combined with a prefix. Accordingly, I would like to offer a modification of Ilmari Karonen’s proposal that may capture the preferences of most of those involved in this debate:
"The Unicode "script ell" character ℓ or the precomposed characters ㎕, ㎖, ㎗ and ㎘ should not be used on Wikipedia."
Hopefully this may prove a less contentious formulation. Askari Mark (Talk) 01:35, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
With the SI, the accepted unit symbols for the liter are both the uppercase L and the lowercase form (l). However, since lowercase L (l) can be easily confused with uppercase i (I) and the numeral 1 when using sans-serif typefaces, the un‑prefixed unit symbol for liter should be only the uppercase L, (e.g., editors should write "A 10 L tank" instead of "A 10 l tank"). Prefixed versions of the unit symbol (the decimal multiples and submultiples such as the milliliter and microliter) may be written with either the lowercase or uppercase L (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer" is satisfactory), but the chosen style should be used consistently. Articles should not mix the uppercase L for the un‑prefixed liter with lowercase prefixed forms like ml; that is, do not write "this soft drink is availible in both 250 ml and 2 L bottles", but rather "this soft drink is availible in both 250 mL and 2 L bottles". Do not use the unicode "script ell" character ℓ and its variants (㎕, ㎖, ㎗ and ㎘).
User:Tony1 just removed the auto-formatting of all the dates in Military history of Canada on the grounds that it was no longer encouraged at WP:MOSNUM Now, personally, I really couldn't care less either way, but I'd like to know what consensus is on this. I didn't see anything in WP:MOSNUM that suggested a major reversal of guidelines, or anything suggesting a large scale removal of such formatting was in order. If I somehow missed it, I'm sorry. If such a consensus has been made, it should be more clearly displayed on the guideline page. If not, I'm not sure what to do about Military history of Canada. Thanks, TheMightyQuill ( talk) 15:15, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't "In the mean time, err on the side of leaving things the way they are" be a standard intermediate policy? Whatever, this really doesn't matter.- TheMightyQuill ( talk) 17:24, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I would like to see links to the consensus discussions to remove autoformating and in fact links to the discussion to make autoformating optional. I am afraid this has become a personal crusade of Tony1 and hope there is a clear consensus somewhere to support this. Rmhermen ( talk) 13:49, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Tony's responses:
I apologise if I've upset anyone by my removal of date autoformatting from articles. This has been part of a trial to uncover any problems in a script. I have to say that people have reacted positively to the reduction in the amount of bright-blue words and underlining in their articles, with two exceptions out of many instances. When the issues were put to both editors, they changed their minds, which is telling: date autoformatting is a complicated issue that many WPians do not understand and just go along with because everyone else has been doing it for ages without question. One of these two users was Tony the Tiger, who's generally a maximalist when it comes to linking, and not an easy to convince. When he got to the bottom of how date autoformatting is fundamentally different from plain linking, he wrote to me: "In response to your post on my userspace, yes I concur linking dates is among the most useless type of linkage." I could quote a lot of positive comments here, but won't unless you request it.
Elliskev and MightyQuill: MOSNUM does no longer encourage the autoformatting of dates. It used to be mandatory, then late last year, I think, this was weakened from "are autoformatted" to "can be autoformatted". This change was not made by me, although more recently I've clarified the language after debates on this page. Optionalisation is not a sudden change, but has evolved over at least two years; you can find numerous debates in the archives here during that period. I think there was significant support for compulsion in the earlier debates, but in the past year or so, and particularly more recently, this has not been the case—rather, there has been continual grumbling on this talk page about:
The in-house-only aspect was not part of debate until recently (I myself didn't realised it until a few months ago). This fact has considerably strengthened support for optionalisation. It's easy to say that there's no consensus, Rmhermen, but I haven't seen significant opposition at MOSNUM to optionalisation for some time.
As for the Beethoven and Mozart articles, it was my fault not to have checked through more thoroughly (I normally do); but I have to ask why you're complaining now? All of your readers out there have been seeing those inconsistencies ever since they were entered; at least removing the autoformatting has made what they see obvious to you, and I hope will lead to their being fixed. If you'd posted on my talk page, I'd have done so immediately. I see that Elliskev has reinstated auto to Schubert, and Michael Bednarek to Beethoven. Who is going to fix the inconsistencies uncovered by the removal of the autoformatting? I'm happy to do the Mozart right now, since that hasn't been reverted.
Elliskev: no one has suggested that a FA or an FA would be held up because of a date autoformatting issue? You weren't implying that, surely. User Realist may well have decided to encourage people to remove autoformatting at GA, and I strongly support him/her, but in the end, it's optional: those who believe the removal is a significant improvement can only put their case to those who are uncomfortable with what has become part of the furniture over the years.
I hope this response has cleared the air. MightyQuill, I wonder whether you're willing to trial the non-autoformatting in the MilHist article for a week or so, perhaps returning to it a few times to judge whether it displays your high-value links a little better, and reduces the colour-clutter slightly on the page. Same or Mozart. I have no wish to pick fights with people who firmly object.
I haven't put most of the arguments for not using autoformatting that have occupied debate here, but we can regurgitate them if you like. I'm interested in your opinions, and hope that you might be willing to support this issue. I believe someone else is setting them out fully in an essay soon to be posted. Tony (talk) 17:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I couldn't care less about formatting, but if some people do, why not find a solution that satisfies everyone. User:Michael Bednarek mentioned the Template:date which I see doesn't work. What about producing a template like {{ymd|2008-07-18}} that would format dates properly both for editors and for anonymous readers, and use a bot to convert them all (and simultaneously unlink them), instead of just unlinking them on a page by page basis? - TheMightyQuill ( talk) 18:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Tony, please stop trying to convince me, because I really couldn't care either way about the date format. My problem is that you're taking action (in the form of mass removals) when there is no consensus to do so. There is a very big difference between MOSNUM not encouraging the formatting of dates, and MOSNUM discouraging the formatting of dates. Only the latter would legitimize mass removals. Whether or not I would support such a change in guidelines is a totally different issue than whether I would support mass removals before such a change has occurred (ie. before consensus has been reached). - TheMightyQuill ( talk) 19:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
(reset indent)Response to Tony I hope I hit all the points addressed to me.
MOSNUM no longer encourages autoformatting, but does it discourage it?
Where auto-formatting exists, shouldn't removal be discussed on an article-by-article basis?
Inconsistencies uncovered by removal of auto-formatting should be fixed, just as inconsistencies uncovered by editing should be fixed.
I wasn't suggesting that FAs or GAs are being held up, or that they should be held up. Poor way of expressing it on my end. Hypothetically, if an article was held up because it included auto-formatted dates, that would be a bad thing. However, suggestions in a GA or FA review are (I'm guessing here) less likely to be ignored on the basis of optionality. People are going to do as suggested in hopes of a Support !vote -- Elliskev 20:00, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
It may be a toss-up in the case of most articles but I've just recently decreased the average frequency of photons emitted from a couple of pages. Certain articles contain date ranges of the form day1–day2 month year (albeit month day1–day2, year). Blue lemon can't deal with this. For autoformatting to work this has to be written day1 month–day2 month year. We're trying to write English here: we shouldn't have to twist it to fit some ill-conceived formatting feature. I propose that whenever such unautoformattable dates appear in an article, for consistency no dates should be autoformatted. JIMp talk· cont 02:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I've been editing on a varying scale for five years and with dozens of identities. Until recently, I'd never hewed to the MoS, simply because I felt some of the prescriptions were silly. Date-linking was probably my main complaint, and on its account alone I found it hard to take the Manual seriously. Instead, I'd pull up FAs, go through them, follow the precedents I liked, and ignore those I didn't. The MoS was to be disregarded; I never tracked changes or updates.
After all, what was the big idea? How did date-linking follow usual linking guidelines, wherein links are used to improve depth of understanding, explain references, and lead to related subjects? What does April 7 have to do with Henry Ford? He probably never gave a whit of thought to April 7 until he happened to croak on it. How much worth do random events occurring in 1828 have for readers of Francisco Goya? How relevant is it that Andrew Taylor Still, "the father of osteopathy", happened to be born in the year Goya happened to die? And why do I keep saying "happen"? Because dates are happenstance by nature, irrelevant to almost every topic. If we're just linking dates for diversity, to lead readers in new browsing directions, why should dates in particular get this special privilege? And if we just like to turn as much text as possible to that lovely blue hue, why not just make it the default text color on Wikipedia?
So anyway, after much avoidance and intermittent wikibreaks, I returned to editing on a small scale. I decided to play things by the book this time, and the book is what I turned to when I got to cleaning up our inchoate Eleanor McGovern article. Did I really have to link these stupid dates? Looking through the MoS and expecting the bad news, I didn't find it. I went to the Village Pump, asked about changes in datelinking policy, and got no answer. Eventually I wound up at Tony's talk page, and now I wind up here.
The policy needs to change. Optionalization is a fine start, and an absolute minimum, but the MoS should come out clearly and unambiguously against date-linking. It's not an IDONTLIKEIT concern; it's a matter of getting guidance from our guidelines. The MoS should not create ex juris enclaves of special linking policy where common consensus about overlinking does not apply. Sure, there is a tension between WP:OVERLINK and WP:BUILD, but even the more link-happy of these two makes clear that links should only be made to relevant pages, and April 7 has precious little relevance to anything except April 8. If we are honest to our general guidelines, the MoS must establish a strong recommendation against linking dates in all but the most unusual circumstances.
And one more word, on the "American" date style. I'm an American, though raised partly in the UK, and I don't think date styles are an issue at all, let alone analogous to differences in spellings or measurement systems. Just a few weeks ago I made sure that Pan-Slavic colours was moved back to its original American spelling, and if WP ever switched to an all-metric system, I'd go into conniptions. And yet, I wouldn't give a hoot if we switched over entirely to "7 April" over "April 7", and neither would most Yanks. Ask the average American on the street which style belongs to which place, and we wouldn't be able to tell you. The same American who flinches to hear "kilometres" would find nothing dubious or foreign about "7 April". Further, the "international" style is preferable simply because it lends itself less naturally to ordinal suffixes and other such frippery. Though I doubt it will ever happen, date formats could be standardized without loss or upset. But really, my main issue is date-linking, and we can spare the other debate for another time.
We can act now to establish a single clear and sensible date guideline which conforms to the spirit of our wider policies, and we should. Mr. IP ( talk) 22:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
____________________
Title: "Proposal to remove date-autoformatting"
Dear fellow contributors
MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. Related to this, MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether a date is autoformatted or not). MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.
There are at least six disadvantages in using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:
Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors. Does anyone object if I remove it from the main text in a few days on a trial basis? The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just our millions of readers; it would be plain, unobtrusive text, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links.
____________________
One final matter: Parham, it is pure contrarian fantasy that someone would invent a script for imposing date-autoformatting in this contet. I'm unsure what motivates you this time to apparently object to a highly popular move; is it based on "I don't like it"? Your support would be greatly appreciated. Tony (talk) 02:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
I might be missing this, but how does the current suggestion of removing autoformatting of dates within the article body affect dates for references? Are these encouraged to be not linked (which means that the accessdate parameter in most templates will need to be changed) with the same date formatting as the article, or are these considered outside the bounds of the article, thus linking as normal? -- MASEM 14:00, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Here are three articles, with dates completely delinked and correctly and consistently formatted, in three different styles, as samples:
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 05:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't care much what decision is reached on the autoformatting issue, but one thing is perfectly clear: anyone mass removing these links without an established concensus should cease and desist, and there certainly shouldn't be any bots already doing this (as was indicated above). Was there a prior discussion/concensus regarding the change in the MOS? If so, can someone provide a link? Personally I like the idea of having all dates formatted consistantly to my preference. I had assumed that dates were autoformatted to a single default for non-registered users. Given what has been said above, I take it this is not the case? I assume this avenue has already been explored? PC78 ( talk) 17:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
And when you wrote that “I had assumed that dates were autoformatted to a single default for non-registered users”, you assumed a bit too much with that assumption. Depending on the autoformat chosen, there are different defaults and some are particularly crappy looking—beyond worthless really—for most readers. Note how if we were to code [[2005-08-06]], the vast majority of readers see only 2005- 08-06. Well, is that June 8, 2005 or August 6, 2005? It’s not intuitively clear until the 13th day of the month. Only we registered editors—a small, privileged minority—would see something attractive and unambiguous such as August 6, 2005 or 6 August 2005. But we registered editors are insulated and oblivious to this ugliness and can’t fix what we can’ see. The simple solution is to stop thinking of tools that only work for us as being of any value whatsoever.
And BillCJ, your argument that that the consensus view (solutions that only benefit a small minority and actually messes things up for the vast majority) is “silly,” just proves the point that some registered editors on Wikipedia are only here to impress themselves and an elite club of registered editors. The rest of us simply reject that attitude; we know what Wikipedia’s proper mission is: to benefit the general reader just as much as our precious little selves. Greg L ( talk) 19:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
(ec) My understanding is that it is finally an option to scrap autoformatting in an article I am writing if I want to, which I do. That is, autoformatting is no longer forced on me. If I want to consider the vast majority of readers who are the unregistered public, I am now allowed to do so. — Mattisse ( Talk) 19:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
GregL: What this issue really needs is a centralized discussion, where a binding concensus can (hopefully) be forged. It's all too easy for you to see a concensus where you want to, but it won't necessarily be so obvious to everyone else. What I don't want to see is a repeat of the debacle with placeholder images in biography articles, where a group of editors plastered them all over the place and a concensus was later formed against their use.
Is there any reason why a single default can't be imposed, as opposed to the current "no preference"? PC78 ( talk) 21:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
My personal view is that as long as the dates are displayed correctly for the region to which the article relates or for which a consensus exists within the article or topic, then there's no problem. It does create less of a "blue sea" effect. I've always been totally against wikilinking years (other than those that are part of dates) as it serves no purpose at all, but with the dates the issue had always been what I perceive as a US-centrism that sometimes operates and spreads when left unchecked. (i.e. if people in the US do something one way and people elsewhere do it differently, the latter is seen as "wrong".) Agreed with PC78 that the best way to effect change management is to involve people rather than force it from above. Orderinchaos 19:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm convinced. I just turned off date preferences in my preferences. I've been removing bare year links on sight for a long time now, and I now intend to removed date autoformatting when I see it. -- Donald Albury 20:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
{{US/Commonwealth|trunk|boot}}
so text would read “…he put the bomb in the trunk of the car…” for US readers and “…he put the bomb in the boot of the car…” for readers from the UK and Australia. Similarly, editors could write {{US/Commonwealth|color|colour}}
. For dates, (although I personally don’t have a problem looking at 2 August 2008), one could write {{US/other|July 4, 1776|4 July 1776}}
.But we don’t have these tools, which would be designed to improve the reading experience for the vast majority of Wikipedia’s readers: the non-registered I.P. user. The autoformatting of dates was sooooo unwise because they allowed us to start using crappy-looking code for regular users to look at just so we privileged few could benefit. 21:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
However, making complex editting templates within the text is not going to make joining in easier or attractive to new editors. Putting each date, each unit of measurement, each boot/trunk/hood/bonnet, each or/our or ise/ize ending inside brackets and slashes is a prospect to fill me with despair. -- Pete ( talk) 00:22, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
On a pedantic note, Greg said that the spelling 'kilogram' instead of 'kilogramme' annoys UK people. The spelling 'kilogramme' may exist in the UK but I think the spelling 'kilogram' is the current dominant spelling in British English. It is the spelling used in British law such as The Units of Measurement Regulations. This pedantry does not detract from his point. Regards Lightmouse ( talk) 21:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
And beyond the issue of *formating* of dates, I just can’t see the wisdom of cluttering up articles with even more links if all they do is take readers to random lists of historical trivia that have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter at hand. If I were writing an article on the speed of light, I might link to meter, for instance. Such topical links properly invite exploration and learning. When articles are over‑linked, we’re just numbing readers to links, such as when we add a link within speed of light that takes the reader to an article that says…
“ | [On this date in] 1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-nineteenth century. | ” |
ISO dates are a standard format on Wikipedia. Just look at the main article on the main page: Ann Arbor, Michigan or any other with lots of references. The autoformatting mess is because well-meaning people combined two things (create more links, create autoformatting). Let's not combine a migration away from autoformatting with a prohibition on ISO dates - just think of the effect that will have on delinking thousand of articles like Ann Arbor, Michigan i.e. you will have to examine the article for its dominant region, and edit all the ISO dates to become US dates, only then will you be able to remove all the links. Lightmouse ( talk) 17:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Do you think most readers are familiar with the ISO specification? I can point to a hundred people I know who’ve never heard of the ISO, let alone read their specification. Or do you hope that if Wikipedia were to start using the ISO‑style, all‑numeric date, the rest of the world will go “Ah HAAA (those smart Wikipedia editors), I see” and the world will soon intuitively understand the style and instantly recognize and parse such dates? The ISO specification was valuable for establishing a standardized way for the storage and retrieval of computerized, numeric-only dates in databases and spreadsheets and what not. But the result is still slow to read and takes more mental energy to parse than simply writing 2 February 2008 or February 2, 2008. There clearly was never any need for some standards organization somewhere on this planet to “define” how dates with the month written out (like 2 February 2008) should be parsed and interpreted because there is no alternative way to interpret them. What’s good for machines isn’t necessarily good for humans.
So, to paraphrase your fallacious statement: “That is the beauty of dates with the month written out - they have only one possible interpretation”. Just because there is a “standard” of some sort for the computerized storage and retrieval of data and similar purposes, doesn’t mean it’s a good convention to use when writing dates in the body text of encyclopedic articles. That much is just too obvious. Greg L ( talk) 22:58, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Since links to lists of historical trivia are rarely germane to the subject matter of the main article, the linking of dates and years (e.g. April 2, 1978) is discouraged unless the article is especially historical in nature. So long as the autoformating of dates results in linked dates, autoformated dates are discouraged. The all-numeric, autoformat option that is coded as follows
[[2005-08-06]]
and which displays as 2005- 08-06 for non-registered I.P. users (the vast majority of readers) should not be used.
The autoformatting of dates is generally discouraged in the main text of articles. In particular, the all-numeric, autoformat option (
[[2005-08-06]]
, which displays as 2005- 08-06 for the vast majority of readers, i.e., non-registered IP users) should not be used.
The autoformatting of dates is generally discouraged in the main text of articles because the great majority of users cannot take advantage of it. This includes all non-registered users, as well as those registered editors who do not select a date preference. In particular, the all-numeric, autoformat option (
[[2005-08-06]]
) should not be used, because it displays as 2005- 08-06 which leaves the identity of the month and day unclear. (Note, though, that certain templates do require this ISO yyyy-mm-dd format for proper functioning.)
I think there is, at least by implicaton, a loss of information when old dates are wikilinked and the original date is written in YYYY-MM-DD format. People often associate this format with ISO-8601, and this MoS (dates and numbers) says "ISO 8601 dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose" thus establishing that in the absence of information to the contrary, when a date in this format is encountered in Wikipedia, it is an ISO-8601 format. As such, it is in the Gregorian calender (proleptic if need be). When a user preference transforms the date into some other style, information about which calender is used is lost. Granted, it would be unwise for the editor writing an article to depend on the mere use of ISO-8601 dating to communicate that the proleptic Gregorian calendar is in use, but nevertheless information can be lost. -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 01:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm just waay confused where this came from, where was the discussion, and obviously there hasn't been consensus. The autocratic change to the MOS seems totally out of line with "the way we work". -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 02:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I have a pair of ideas for resolving the U.S. v. US (or should that be U.S. v US) issue for the page. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Are we not, though, adding another point of potential disagreement with respect to US-centricism? The US customary system is certianly not my customary system. JIMp talk· cont 05:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
It's nothing to do with laziness; that argument was run a year ago and laughed at. Typing dots is no problem for me: it's the reading of them that I don't like, and which makes the initialism look clunky. I hope that this campaign you've been conducting will cease. Tony (talk) 16:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Since the United States is the only country with significant usage of a set of customary units, how about saying instead of U.S. customary units each time they are mentioned, use United States customary units the first time, and customary units each succeeding time. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
This one I don't support as much, since unless we want to change a whole bunch of pages, we'll need to mention U.S. gallon (or US gallon or both) at least once, so it doesn't solve the issue, but perhaps changing as may mentions as would be unawkward to liquid gallon, leaving the U.S. implied instead of the liquid would work. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, there are two US gallons. However, you can generally guess which one is meant by that which is being measured. Also the imperial gallon is usually used for liquids. JIMp talk· cont 05:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
miles (U.S. customary - statute) per gallon (U.S. customary - liquid) - you're not serious, right? We're ALMOST NEVER going to have to specify the US "statute"/survey mile vs the one based on the international foot - the difference is literally only two parts per million; a quantity would have to be given to six or seven significant figures before it matters, and sources often don't specify what mile is used ("statute" mile is often used simply to disambiguate from nautical miles). 30 mile/US gallon is 1.27543×107 m-2 is (reciprocally) 7.8405 L/100km no matter which mile is used. -- Random832 ( contribs) 15:09, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
This summer, at one particularly remote harbour (or harbor using US spelling), I managed to fill my yacht up with 14.62 Canadian gallons of diesel fuel (they hadn't changed their pumps for a few decades), and I managed to get about 25 nautical miles (we don't use your wimpy landlubber miles at sea) per Canadian gallon. (Of course, it's a sailboat.) So let me offer the following suggestion: If you don't use SI (metric) units, specify which country or which organization defined the standards you are basing your units on. Are you using American imperial gallons, or British imperial gallons, or Canadian imperial gallons. And, are your miles statute miles, or nautical miles, or Norwegian miles. (I add the last one because I drove in Norway, and I speak a bit of Norwegian, so I know they often specify their mileage in litres per Norwegian mile - the Norwegian mile is 10 kilometres or about 6.2 English miles). So, if your are using non-SI units, don't assume that everyone uses the same gallons or miles as you and specify who's standards you are using. RockyMtnGuy ( talk) 22:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Of course a Canadian gallon is a British gallon is an Australian gallon. They are all the imperial gallon as opposed to the only two other gallons in current use: the US liquid & dry gallons. So, keeping things simple, we need only specify that it was an imperial gallon. As for Canadian pints: in my limited experience in Canadian pubs the word pint refers to any largish beer glass, not necessarily 20 imp fl oz, but this doesn't mean that a Canadian pint is anything different to an imperial pint, all it means is that bar owners are good at playing on people's confusion. JIMp talk· cont 03:24, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Headbomb recently added the following.
Do not use the unicode characters ² and ³. They are harder to read on small display, and are not aligned with supercript characters (see x1x²x³x4 vs. x1x2x3x4).
What's the general feeling here? I came out against this rule the last time it was added to the MoS. It was since removed. I'm not calling for its removal again but I would like to see what kind of ground we're standing on with respect to consensus for this. JIMp talk· cont 05:15, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, maecenas eligendi tincidunt aenean, sit et hac hendrerit massa, morbi maecenas nec vel auctor. Aliquam sit, tincidunt justo arcu neque eu mi fames. Vitae tellus suspendisse sed sit, dapibus ante purus erat non dui vivamus, dolor ultricies maecenas lacus luctus nunc, integer cursus tellus, anim a sem. → 592 mm3 ← fusce non, hendrerit etiam turpis vivamus hac, eget magna laoreet. Ipsum class risus, vitae leo lacinia rutrum cursus mauris nunc, purus tincidunt quisquam est blandit sed, auctor auctor. Feugiat pede metus sed ut integer duis, quis nec purus, ac ad in ac convallis. Odio morbi pellentesque facilisis. Praesent sed tempus phasellus turpis nec elementum, justo eu volutpat tincidunt perferendis, mauris enim nullam et pellentesque sociosqu sodales, eros nulla sociosqu nascetur mauris euismod. Libero urna morbi lacus, quisque varius massa dapibus egestas aliquam vulputate.
Why do we insist on placing the dates after the name in the intro when it causes clutter and can be tucked away in infoboxes? What is so special about the dates anyway? I suggest we change the MOS to suggest that the DOB may be removed from the intro if an appropriate infobox exists. -- Adoniscik( t, c) 16:19, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
What basis is there for removing something that neatly presents all the facts? It's much easier to glance at an infobox, which has a standard format, than to fish through text. Also, why shouldn't the infobox contain anything that isn't in the text? Just provide a citation. -- Adoniscik( t, c) 19:07, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
From time to time, I come across ways in which people ban metric units. Sometimes this is because they do not like them, sometimes it is because they fail to appreciate the effects of things they do. One of the common ways relates to quotations. See: Crotalus mitchellii angelensis. In this case the text is written as:
An edit to add metric units was reverted. I agree that conversions in quotes is an issue in many cases. However, this instance is somewhat trivial and the text should be recast so that the units are not part of a quote. Regional styleguides do not have to address this problem but I think an international publication does. I think this is similar to sex biased text 'a doctor should know his patients' i.e. the bias is initially not noticed, then people notice it but worry about how to fix it, then they simply stop thinking in such ways and write non-biased text in the first place. In a similar way, I would like to be able to point at guidance about units inside quotes. It does not have to be dogmatic, merely encouraging thought of alternatives. Lightmouse ( talk) 10:56, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
I can see that I was not very clear. The issue is not about the 'how', it is about the 'whether'. This is an issue the crops up frequently. I have added a bullet that I think encapsulates what I mean:
If anyone has any better wording, feel free to change it. Perhaps the correspondence will give context.
'Moved from Lightmouse talk page:begin
Here's another problem: I've noticed that Lightbot has recently been making edits to certain articles on snakes, applying the convert template in particular. While I have nothing against this per se, what I do not approve of is that it has also been making edits to type locality statements. That's not good, because these are supposed to be literal quotes. You could fix this by programming Lightbot to ignore all text between an instance of "type locality" and the end of the paragraph it occurs in. -- Jwinius ( talk) 10:51, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
That would seem like a simple solution, but once again, it's supposed to be a literal quote, so I can't change it either. Type locality statements usually come from the first ever descriptions of a species or subspecies: they may be short or long, although never more than a single sentence in my experience, and may even be wildly wrong. That's why they're "between quotation marks." -- Jwinius ( talk) 11:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Moved from Lightmouse talk page:end
Other edits that are relevant are:
I believe that the editor is pro-conversion. So perhaps I have mistitled this section, but if you look at the edits you may see the generic point. I would be intereted to know what people think. Lightmouse ( talk) 15:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Lightmouse, is there a reason why you can't use square brackets in the manner suggested by MJCdetroit and Gerry Ashton? Thunderbird2 ( talk) 14:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I see, but how about more generally. Let's say a fisherman encounters a "30 foot sea monster". Can your bot be taught to convert that to "30 ft [10 m] sea monster"? Thunderbird2 ( talk) 15:23, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
What is the interface to the bot like, that is, does it go through the text change-by-change and ask the operator for permission to do each change? Or maybe it does the whole article and just asks the operator if the entire set of changes to the whole article is ok? Or maybe it just changes the article and it is up to the operator to read the article before hand to see if there is anything that wouldn't work? -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 20:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I notice that many feature articles on musicians use #1 or #3 etc. to indicate chart placement of a single or album. Some editors think this is fine, others say the the number should be written out as in "the record reached number one on the pop charts" and "the album rose to number three on the hot 100. There is no mention in the WP:MoS. Any guidance for me? Hopefully, — Mattisse ( Talk) 22:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Under the Dates section, would people oppose examples showing ISO or "year month day" formats?
Incorrect | February 14th; 14th February; the 14th of February |
---|---|
Correct | 14 February; February 14 |
Incorrect | October, 1976; 1976, October |
Correct | October 1976; 1976 October |
The reason I bring this up is that under Full date formatting subtopic Strong national ties to a topic, it says editors should use a date format familiar to the nation. East Asian countries such as China and Japan use "year month day" dates. In addition to that, their month names are numbered 1 through 12, making the overall date look very similar to the ISO format ( ISO: 2008-08-08, Chinese: 2008年8月8号, Japanese: 2008年8月8日). Some articles on computer data formats may also use ISO.
According to the Dates section of the article, ISO dates are rare in prose. As it does look odd, I'd be okay with not promoting ISO dates in articles, but I think that the "year month day" format is plausible. Of course, any changes to this article would also be made on the main Manual of Style article as well.
Wikky Horse ( talk) 16:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Non-anglophone countries: "it says editors should use a date format familiar to the nation"—This is an incorrect paraphrasing of the guideline. See the following guidelines:
"Articles related to other countries that commonly use one of the two acceptable guidelines above should use that format." And "ISO 8601 dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and are generally not used in Wikipedia. However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness and ease of comparison."
Tony (talk) 00:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
User Ckatz, who has previously taken me to task WRT the move away from date-autoformatting, is making changes to the wording of the date autoformatting section, with what I perceive to be vague or unconvincing edit-summary justifications. I've suggested that instead of edit-warring, the matter be discussed here. I do believe that the existing wording expresses fact rather than opinion, which is Ckatz's issue. Tony (talk) 10:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
while my changes were to have it read:"Careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the autoformatting mechanism should be made before applying it: the mechanism does not work for the vast majority of readers, such as unregistered users and registered users who have not made a setting, and can affect readability and appearance if there are already numerous high-value links in the text.."
If discussion is desired, great - but I do think the changes are pretty self-evident. Saying it "does not work" really pushes the "don't use it" POV, as does the unnecessary (and unverified) "vast majority of readers" - hence my more specific language. The second part of the text, which I removed, is not suitable for a guideline as it clearly reflects an opinion about the effect of autoformatting. I was pretty clear about this in the edit summaries. -- Ckatz chat spy 19:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)"Careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the autoformatting mechanism should be made before applying it; autoformatting has no effect for unregistered users or registered users who have not made a setting. "
Tony's response: I agree with C Parham's second statement: it's false to assert, as Ckatz's change did, that "autoformatting has no effect on unregistered users": how many outsiders have said to me, when I raise the topic of the blue dates, "yes, I wondered why earth: it's odd", or similar queries? My disclosure that it's so Wikipedians can see those blue dates in a preferred format receives quizzical looks. Of course, they have to travel over the disruptive blue displays without the preferred formatting. Therefore, Ckatz's proposed change in the text ("no effect") is starting to look POV.
"The second part of the text,... is not suitable for a guideline as it clearly reflects an opinion about the effect of autoformatting"
This risks being "opinion" itself. There's wide acceptance that (1) some links are more valuable than others, and (2) text can be overlinked (the "sea of blue" that is referred to on this page and in the archives—by Greg L, as one of many, in less flattering words; put "turd" into your finder). A significant motivating factor for me is to make the linking system work better by removing low-value links. I'm unsure why this is not uppermost in your minds, too. So C Parham, your suggested insertion of "users who do make settings may enjoy improved readability" is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. We need to take into account the entire utility of the text and the linking system.
"Saying it "does not work" really pushes the "don't use it" POV, as does the unnecessary (and unverified) "vast majority of readers""
The first one is a fact; the second is a conjecture in the vein of "The sun will come up tomorrow morning"—unverifiable in the strictest terms, but not worth wasting people's time over the null hypothesis. WP is the ?seventh-most-visited site in the world, I think: many millions of hits a day. Compare that with the few thousand regular users, and the few tens of thousands who make occasional edits: how many of the visitors are registered, preference-set and logged in? And nothing like all edits—even by regulars—are done by registered, preference-set and logged-in users. I'm surprised to be having this discussion about the existence of the "vast majority", frankly. In any case, some people advise that we should set "no preference", so that we see what outsiders see, to make it easier to pick up the raw-format inconsistencies and broken formatting that plague some articles.
The realisation that disciplined linking is important to the project is well-established at WP:MOSLINK, WP:CONTEXT and, indeed, MoS main. Such phrases as:
"Do not make too many links" (MOSLINK), and "Links should add to the user's experience; they should not detract from it by making the article harder to read. A high density of links can draw attention away from the high-value links that you would like your readers to follow up. Redundant links clutter the page and make future maintenance harder." (MoS main)
have been there for ages, undisputed. The proposal to remove from MOSNUM wording that is consonant with these statements is going against a large-scale, long-term trend in WP.
I do hope to convince both of you to support the three main issues: (1) DA is generally undesirable, while not disputing editors' right to use it where they wish; (2) the move a while ago, in effect, to give editors at each article the power to use or not use DA was worth supporting; and (3) raising the issue on individual article talk pages is an entirely legitimate part of the way WP evolves—through reasoned debate. Tony (talk) 01:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
This arises from the discussion above, initiated by Lightmouse (although not with a title I'd have chosen). The debate is prompted by MOSNUM's statement: "The same format should be used in the main text, footnotes and references of each article". In that discussion, inter alia, Lighmouse says:
I started this debate [on the scope of within-article consistency in date formatting] because there is a mismatch between guidance (demands consistency) and the reality (tolerates inconsistency). The debates about consistency have always been about the main text only. Date formatting must be one of the most talked about and most badly handled issues on Wikipedia. Yet three formats are widely seen on the same page without significant comment. Few editors care enough about date consistency to do much about it. It is not a big deal. For now, please, just cut the scope of guidance down from whole-article to main-text.
This is a view that I find compelling, except that I take it Lightmouse also intended that date formats in citation-driven references should be internally consistent where they are different from date formats in the main text.
SandyGeorgia, the FA delegate, has been concerned about this "mismatch" between rules and practice for some time; she finds it most uncomfortable to pass FAs that are, technically speaking, in breach of the MoS guidelines. This occurs, for example, in all articles that use the popular cite web template for the references section, which displays ISO dates in contempt of MOSMUM's statement:
"ISO 8601 dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and are generally not used in Wikipedia.
Note, however, that there's a little loophole that might be construed as allowing ISO dates in citation lists:
However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness and ease of comparison."
even though this is at odds with the quote at the top of this section <clears throat loudly>.
Sandy commented in the discussion above:
However the wording change is done, please make sure that readers understand that:
- [the main] text should use one, consistent style for date formatting and linking, and
- references and footnotes should use one, consistent style ...
The aim is that article text and footnotes/references may differ in style because of citation template programming, but within the footnotes and references, we should still find consistency in both linking/delinking and style of dates used. That is, if ISO dates are used, they should be used consistently [in references].... we're not letting footnotes and references off the consistency hook; we're just recognizing that current template implementations on Wiki make it very hard to achieve consistenty between article text and citations. We can still achieve consistency within each. I suppose the "consistency dividing line" would be consistency above the See also section, and consistency below the See also section, in terms of WP:LAYOUT.... In other words, I agree with the proposal, but disagree with the section heading here.
I believe that herding together the templates into a rationale, coordinated part of the project is impossible to do in the short term, and that we should go along with Lightmouse's and Sandy's call. In effect, the simplest way of acknowledging reality is to be strict about date formatting consistency within (1) the manually entered dates in an article, and separately (2) the citation-generated dates that are largely out of editors' control. We are aided in this proposal by the fact that the citations are neatly corralled at the bottom of articles, and the main text, with a few rare exceptions, contains manually entered dates.
At the moment, MOSNUM can say what it likes about whole-article consistency until it's blue in the face, but the developers of the citation templates have taken no notice, and we tag along. Tony (talk) 05:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I do not understand this discussion, or what people still believe are the limitations in any of the various citation templates. There is currently a bug at {{ citation}} where it won't accept delinked US-style date formats (it converts them to international style), but to my knowledge, this meme that x, y or z can't be done with a given template is simply wrong. With the exception of that bug, all of the templates can handle all combinations (linked, not linked, US-style or international-style), and that one bug can be dealt with manually by moving the date out of the template. I suspect that many editors are repeating these memes without having experimented with different methods. Again, there are three completely delinked samples in:
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
In American English the date is written as mm/dd/yy
In British English AKA European English the date is written as dd/mm/yy.
I suggest that on all American related articles we should use the American format and in European related articles, we use the European format. This makes sense. Also the same goes with articles related to South Africa, Australia ect. I believe this should be added to this wiki-page
Ijanderson977 (
talk) 18:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Written out dates, 12 August 2008 and August 12, 2008 are confusing? What system are you advocating? FWiW Bzuk ( talk) 19:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC).
That's not what mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy advocates unless it is in ISO dating format. When I see dd/mm/yy, it is a code for writing out 12 August 2008 and mm/dd/yy means August 1, 2008 to me; that's why I was confused, as I didn't see an argument for using numerical equivalents, merely for the arrangement of the day or month sequence. FWiW Bzuk ( talk) 21:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC).
Yep, numbers alone are dangerous—I have to think carefully to interpret them, and sometimes still can't determine which system. The advantage of spelling out the month is that (1) it instantly classifies all three components of a full date, and (2) it's more accessible to most readers. Tony (talk) 05:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Can someone tell me why we don't auto-format dates for non-registered users? -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 02:10, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
No, I meant what I asked. Why is it that a visitor to our site that doesn't log in to any account will see 2008-08-23 when a logged in user will see it auto-formatted? Why don't we auto-format dates for users that aren't logged in? -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 03:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia should end its addiction to tinkering with date formats and mandating date format consistency within articles. Ordinary people do not care much. Wikipedia clearly does not care much about what ordinary readers see. As an issue, date format is less of a concern than regional spelling (color vs colour). Spelling can be wrong for the region but unambiguous date formats are not wrong, merely less common. Lightmouse ( talk) 09:47, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
What would solve all of this is if Wikipedia developers made a parser function that looked to the requesting reader’s I.P. address so it knew what country they are from. This is routinely done on Web servers of all sorts so they can spoon-feed custom content to the reader and collect reader statistics. There could be certain parser function classifications and groupings of these classifications, such as “US/other” or “US/Commonwealth”, “NorthAmerica/Other”, “US/UK”. Then we could have templates like {{US/Commonwealth|trunk|boot}}
so text for US readers would be “…he put the bomb in the trunk of the car…” and UK and Australian readers would see “…he put the bomb in the boot of the car…”. Similarly, editors could write {{US/Commonwealth|color|colour}}
. For dates, (although I personally don’t have a problem looking at 2 August 2008), one could write {{US/other|July 4, 1776|4 July 1776}}
.'
The simple solution is for editors to stop using the formatting tools. That will also stop linking dates to mindless lists of historical trivia. If one is writing an article on an intrinsically historical subject, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, then linking “ 1799” can be topical. But for most articles, the resultant links to seemingly random trivia are not topical and just junk up articles with too many blue links, which discourages learning and exploration. If someone is reading up on Planck units, they don’t need to read that “Max Planck first proposed them in 1899”, and click on the link in hopes of learning more about his proposal, only to be faced with stuff like “ July 17: The French Bretonnet- Braun mission is destroyed in the battle of Togbao, in Chad, by the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr.” (*aack*) Greg L ( talk) 17:21, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
[[2005-08-06]]
. It is beyond worthless. I added a footnote (
∆ here) to the table of date formats,
here. Given that this particular format produces (to quote O.J. Simpson) “ugly-ass” text for the majority of readers, this seems a common-sense thing to do. I guess we’ll just sit back and watch for who reverts it and why; that will at least clarify for me why this paralysis has gone on for so damned long.
Greg L (
talk) 17:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)I can't work out where to comment, but my comment would be that I'd support dropping date formatting as long as we adopt the compromise we have for spelling, first contributor unless article subject indicates a national tie and consistency. Hiding T 18:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
As to spelling, there is already a perfectly workable solution on WP:MOS:
“ | [editors should] defer to the style used by the first major contributor [except for national ties, etc.] | ” |
And finally, why do you perceive there is a link between the dropping of linked dates and spelling? Or is it that you are offering your support for one issue if you gain support for another? Greg L ( talk) 20:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Some dates are part of reading flow (body text). Some dates are just reference data (citations). The obsession with date consistency got us into this autoformatting mess and readers really do not care that much. I am happy to read 'Fourth of July' in one paragraph and 'September the Eleventh' in the next and I am happy if citations have compact ISO formats. The formats that almost all readers see today are not the problem, just take all the square brackets away. Lightmouse ( talk) 00:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Responses from Tony1, from bottom upwards:
Again, I ask, why bother to go through so much angst in search of a solution to a non-problem? I can think of lots of better places to direct our programming and editorial talent. The "end run" LeadDogSong talks of is here now: drop it altogether. Simplicity wins, usually. Tony (talk) 00:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
What you type | What logged-in registered users see (settings on first row) | What others will see* | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-- | January 15, 2001 | 15 January 2001 | 2001 January 15 | 2001-01-15 | No preference | -- | |
[[2005-05-15]] | May 15, 2005 | 15 May 2005 | 2005 May 15 | 2005- 05-15 | 2005- 05-15 | 2005- 05-15 | |
* Non-registered users and registered users not logged in |
Most registered editors stay logged in. As soon as they don’t see their name up at the top (every 30 days now), we log in again. Very few of we editors ever peruse Wikipedia and look at articles as a regular I.P. user. But 99.9% of Wikipedia’s readers are I.P. users.
So editors *think* they’re doing something wonderful with this stupid format option and, in fact, all we give 99.9% of our readers is the worst of both worlds: they don’t get the written-out dates we privileged editors see, and they get the damned links to mindless trivia that has next to nothing to do with the subject the article is about.
So that is why I advocate that editors should not use this particular date *formatting* option. If editors want “2005-08-06” for a tabular or special use, they should simply write it out. If editors want proper dates with a month written out (which they should want to usually do), they should at least use one of the other date formatting options. Better yet, just choose a style (either “August 6, 2005” or “6 August 2005”) and don’t link it.
This is why I suggested adding a footnote ( ∆ here) to the table of date formats, to produce this. Greg L ( talk) 17:22, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
On the subject of links: I just can’t see the wisdom of cluttering up articles with even more links if all they do is take readers to random lists of historical trivia that have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter at hand. If we’re going to start linking to trivia, that suggests we might as well link to every other possible word; and attitude of “if Wikipedia has a damned article on it, LINK TO IT!!!!” When we over‑link—like with links to trivia—we just turn articles into a giant blue turd. A properly linked article invites exploration and learning by properly anticipating what the typical reader might be interested in further exploring.
If I were writing an article on the speed of light, I might link to meter, for instance. Such topical links properly invite exploration and learning. When articles are over‑linked, we’re just numbing readers to links, such as when we add a link within speed of light that takes the reader to an article that says…
“ | [On this date in] 1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-nineteenth century. | ” |
Now, I don’t care to try to impress this basic lesson on technical writing upon every damned 8th-grade editor who takes the time to register and become a Wikipedia editor™®©. They can knock themselves out with the power of wikilinking and link the living shit out of everything they touch their hands to. I don’t want linked dates in articles I’ve worked hard to expand and make professional. I’m happy as a clam as long as MOSNUM doesn’tencourage the use of date *formatting* or linking or permit other editors who like to link dates to wade into nice mature articles and junk them up with even more links.
Finally, I’m all for expanding the use of date formatting so it benefits all readers (I.P. readers too, even though they account for *only* 99.9% of Wikipedia’s readership). But such tools currently don’t exist and the developer who ‘rules’ on this likes his damned blue links to trivia and seems to be entirely pleased with what they do so long as he sees what he likes when he’s logged in. So I’m not holding my breath waiting for properly conceived tools that will truly benefit the vast majority readers. And I simply think it was profoundly unwise for a developer to have made a date format like [[2005-08-06]] where registered edtiors are deluded into thinking they’re making some pretty-looking dates like August 6, 2005 or 6 August 2005 but pretty much the entire rest of the planet sees 2005- 08-06. Whoever thought that was a keeno idea should, IMO, be blocked for a week for stupidity. With the use of [[2005-08-06]], not only does the rest of the world see the all-numeric date in in-line body text, but if they have the misfortune of clicking on the blue link, they’re taken to the nothing but random trivia. Greg L ( talk) 21:56, 14 August 2008 (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 100 | ← | Archive 104 | Archive 105 | Archive 106 | Archive 107 | Archive 108 | → | Archive 110 |
Do we have an official preference for the use of l vs L for litre? -- Random832 ( contribs) 21:27, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
Iletin I
(I wrote the drug name in “code” typeface so it could be read). Is that about as clear as mud? The expression is somewhat easier to read using a serif typeface: “1 l of Iletin I.” Sanserif fonts are poor for distinguishing between I
and l
and 1
(again, in “code” face). Expressions with uppercase L, like “2 L of Pepsi” are infinitely easier to interpret in sanserif faces.Setting aside the issue of prefixed forms, which I don’t think needs any proscriptions or prescriptions (lawmaking bodies do best when the legislate the least) I agree that the symbol for liter should be uppercase L. Greg L ( talk) 00:09, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
There is also the script small l (U+2113 ℓ) that was once used and still has currency in East Asian usages, but I could see using it on the English Wikipedia only in a rare case where both l and L might cause ambiguity. (The precomposed CJK characters, ㎕, ㎖, ㎗, and ㎘ use the script l form in most fonts.) Caerwine Caer’s whines 01:27, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree entirely with Greg L and Gary King. "l" for "litre" is hopelessly hard to discern unless the context is very well established. Tony (talk) 01:40, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I agree that this isn't WP:ENGVAR. Use the capital version, L, and not the lowercase case, l, because lowercase l is indistinguisable from uppercase I. Which is why I usually hate non-serif fonts. Headbomb { ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 02:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
The litre, and the symbol lower-case l, were adopted by the CIPM in 1879 (PV, 1879, 41). The alternative symbol, capital L, was adopted by the 16th CGPM (1979, Resolution 6) in order to avoid the risk of confusion between the letter l (el) and the numeral 1 (one).
If we want MOSNUM to be valuable and relevant, we’ve got to listen to what other editors are saying. You know, some of these editors at WikiProject Chemistry are highly educated chemists and don’t take kindly to being told what to do by novice editors who spend much of their time here on MOSNUM but who aren’t as informed as they ought to be in the practices observed in certain disciplines. Like I said above, legislative bodies govern best when they legislate the least. Tread lightly here, provide editing latitude, and fix only what’s really broken. If not that, then we really ought to solicit greater input from the WikiProject Chemistry editors (or move this discussion over there). Greg L ( talk) 22:34, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
ℓ
) and which produces ℓ should not be used for in-line text.As to I also fail to understand the significance of "in-line text",
I thought that would give editors the flexibility to use the script form in math-style text where the formula is set off from the body text and is not part of in-line text. Do you think that is a bad idea? What I’m trying to do is avoid writing a rule that would require wholesale changes in existing articles for no good reason.
As regards All the stuff about "juxtaposed in close proximity" creates a contradiction; it implies that a prefixed "l" and a nonprefixed "L" may be used in the same article so long as they are separated by a lot of text…
No, it doesn’t “imply” anything, that’s exactly what it says and means and there is no contradiction. In total, it says that if the two aren’t used in a way that would cause confusion, then there is no problem. Do you think that if the
Cyclohexane had some verbiage somewhere in the body text that mentioned “a 200 L chemical drum” that this is going to really confuse anyone because ml appears in the sidebar? Third-graders aren’t reading that article. And why are you so quick to condemn an SI-compliant style that is routinely used in chemistry if doing so—as the above rules mandate—wouldn’t cause confusion?
A quick scan of your last 500 edits shows that your interest in chemistry-related articles is slim to none. As an R&D scientist who worked alongside a Ph.D. biochemist for many years on fuel cells (and am currently working on a medical device), I certainly know enough about chemistry to realize that there is simply no reason for non-chemists here on MOSNUM who like adding rules to style guides to be messing around in disciplines in which they have limited understanding. And why would you be so quick to ignore the wishes User:Itub? Let’s take a look at HIS contributions. As if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in chemistry and should be ignored? Your being so quick to reject his wishes given his clear expertise in chemistry strikes me as a bit arrogant. The above three-rule set addresses the issue by proscribing the use of lowercase l for liter and also affords editors the flexibility to use an SI-compliant symbol so long as editors only exercise a little common sense in deciding if confusion might arise. Greg L ( talk) 19:23, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
You don’t trust chemistry editors to be able to use common sense in avoiding confusion? You think some non-chemists here on MOSNUM should tell them what they have to do because chemistry editors don’t understand their subject well enough to how to write chemistry symbols in their articles? I reject that notion. Utterly. I just don’t seem to have the stomach for writing restrictive guidelines that make blanket, radical changes in the practices of a discipline like chemistry unless we are fixing something that’s truly broken. Prescribing the U.S. convention (uppercase L) for the singular liter addresses an important issue and the BIPM recognized that. I also happen to think that we can point out that using ml and L in the same article certainly can be confusing and chemistry editors should look out for that and harmonize the style if necessary. I actually think chemistry editors can be trusted a bit to use their brains. Don’t you?
Let’s see if we can get Itub to weigh in here; he’s actually a chemist. Greg L ( talk) 20:11, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that this is a matter that needs resolving in the MOS. Other than NIST, I'm not aware of any standards body mandating one form over the other and any attempt on Wikipedia's part to codify seems a bit of bureaucratic overzealousness that is adequately dealt with already by rule #1 on units of measurements in MOSNUM: "Unambiguousness: Do not write so you can be understood, write so you cannot be misunderstood." Caerwine Caer’s whines 04:43, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm a chemist and I don't think I would agree that C is true. The upper case L is a quite common in chemistry literature. I don't like the lower case l, and I find that the curly l looks terrible. There was a fad at one point for using dm^3 in lieu of liter, and an even older fad for using c.c. (cm^3) in lieu of mL, but that seems to be non-mainstream now. -- Rifleman 82 ( talk) 08:13, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Guidance is redundant if there is no clear and present or significant problem. It is redundant if editors will not change what they do anyway. I searched Wikipedia and see no significant problem to solve. Evidence of a clear and present problem please. Lightmouse ( talk) 14:30, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
If I’m reading this right, there are 3 front runners. In order of increasing complexity, these are:
My own preference is #2, followed by #3. (The default is #1). What do others think? Thunderbird2 ( talk) 10:37, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
I vote for #1. Do we need to clutter the page with this? Can we not let editors use common sense? My second preference is #3 (except if directly quoting a curly cousin). Both upper and lower case are valid according to SI. JIMp talk· cont 17:18, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
No, we should not have both in the one article (with the obvious exceptions). Yes, we are free to decide for ourselves. JIMp talk· cont 17:49, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
Greg, yes, we're free to decide for ourselves, if we decide to go with your proposal (which is pretty sound), we can. And, yes, it does address the issue of consistency within articles. Of course, Beer bottle etc. have other problems besides "l" vs "L" but your proposal would address this. JIMp talk· cont 03:19, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
It seems to me that it would be possible to express the intent of Greg L's proposals above using simpler language. How about something like this:
Note that I've deliberately left any modifiers like "in close proximity" out of the sentence advising against mixing the two symbols: that way editors are free to decide, on a case-by-case basis, the appropriate scope (one sentence, one section, one article, a cluster of related articles, one WikiProject...) within which consistency should be maintained. — Ilmari Karonen ( talk) 05:28, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
I oppose. I'd rather have all-across L.
Headbomb { ταλκ – WP Physics: PotW} 02:28, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
What you are advocating would certainly be “pretty” but will piss others off for reasons I stated above—including the fact that it is an SI-compliant style and is commonly done that way. That’s why we see the use of ml here. Now articles that feature ml and µl will at least be using them consistently with no mixing. We’ll just have to look at that and accept it. Other than us editors here flailing our arms over this, I expect that few readers will notice that one article does it one way than another. I suspect medical articles will naturally gravitate towards mL and that’s the way it ought to be in my opinion. We can let editors and groups of editors decide what’s better for their articles. If what we have now creates more problems than it solves—and I don’t see how that can be since the guideline only deprecates the worst practices that common sense should have fixed long ago—it can always be repealed or revised. Greg L ( talk) 04:59, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
The internationally accepted unit symbols for the liter are both the uppercase L and the lowercase form (l). However, since "l" can be easily confused for "I" (uppercase "i" ) and the numeral 1 when using sans-serif typefaces, editors should use only the uppercase L for the unprefixed liter (e.g., editors should write "A 10 L tank" instead of "A 10 l tank"). For prefixed versions of the liter (the decimal multiples and submultiples such as the milliliter and microliter), either lowercase or uppercase are acceptable (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer").
- Do not use the unicode "script ell" character ℓ and its variants (㎕, ㎖, ㎗ and ㎘).
- Articles should use the uppercase "L" and the lowercase "l" consistently; i.e., do not write "This soft drink is availible in both 250 ml and 2 L bottles", but rather "This soft drink is availible in both 250 mL and 2 L bottles".
either lowercase or uppercase are acceptable (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer").
For prefixed versions of the liter (the decimal multiples and submultiples such as the milliliter and microliter), either lowercase or uppercase are acceptable (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer" are satisfactory) but the chosen style should be consistent so as to avoid the awkward mixing of styles.
Headbomb and Gerry Ashton: There was a widespread consensus that ml and mL should not be used in the same article. There are a number of articles on Wikipedia that mix both. A guideline must be clear that though either style is OK, only one style should be used in an article. Here is the wording I'm proposing:
It seems clear that the last bullet point does not sufficiently speak to the issue of mixing ml and mL. In accordance with the consensus view here, I insist that any guideline wording make this clear. Don’t bother reverting it to a version of the text that doesn’t accomplish this agreed-upon principle or I will simply delete the whole damn thing from MOSNUM until we can vote on wording here. I don’t know what you are trying to accomplish here Headbomb. You earlier were pressing for requiring only that mL be allowed on MOSNUM and your efforts here almost look like you are trying to cripple the guideline so that editors continue to mix styles in the article. The underlined sentence is simple and straightforward. Stop deleting it. Greg L ( talk) 20:00, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
While there seems to be a consensus to employ uppercase ell (L) for liter, it appears to me that there is no consensus on capitalization of the ell when it is combined with a prefix. Accordingly, I would like to offer a modification of Ilmari Karonen’s proposal that may capture the preferences of most of those involved in this debate:
"The Unicode "script ell" character ℓ or the precomposed characters ㎕, ㎖, ㎗ and ㎘ should not be used on Wikipedia."
Hopefully this may prove a less contentious formulation. Askari Mark (Talk) 01:35, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
With the SI, the accepted unit symbols for the liter are both the uppercase L and the lowercase form (l). However, since lowercase L (l) can be easily confused with uppercase i (I) and the numeral 1 when using sans-serif typefaces, the un‑prefixed unit symbol for liter should be only the uppercase L, (e.g., editors should write "A 10 L tank" instead of "A 10 l tank"). Prefixed versions of the unit symbol (the decimal multiples and submultiples such as the milliliter and microliter) may be written with either the lowercase or uppercase L (e.g., either "A 200 ml bottle" or "A 500 mL glass of beer" is satisfactory), but the chosen style should be used consistently. Articles should not mix the uppercase L for the un‑prefixed liter with lowercase prefixed forms like ml; that is, do not write "this soft drink is availible in both 250 ml and 2 L bottles", but rather "this soft drink is availible in both 250 mL and 2 L bottles". Do not use the unicode "script ell" character ℓ and its variants (㎕, ㎖, ㎗ and ㎘).
User:Tony1 just removed the auto-formatting of all the dates in Military history of Canada on the grounds that it was no longer encouraged at WP:MOSNUM Now, personally, I really couldn't care less either way, but I'd like to know what consensus is on this. I didn't see anything in WP:MOSNUM that suggested a major reversal of guidelines, or anything suggesting a large scale removal of such formatting was in order. If I somehow missed it, I'm sorry. If such a consensus has been made, it should be more clearly displayed on the guideline page. If not, I'm not sure what to do about Military history of Canada. Thanks, TheMightyQuill ( talk) 15:15, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't "In the mean time, err on the side of leaving things the way they are" be a standard intermediate policy? Whatever, this really doesn't matter.- TheMightyQuill ( talk) 17:24, 17 July 2008 (UTC)
I would like to see links to the consensus discussions to remove autoformating and in fact links to the discussion to make autoformating optional. I am afraid this has become a personal crusade of Tony1 and hope there is a clear consensus somewhere to support this. Rmhermen ( talk) 13:49, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Tony's responses:
I apologise if I've upset anyone by my removal of date autoformatting from articles. This has been part of a trial to uncover any problems in a script. I have to say that people have reacted positively to the reduction in the amount of bright-blue words and underlining in their articles, with two exceptions out of many instances. When the issues were put to both editors, they changed their minds, which is telling: date autoformatting is a complicated issue that many WPians do not understand and just go along with because everyone else has been doing it for ages without question. One of these two users was Tony the Tiger, who's generally a maximalist when it comes to linking, and not an easy to convince. When he got to the bottom of how date autoformatting is fundamentally different from plain linking, he wrote to me: "In response to your post on my userspace, yes I concur linking dates is among the most useless type of linkage." I could quote a lot of positive comments here, but won't unless you request it.
Elliskev and MightyQuill: MOSNUM does no longer encourage the autoformatting of dates. It used to be mandatory, then late last year, I think, this was weakened from "are autoformatted" to "can be autoformatted". This change was not made by me, although more recently I've clarified the language after debates on this page. Optionalisation is not a sudden change, but has evolved over at least two years; you can find numerous debates in the archives here during that period. I think there was significant support for compulsion in the earlier debates, but in the past year or so, and particularly more recently, this has not been the case—rather, there has been continual grumbling on this talk page about:
The in-house-only aspect was not part of debate until recently (I myself didn't realised it until a few months ago). This fact has considerably strengthened support for optionalisation. It's easy to say that there's no consensus, Rmhermen, but I haven't seen significant opposition at MOSNUM to optionalisation for some time.
As for the Beethoven and Mozart articles, it was my fault not to have checked through more thoroughly (I normally do); but I have to ask why you're complaining now? All of your readers out there have been seeing those inconsistencies ever since they were entered; at least removing the autoformatting has made what they see obvious to you, and I hope will lead to their being fixed. If you'd posted on my talk page, I'd have done so immediately. I see that Elliskev has reinstated auto to Schubert, and Michael Bednarek to Beethoven. Who is going to fix the inconsistencies uncovered by the removal of the autoformatting? I'm happy to do the Mozart right now, since that hasn't been reverted.
Elliskev: no one has suggested that a FA or an FA would be held up because of a date autoformatting issue? You weren't implying that, surely. User Realist may well have decided to encourage people to remove autoformatting at GA, and I strongly support him/her, but in the end, it's optional: those who believe the removal is a significant improvement can only put their case to those who are uncomfortable with what has become part of the furniture over the years.
I hope this response has cleared the air. MightyQuill, I wonder whether you're willing to trial the non-autoformatting in the MilHist article for a week or so, perhaps returning to it a few times to judge whether it displays your high-value links a little better, and reduces the colour-clutter slightly on the page. Same or Mozart. I have no wish to pick fights with people who firmly object.
I haven't put most of the arguments for not using autoformatting that have occupied debate here, but we can regurgitate them if you like. I'm interested in your opinions, and hope that you might be willing to support this issue. I believe someone else is setting them out fully in an essay soon to be posted. Tony (talk) 17:46, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Personally, I couldn't care less about formatting, but if some people do, why not find a solution that satisfies everyone. User:Michael Bednarek mentioned the Template:date which I see doesn't work. What about producing a template like {{ymd|2008-07-18}} that would format dates properly both for editors and for anonymous readers, and use a bot to convert them all (and simultaneously unlink them), instead of just unlinking them on a page by page basis? - TheMightyQuill ( talk) 18:16, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
Tony, please stop trying to convince me, because I really couldn't care either way about the date format. My problem is that you're taking action (in the form of mass removals) when there is no consensus to do so. There is a very big difference between MOSNUM not encouraging the formatting of dates, and MOSNUM discouraging the formatting of dates. Only the latter would legitimize mass removals. Whether or not I would support such a change in guidelines is a totally different issue than whether I would support mass removals before such a change has occurred (ie. before consensus has been reached). - TheMightyQuill ( talk) 19:30, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
(reset indent)Response to Tony I hope I hit all the points addressed to me.
MOSNUM no longer encourages autoformatting, but does it discourage it?
Where auto-formatting exists, shouldn't removal be discussed on an article-by-article basis?
Inconsistencies uncovered by removal of auto-formatting should be fixed, just as inconsistencies uncovered by editing should be fixed.
I wasn't suggesting that FAs or GAs are being held up, or that they should be held up. Poor way of expressing it on my end. Hypothetically, if an article was held up because it included auto-formatted dates, that would be a bad thing. However, suggestions in a GA or FA review are (I'm guessing here) less likely to be ignored on the basis of optionality. People are going to do as suggested in hopes of a Support !vote -- Elliskev 20:00, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
It may be a toss-up in the case of most articles but I've just recently decreased the average frequency of photons emitted from a couple of pages. Certain articles contain date ranges of the form day1–day2 month year (albeit month day1–day2, year). Blue lemon can't deal with this. For autoformatting to work this has to be written day1 month–day2 month year. We're trying to write English here: we shouldn't have to twist it to fit some ill-conceived formatting feature. I propose that whenever such unautoformattable dates appear in an article, for consistency no dates should be autoformatted. JIMp talk· cont 02:27, 18 July 2008 (UTC)
I've been editing on a varying scale for five years and with dozens of identities. Until recently, I'd never hewed to the MoS, simply because I felt some of the prescriptions were silly. Date-linking was probably my main complaint, and on its account alone I found it hard to take the Manual seriously. Instead, I'd pull up FAs, go through them, follow the precedents I liked, and ignore those I didn't. The MoS was to be disregarded; I never tracked changes or updates.
After all, what was the big idea? How did date-linking follow usual linking guidelines, wherein links are used to improve depth of understanding, explain references, and lead to related subjects? What does April 7 have to do with Henry Ford? He probably never gave a whit of thought to April 7 until he happened to croak on it. How much worth do random events occurring in 1828 have for readers of Francisco Goya? How relevant is it that Andrew Taylor Still, "the father of osteopathy", happened to be born in the year Goya happened to die? And why do I keep saying "happen"? Because dates are happenstance by nature, irrelevant to almost every topic. If we're just linking dates for diversity, to lead readers in new browsing directions, why should dates in particular get this special privilege? And if we just like to turn as much text as possible to that lovely blue hue, why not just make it the default text color on Wikipedia?
So anyway, after much avoidance and intermittent wikibreaks, I returned to editing on a small scale. I decided to play things by the book this time, and the book is what I turned to when I got to cleaning up our inchoate Eleanor McGovern article. Did I really have to link these stupid dates? Looking through the MoS and expecting the bad news, I didn't find it. I went to the Village Pump, asked about changes in datelinking policy, and got no answer. Eventually I wound up at Tony's talk page, and now I wind up here.
The policy needs to change. Optionalization is a fine start, and an absolute minimum, but the MoS should come out clearly and unambiguously against date-linking. It's not an IDONTLIKEIT concern; it's a matter of getting guidance from our guidelines. The MoS should not create ex juris enclaves of special linking policy where common consensus about overlinking does not apply. Sure, there is a tension between WP:OVERLINK and WP:BUILD, but even the more link-happy of these two makes clear that links should only be made to relevant pages, and April 7 has precious little relevance to anything except April 8. If we are honest to our general guidelines, the MoS must establish a strong recommendation against linking dates in all but the most unusual circumstances.
And one more word, on the "American" date style. I'm an American, though raised partly in the UK, and I don't think date styles are an issue at all, let alone analogous to differences in spellings or measurement systems. Just a few weeks ago I made sure that Pan-Slavic colours was moved back to its original American spelling, and if WP ever switched to an all-metric system, I'd go into conniptions. And yet, I wouldn't give a hoot if we switched over entirely to "7 April" over "April 7", and neither would most Yanks. Ask the average American on the street which style belongs to which place, and we wouldn't be able to tell you. The same American who flinches to hear "kilometres" would find nothing dubious or foreign about "7 April". Further, the "international" style is preferable simply because it lends itself less naturally to ordinal suffixes and other such frippery. Though I doubt it will ever happen, date formats could be standardized without loss or upset. But really, my main issue is date-linking, and we can spare the other debate for another time.
We can act now to establish a single clear and sensible date guideline which conforms to the spirit of our wider policies, and we should. Mr. IP ( talk) 22:41, 20 July 2008 (UTC)
____________________
Title: "Proposal to remove date-autoformatting"
Dear fellow contributors
MOSNUM no longer encourages date autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. Related to this, MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether a date is autoformatted or not). MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.
There are at least six disadvantages in using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:
Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors. Does anyone object if I remove it from the main text in a few days on a trial basis? The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just our millions of readers; it would be plain, unobtrusive text, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links.
____________________
One final matter: Parham, it is pure contrarian fantasy that someone would invent a script for imposing date-autoformatting in this contet. I'm unsure what motivates you this time to apparently object to a highly popular move; is it based on "I don't like it"? Your support would be greatly appreciated. Tony (talk) 02:30, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
I might be missing this, but how does the current suggestion of removing autoformatting of dates within the article body affect dates for references? Are these encouraged to be not linked (which means that the accessdate parameter in most templates will need to be changed) with the same date formatting as the article, or are these considered outside the bounds of the article, thus linking as normal? -- MASEM 14:00, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Here are three articles, with dates completely delinked and correctly and consistently formatted, in three different styles, as samples:
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 05:00, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
I don't care much what decision is reached on the autoformatting issue, but one thing is perfectly clear: anyone mass removing these links without an established concensus should cease and desist, and there certainly shouldn't be any bots already doing this (as was indicated above). Was there a prior discussion/concensus regarding the change in the MOS? If so, can someone provide a link? Personally I like the idea of having all dates formatted consistantly to my preference. I had assumed that dates were autoformatted to a single default for non-registered users. Given what has been said above, I take it this is not the case? I assume this avenue has already been explored? PC78 ( talk) 17:30, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
And when you wrote that “I had assumed that dates were autoformatted to a single default for non-registered users”, you assumed a bit too much with that assumption. Depending on the autoformat chosen, there are different defaults and some are particularly crappy looking—beyond worthless really—for most readers. Note how if we were to code [[2005-08-06]], the vast majority of readers see only 2005- 08-06. Well, is that June 8, 2005 or August 6, 2005? It’s not intuitively clear until the 13th day of the month. Only we registered editors—a small, privileged minority—would see something attractive and unambiguous such as August 6, 2005 or 6 August 2005. But we registered editors are insulated and oblivious to this ugliness and can’t fix what we can’ see. The simple solution is to stop thinking of tools that only work for us as being of any value whatsoever.
And BillCJ, your argument that that the consensus view (solutions that only benefit a small minority and actually messes things up for the vast majority) is “silly,” just proves the point that some registered editors on Wikipedia are only here to impress themselves and an elite club of registered editors. The rest of us simply reject that attitude; we know what Wikipedia’s proper mission is: to benefit the general reader just as much as our precious little selves. Greg L ( talk) 19:05, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
(ec) My understanding is that it is finally an option to scrap autoformatting in an article I am writing if I want to, which I do. That is, autoformatting is no longer forced on me. If I want to consider the vast majority of readers who are the unregistered public, I am now allowed to do so. — Mattisse ( Talk) 19:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
GregL: What this issue really needs is a centralized discussion, where a binding concensus can (hopefully) be forged. It's all too easy for you to see a concensus where you want to, but it won't necessarily be so obvious to everyone else. What I don't want to see is a repeat of the debacle with placeholder images in biography articles, where a group of editors plastered them all over the place and a concensus was later formed against their use.
Is there any reason why a single default can't be imposed, as opposed to the current "no preference"? PC78 ( talk) 21:26, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
My personal view is that as long as the dates are displayed correctly for the region to which the article relates or for which a consensus exists within the article or topic, then there's no problem. It does create less of a "blue sea" effect. I've always been totally against wikilinking years (other than those that are part of dates) as it serves no purpose at all, but with the dates the issue had always been what I perceive as a US-centrism that sometimes operates and spreads when left unchecked. (i.e. if people in the US do something one way and people elsewhere do it differently, the latter is seen as "wrong".) Agreed with PC78 that the best way to effect change management is to involve people rather than force it from above. Orderinchaos 19:38, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm convinced. I just turned off date preferences in my preferences. I've been removing bare year links on sight for a long time now, and I now intend to removed date autoformatting when I see it. -- Donald Albury 20:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
{{US/Commonwealth|trunk|boot}}
so text would read “…he put the bomb in the trunk of the car…” for US readers and “…he put the bomb in the boot of the car…” for readers from the UK and Australia. Similarly, editors could write {{US/Commonwealth|color|colour}}
. For dates, (although I personally don’t have a problem looking at 2 August 2008), one could write {{US/other|July 4, 1776|4 July 1776}}
.But we don’t have these tools, which would be designed to improve the reading experience for the vast majority of Wikipedia’s readers: the non-registered I.P. user. The autoformatting of dates was sooooo unwise because they allowed us to start using crappy-looking code for regular users to look at just so we privileged few could benefit. 21:20, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
However, making complex editting templates within the text is not going to make joining in easier or attractive to new editors. Putting each date, each unit of measurement, each boot/trunk/hood/bonnet, each or/our or ise/ize ending inside brackets and slashes is a prospect to fill me with despair. -- Pete ( talk) 00:22, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
On a pedantic note, Greg said that the spelling 'kilogram' instead of 'kilogramme' annoys UK people. The spelling 'kilogramme' may exist in the UK but I think the spelling 'kilogram' is the current dominant spelling in British English. It is the spelling used in British law such as The Units of Measurement Regulations. This pedantry does not detract from his point. Regards Lightmouse ( talk) 21:19, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
And beyond the issue of *formating* of dates, I just can’t see the wisdom of cluttering up articles with even more links if all they do is take readers to random lists of historical trivia that have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter at hand. If I were writing an article on the speed of light, I might link to meter, for instance. Such topical links properly invite exploration and learning. When articles are over‑linked, we’re just numbing readers to links, such as when we add a link within speed of light that takes the reader to an article that says…
“ | [On this date in] 1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-nineteenth century. | ” |
ISO dates are a standard format on Wikipedia. Just look at the main article on the main page: Ann Arbor, Michigan or any other with lots of references. The autoformatting mess is because well-meaning people combined two things (create more links, create autoformatting). Let's not combine a migration away from autoformatting with a prohibition on ISO dates - just think of the effect that will have on delinking thousand of articles like Ann Arbor, Michigan i.e. you will have to examine the article for its dominant region, and edit all the ISO dates to become US dates, only then will you be able to remove all the links. Lightmouse ( talk) 17:10, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Do you think most readers are familiar with the ISO specification? I can point to a hundred people I know who’ve never heard of the ISO, let alone read their specification. Or do you hope that if Wikipedia were to start using the ISO‑style, all‑numeric date, the rest of the world will go “Ah HAAA (those smart Wikipedia editors), I see” and the world will soon intuitively understand the style and instantly recognize and parse such dates? The ISO specification was valuable for establishing a standardized way for the storage and retrieval of computerized, numeric-only dates in databases and spreadsheets and what not. But the result is still slow to read and takes more mental energy to parse than simply writing 2 February 2008 or February 2, 2008. There clearly was never any need for some standards organization somewhere on this planet to “define” how dates with the month written out (like 2 February 2008) should be parsed and interpreted because there is no alternative way to interpret them. What’s good for machines isn’t necessarily good for humans.
So, to paraphrase your fallacious statement: “That is the beauty of dates with the month written out - they have only one possible interpretation”. Just because there is a “standard” of some sort for the computerized storage and retrieval of data and similar purposes, doesn’t mean it’s a good convention to use when writing dates in the body text of encyclopedic articles. That much is just too obvious. Greg L ( talk) 22:58, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Since links to lists of historical trivia are rarely germane to the subject matter of the main article, the linking of dates and years (e.g. April 2, 1978) is discouraged unless the article is especially historical in nature. So long as the autoformating of dates results in linked dates, autoformated dates are discouraged. The all-numeric, autoformat option that is coded as follows
[[2005-08-06]]
and which displays as 2005- 08-06 for non-registered I.P. users (the vast majority of readers) should not be used.
The autoformatting of dates is generally discouraged in the main text of articles. In particular, the all-numeric, autoformat option (
[[2005-08-06]]
, which displays as 2005- 08-06 for the vast majority of readers, i.e., non-registered IP users) should not be used.
The autoformatting of dates is generally discouraged in the main text of articles because the great majority of users cannot take advantage of it. This includes all non-registered users, as well as those registered editors who do not select a date preference. In particular, the all-numeric, autoformat option (
[[2005-08-06]]
) should not be used, because it displays as 2005- 08-06 which leaves the identity of the month and day unclear. (Note, though, that certain templates do require this ISO yyyy-mm-dd format for proper functioning.)
I think there is, at least by implicaton, a loss of information when old dates are wikilinked and the original date is written in YYYY-MM-DD format. People often associate this format with ISO-8601, and this MoS (dates and numbers) says "ISO 8601 dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose" thus establishing that in the absence of information to the contrary, when a date in this format is encountered in Wikipedia, it is an ISO-8601 format. As such, it is in the Gregorian calender (proleptic if need be). When a user preference transforms the date into some other style, information about which calender is used is lost. Granted, it would be unwise for the editor writing an article to depend on the mere use of ISO-8601 dating to communicate that the proleptic Gregorian calendar is in use, but nevertheless information can be lost. -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 01:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm just waay confused where this came from, where was the discussion, and obviously there hasn't been consensus. The autocratic change to the MOS seems totally out of line with "the way we work". -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 02:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
I have a pair of ideas for resolving the U.S. v. US (or should that be U.S. v US) issue for the page. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Are we not, though, adding another point of potential disagreement with respect to US-centricism? The US customary system is certianly not my customary system. JIMp talk· cont 05:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
It's nothing to do with laziness; that argument was run a year ago and laughed at. Typing dots is no problem for me: it's the reading of them that I don't like, and which makes the initialism look clunky. I hope that this campaign you've been conducting will cease. Tony (talk) 16:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
Since the United States is the only country with significant usage of a set of customary units, how about saying instead of U.S. customary units each time they are mentioned, use United States customary units the first time, and customary units each succeeding time. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
This one I don't support as much, since unless we want to change a whole bunch of pages, we'll need to mention U.S. gallon (or US gallon or both) at least once, so it doesn't solve the issue, but perhaps changing as may mentions as would be unawkward to liquid gallon, leaving the U.S. implied instead of the liquid would work. Caerwine Caer’s whines 03:32, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Yes, there are two US gallons. However, you can generally guess which one is meant by that which is being measured. Also the imperial gallon is usually used for liquids. JIMp talk· cont 05:24, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
miles (U.S. customary - statute) per gallon (U.S. customary - liquid) - you're not serious, right? We're ALMOST NEVER going to have to specify the US "statute"/survey mile vs the one based on the international foot - the difference is literally only two parts per million; a quantity would have to be given to six or seven significant figures before it matters, and sources often don't specify what mile is used ("statute" mile is often used simply to disambiguate from nautical miles). 30 mile/US gallon is 1.27543×107 m-2 is (reciprocally) 7.8405 L/100km no matter which mile is used. -- Random832 ( contribs) 15:09, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
This summer, at one particularly remote harbour (or harbor using US spelling), I managed to fill my yacht up with 14.62 Canadian gallons of diesel fuel (they hadn't changed their pumps for a few decades), and I managed to get about 25 nautical miles (we don't use your wimpy landlubber miles at sea) per Canadian gallon. (Of course, it's a sailboat.) So let me offer the following suggestion: If you don't use SI (metric) units, specify which country or which organization defined the standards you are basing your units on. Are you using American imperial gallons, or British imperial gallons, or Canadian imperial gallons. And, are your miles statute miles, or nautical miles, or Norwegian miles. (I add the last one because I drove in Norway, and I speak a bit of Norwegian, so I know they often specify their mileage in litres per Norwegian mile - the Norwegian mile is 10 kilometres or about 6.2 English miles). So, if your are using non-SI units, don't assume that everyone uses the same gallons or miles as you and specify who's standards you are using. RockyMtnGuy ( talk) 22:04, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Of course a Canadian gallon is a British gallon is an Australian gallon. They are all the imperial gallon as opposed to the only two other gallons in current use: the US liquid & dry gallons. So, keeping things simple, we need only specify that it was an imperial gallon. As for Canadian pints: in my limited experience in Canadian pubs the word pint refers to any largish beer glass, not necessarily 20 imp fl oz, but this doesn't mean that a Canadian pint is anything different to an imperial pint, all it means is that bar owners are good at playing on people's confusion. JIMp talk· cont 03:24, 5 August 2008 (UTC)
Headbomb recently added the following.
Do not use the unicode characters ² and ³. They are harder to read on small display, and are not aligned with supercript characters (see x1x²x³x4 vs. x1x2x3x4).
What's the general feeling here? I came out against this rule the last time it was added to the MoS. It was since removed. I'm not calling for its removal again but I would like to see what kind of ground we're standing on with respect to consensus for this. JIMp talk· cont 05:15, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, maecenas eligendi tincidunt aenean, sit et hac hendrerit massa, morbi maecenas nec vel auctor. Aliquam sit, tincidunt justo arcu neque eu mi fames. Vitae tellus suspendisse sed sit, dapibus ante purus erat non dui vivamus, dolor ultricies maecenas lacus luctus nunc, integer cursus tellus, anim a sem. → 592 mm3 ← fusce non, hendrerit etiam turpis vivamus hac, eget magna laoreet. Ipsum class risus, vitae leo lacinia rutrum cursus mauris nunc, purus tincidunt quisquam est blandit sed, auctor auctor. Feugiat pede metus sed ut integer duis, quis nec purus, ac ad in ac convallis. Odio morbi pellentesque facilisis. Praesent sed tempus phasellus turpis nec elementum, justo eu volutpat tincidunt perferendis, mauris enim nullam et pellentesque sociosqu sodales, eros nulla sociosqu nascetur mauris euismod. Libero urna morbi lacus, quisque varius massa dapibus egestas aliquam vulputate.
Why do we insist on placing the dates after the name in the intro when it causes clutter and can be tucked away in infoboxes? What is so special about the dates anyway? I suggest we change the MOS to suggest that the DOB may be removed from the intro if an appropriate infobox exists. -- Adoniscik( t, c) 16:19, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
What basis is there for removing something that neatly presents all the facts? It's much easier to glance at an infobox, which has a standard format, than to fish through text. Also, why shouldn't the infobox contain anything that isn't in the text? Just provide a citation. -- Adoniscik( t, c) 19:07, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
From time to time, I come across ways in which people ban metric units. Sometimes this is because they do not like them, sometimes it is because they fail to appreciate the effects of things they do. One of the common ways relates to quotations. See: Crotalus mitchellii angelensis. In this case the text is written as:
An edit to add metric units was reverted. I agree that conversions in quotes is an issue in many cases. However, this instance is somewhat trivial and the text should be recast so that the units are not part of a quote. Regional styleguides do not have to address this problem but I think an international publication does. I think this is similar to sex biased text 'a doctor should know his patients' i.e. the bias is initially not noticed, then people notice it but worry about how to fix it, then they simply stop thinking in such ways and write non-biased text in the first place. In a similar way, I would like to be able to point at guidance about units inside quotes. It does not have to be dogmatic, merely encouraging thought of alternatives. Lightmouse ( talk) 10:56, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
I can see that I was not very clear. The issue is not about the 'how', it is about the 'whether'. This is an issue the crops up frequently. I have added a bullet that I think encapsulates what I mean:
If anyone has any better wording, feel free to change it. Perhaps the correspondence will give context.
'Moved from Lightmouse talk page:begin
Here's another problem: I've noticed that Lightbot has recently been making edits to certain articles on snakes, applying the convert template in particular. While I have nothing against this per se, what I do not approve of is that it has also been making edits to type locality statements. That's not good, because these are supposed to be literal quotes. You could fix this by programming Lightbot to ignore all text between an instance of "type locality" and the end of the paragraph it occurs in. -- Jwinius ( talk) 10:51, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
That would seem like a simple solution, but once again, it's supposed to be a literal quote, so I can't change it either. Type locality statements usually come from the first ever descriptions of a species or subspecies: they may be short or long, although never more than a single sentence in my experience, and may even be wildly wrong. That's why they're "between quotation marks." -- Jwinius ( talk) 11:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Moved from Lightmouse talk page:end
Other edits that are relevant are:
I believe that the editor is pro-conversion. So perhaps I have mistitled this section, but if you look at the edits you may see the generic point. I would be intereted to know what people think. Lightmouse ( talk) 15:39, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
Lightmouse, is there a reason why you can't use square brackets in the manner suggested by MJCdetroit and Gerry Ashton? Thunderbird2 ( talk) 14:18, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I see, but how about more generally. Let's say a fisherman encounters a "30 foot sea monster". Can your bot be taught to convert that to "30 ft [10 m] sea monster"? Thunderbird2 ( talk) 15:23, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
What is the interface to the bot like, that is, does it go through the text change-by-change and ask the operator for permission to do each change? Or maybe it does the whole article and just asks the operator if the entire set of changes to the whole article is ok? Or maybe it just changes the article and it is up to the operator to read the article before hand to see if there is anything that wouldn't work? -- Gerry Ashton ( talk) 20:03, 3 August 2008 (UTC)
I notice that many feature articles on musicians use #1 or #3 etc. to indicate chart placement of a single or album. Some editors think this is fine, others say the the number should be written out as in "the record reached number one on the pop charts" and "the album rose to number three on the hot 100. There is no mention in the WP:MoS. Any guidance for me? Hopefully, — Mattisse ( Talk) 22:26, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Under the Dates section, would people oppose examples showing ISO or "year month day" formats?
Incorrect | February 14th; 14th February; the 14th of February |
---|---|
Correct | 14 February; February 14 |
Incorrect | October, 1976; 1976, October |
Correct | October 1976; 1976 October |
The reason I bring this up is that under Full date formatting subtopic Strong national ties to a topic, it says editors should use a date format familiar to the nation. East Asian countries such as China and Japan use "year month day" dates. In addition to that, their month names are numbered 1 through 12, making the overall date look very similar to the ISO format ( ISO: 2008-08-08, Chinese: 2008年8月8号, Japanese: 2008年8月8日). Some articles on computer data formats may also use ISO.
According to the Dates section of the article, ISO dates are rare in prose. As it does look odd, I'd be okay with not promoting ISO dates in articles, but I think that the "year month day" format is plausible. Of course, any changes to this article would also be made on the main Manual of Style article as well.
Wikky Horse ( talk) 16:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Non-anglophone countries: "it says editors should use a date format familiar to the nation"—This is an incorrect paraphrasing of the guideline. See the following guidelines:
"Articles related to other countries that commonly use one of the two acceptable guidelines above should use that format." And "ISO 8601 dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and are generally not used in Wikipedia. However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness and ease of comparison."
Tony (talk) 00:52, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
User Ckatz, who has previously taken me to task WRT the move away from date-autoformatting, is making changes to the wording of the date autoformatting section, with what I perceive to be vague or unconvincing edit-summary justifications. I've suggested that instead of edit-warring, the matter be discussed here. I do believe that the existing wording expresses fact rather than opinion, which is Ckatz's issue. Tony (talk) 10:38, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
while my changes were to have it read:"Careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the autoformatting mechanism should be made before applying it: the mechanism does not work for the vast majority of readers, such as unregistered users and registered users who have not made a setting, and can affect readability and appearance if there are already numerous high-value links in the text.."
If discussion is desired, great - but I do think the changes are pretty self-evident. Saying it "does not work" really pushes the "don't use it" POV, as does the unnecessary (and unverified) "vast majority of readers" - hence my more specific language. The second part of the text, which I removed, is not suitable for a guideline as it clearly reflects an opinion about the effect of autoformatting. I was pretty clear about this in the edit summaries. -- Ckatz chat spy 19:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)"Careful consideration of the advantages and disadvantages of the autoformatting mechanism should be made before applying it; autoformatting has no effect for unregistered users or registered users who have not made a setting. "
Tony's response: I agree with C Parham's second statement: it's false to assert, as Ckatz's change did, that "autoformatting has no effect on unregistered users": how many outsiders have said to me, when I raise the topic of the blue dates, "yes, I wondered why earth: it's odd", or similar queries? My disclosure that it's so Wikipedians can see those blue dates in a preferred format receives quizzical looks. Of course, they have to travel over the disruptive blue displays without the preferred formatting. Therefore, Ckatz's proposed change in the text ("no effect") is starting to look POV.
"The second part of the text,... is not suitable for a guideline as it clearly reflects an opinion about the effect of autoformatting"
This risks being "opinion" itself. There's wide acceptance that (1) some links are more valuable than others, and (2) text can be overlinked (the "sea of blue" that is referred to on this page and in the archives—by Greg L, as one of many, in less flattering words; put "turd" into your finder). A significant motivating factor for me is to make the linking system work better by removing low-value links. I'm unsure why this is not uppermost in your minds, too. So C Parham, your suggested insertion of "users who do make settings may enjoy improved readability" is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. We need to take into account the entire utility of the text and the linking system.
"Saying it "does not work" really pushes the "don't use it" POV, as does the unnecessary (and unverified) "vast majority of readers""
The first one is a fact; the second is a conjecture in the vein of "The sun will come up tomorrow morning"—unverifiable in the strictest terms, but not worth wasting people's time over the null hypothesis. WP is the ?seventh-most-visited site in the world, I think: many millions of hits a day. Compare that with the few thousand regular users, and the few tens of thousands who make occasional edits: how many of the visitors are registered, preference-set and logged in? And nothing like all edits—even by regulars—are done by registered, preference-set and logged-in users. I'm surprised to be having this discussion about the existence of the "vast majority", frankly. In any case, some people advise that we should set "no preference", so that we see what outsiders see, to make it easier to pick up the raw-format inconsistencies and broken formatting that plague some articles.
The realisation that disciplined linking is important to the project is well-established at WP:MOSLINK, WP:CONTEXT and, indeed, MoS main. Such phrases as:
"Do not make too many links" (MOSLINK), and "Links should add to the user's experience; they should not detract from it by making the article harder to read. A high density of links can draw attention away from the high-value links that you would like your readers to follow up. Redundant links clutter the page and make future maintenance harder." (MoS main)
have been there for ages, undisputed. The proposal to remove from MOSNUM wording that is consonant with these statements is going against a large-scale, long-term trend in WP.
I do hope to convince both of you to support the three main issues: (1) DA is generally undesirable, while not disputing editors' right to use it where they wish; (2) the move a while ago, in effect, to give editors at each article the power to use or not use DA was worth supporting; and (3) raising the issue on individual article talk pages is an entirely legitimate part of the way WP evolves—through reasoned debate. Tony (talk) 01:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
This arises from the discussion above, initiated by Lightmouse (although not with a title I'd have chosen). The debate is prompted by MOSNUM's statement: "The same format should be used in the main text, footnotes and references of each article". In that discussion, inter alia, Lighmouse says:
I started this debate [on the scope of within-article consistency in date formatting] because there is a mismatch between guidance (demands consistency) and the reality (tolerates inconsistency). The debates about consistency have always been about the main text only. Date formatting must be one of the most talked about and most badly handled issues on Wikipedia. Yet three formats are widely seen on the same page without significant comment. Few editors care enough about date consistency to do much about it. It is not a big deal. For now, please, just cut the scope of guidance down from whole-article to main-text.
This is a view that I find compelling, except that I take it Lightmouse also intended that date formats in citation-driven references should be internally consistent where they are different from date formats in the main text.
SandyGeorgia, the FA delegate, has been concerned about this "mismatch" between rules and practice for some time; she finds it most uncomfortable to pass FAs that are, technically speaking, in breach of the MoS guidelines. This occurs, for example, in all articles that use the popular cite web template for the references section, which displays ISO dates in contempt of MOSMUM's statement:
"ISO 8601 dates (1976-05-31) are uncommon in English prose, and are generally not used in Wikipedia.
Note, however, that there's a little loophole that might be construed as allowing ISO dates in citation lists:
However, they may be useful in long lists and tables for conciseness and ease of comparison."
even though this is at odds with the quote at the top of this section <clears throat loudly>.
Sandy commented in the discussion above:
However the wording change is done, please make sure that readers understand that:
- [the main] text should use one, consistent style for date formatting and linking, and
- references and footnotes should use one, consistent style ...
The aim is that article text and footnotes/references may differ in style because of citation template programming, but within the footnotes and references, we should still find consistency in both linking/delinking and style of dates used. That is, if ISO dates are used, they should be used consistently [in references].... we're not letting footnotes and references off the consistency hook; we're just recognizing that current template implementations on Wiki make it very hard to achieve consistenty between article text and citations. We can still achieve consistency within each. I suppose the "consistency dividing line" would be consistency above the See also section, and consistency below the See also section, in terms of WP:LAYOUT.... In other words, I agree with the proposal, but disagree with the section heading here.
I believe that herding together the templates into a rationale, coordinated part of the project is impossible to do in the short term, and that we should go along with Lightmouse's and Sandy's call. In effect, the simplest way of acknowledging reality is to be strict about date formatting consistency within (1) the manually entered dates in an article, and separately (2) the citation-generated dates that are largely out of editors' control. We are aided in this proposal by the fact that the citations are neatly corralled at the bottom of articles, and the main text, with a few rare exceptions, contains manually entered dates.
At the moment, MOSNUM can say what it likes about whole-article consistency until it's blue in the face, but the developers of the citation templates have taken no notice, and we tag along. Tony (talk) 05:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
I do not understand this discussion, or what people still believe are the limitations in any of the various citation templates. There is currently a bug at {{ citation}} where it won't accept delinked US-style date formats (it converts them to international style), but to my knowledge, this meme that x, y or z can't be done with a given template is simply wrong. With the exception of that bug, all of the templates can handle all combinations (linked, not linked, US-style or international-style), and that one bug can be dealt with manually by moving the date out of the template. I suspect that many editors are repeating these memes without having experimented with different methods. Again, there are three completely delinked samples in:
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:35, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
In American English the date is written as mm/dd/yy
In British English AKA European English the date is written as dd/mm/yy.
I suggest that on all American related articles we should use the American format and in European related articles, we use the European format. This makes sense. Also the same goes with articles related to South Africa, Australia ect. I believe this should be added to this wiki-page
Ijanderson977 (
talk) 18:24, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
Written out dates, 12 August 2008 and August 12, 2008 are confusing? What system are you advocating? FWiW Bzuk ( talk) 19:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC).
That's not what mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy advocates unless it is in ISO dating format. When I see dd/mm/yy, it is a code for writing out 12 August 2008 and mm/dd/yy means August 1, 2008 to me; that's why I was confused, as I didn't see an argument for using numerical equivalents, merely for the arrangement of the day or month sequence. FWiW Bzuk ( talk) 21:30, 12 August 2008 (UTC).
Yep, numbers alone are dangerous—I have to think carefully to interpret them, and sometimes still can't determine which system. The advantage of spelling out the month is that (1) it instantly classifies all three components of a full date, and (2) it's more accessible to most readers. Tony (talk) 05:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Can someone tell me why we don't auto-format dates for non-registered users? -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 02:10, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
No, I meant what I asked. Why is it that a visitor to our site that doesn't log in to any account will see 2008-08-23 when a logged in user will see it auto-formatted? Why don't we auto-format dates for users that aren't logged in? -- SatyrTN ( talk / contribs) 03:00, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia should end its addiction to tinkering with date formats and mandating date format consistency within articles. Ordinary people do not care much. Wikipedia clearly does not care much about what ordinary readers see. As an issue, date format is less of a concern than regional spelling (color vs colour). Spelling can be wrong for the region but unambiguous date formats are not wrong, merely less common. Lightmouse ( talk) 09:47, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
What would solve all of this is if Wikipedia developers made a parser function that looked to the requesting reader’s I.P. address so it knew what country they are from. This is routinely done on Web servers of all sorts so they can spoon-feed custom content to the reader and collect reader statistics. There could be certain parser function classifications and groupings of these classifications, such as “US/other” or “US/Commonwealth”, “NorthAmerica/Other”, “US/UK”. Then we could have templates like {{US/Commonwealth|trunk|boot}}
so text for US readers would be “…he put the bomb in the trunk of the car…” and UK and Australian readers would see “…he put the bomb in the boot of the car…”. Similarly, editors could write {{US/Commonwealth|color|colour}}
. For dates, (although I personally don’t have a problem looking at 2 August 2008), one could write {{US/other|July 4, 1776|4 July 1776}}
.'
The simple solution is for editors to stop using the formatting tools. That will also stop linking dates to mindless lists of historical trivia. If one is writing an article on an intrinsically historical subject, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, then linking “ 1799” can be topical. But for most articles, the resultant links to seemingly random trivia are not topical and just junk up articles with too many blue links, which discourages learning and exploration. If someone is reading up on Planck units, they don’t need to read that “Max Planck first proposed them in 1899”, and click on the link in hopes of learning more about his proposal, only to be faced with stuff like “ July 17: The French Bretonnet- Braun mission is destroyed in the battle of Togbao, in Chad, by the warlord Rabih az-Zubayr.” (*aack*) Greg L ( talk) 17:21, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
[[2005-08-06]]
. It is beyond worthless. I added a footnote (
∆ here) to the table of date formats,
here. Given that this particular format produces (to quote O.J. Simpson) “ugly-ass” text for the majority of readers, this seems a common-sense thing to do. I guess we’ll just sit back and watch for who reverts it and why; that will at least clarify for me why this paralysis has gone on for so damned long.
Greg L (
talk) 17:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)I can't work out where to comment, but my comment would be that I'd support dropping date formatting as long as we adopt the compromise we have for spelling, first contributor unless article subject indicates a national tie and consistency. Hiding T 18:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
As to spelling, there is already a perfectly workable solution on WP:MOS:
“ | [editors should] defer to the style used by the first major contributor [except for national ties, etc.] | ” |
And finally, why do you perceive there is a link between the dropping of linked dates and spelling? Or is it that you are offering your support for one issue if you gain support for another? Greg L ( talk) 20:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
Some dates are part of reading flow (body text). Some dates are just reference data (citations). The obsession with date consistency got us into this autoformatting mess and readers really do not care that much. I am happy to read 'Fourth of July' in one paragraph and 'September the Eleventh' in the next and I am happy if citations have compact ISO formats. The formats that almost all readers see today are not the problem, just take all the square brackets away. Lightmouse ( talk) 00:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Responses from Tony1, from bottom upwards:
Again, I ask, why bother to go through so much angst in search of a solution to a non-problem? I can think of lots of better places to direct our programming and editorial talent. The "end run" LeadDogSong talks of is here now: drop it altogether. Simplicity wins, usually. Tony (talk) 00:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
What you type | What logged-in registered users see (settings on first row) | What others will see* | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
-- | January 15, 2001 | 15 January 2001 | 2001 January 15 | 2001-01-15 | No preference | -- | |
[[2005-05-15]] | May 15, 2005 | 15 May 2005 | 2005 May 15 | 2005- 05-15 | 2005- 05-15 | 2005- 05-15 | |
* Non-registered users and registered users not logged in |
Most registered editors stay logged in. As soon as they don’t see their name up at the top (every 30 days now), we log in again. Very few of we editors ever peruse Wikipedia and look at articles as a regular I.P. user. But 99.9% of Wikipedia’s readers are I.P. users.
So editors *think* they’re doing something wonderful with this stupid format option and, in fact, all we give 99.9% of our readers is the worst of both worlds: they don’t get the written-out dates we privileged editors see, and they get the damned links to mindless trivia that has next to nothing to do with the subject the article is about.
So that is why I advocate that editors should not use this particular date *formatting* option. If editors want “2005-08-06” for a tabular or special use, they should simply write it out. If editors want proper dates with a month written out (which they should want to usually do), they should at least use one of the other date formatting options. Better yet, just choose a style (either “August 6, 2005” or “6 August 2005”) and don’t link it.
This is why I suggested adding a footnote ( ∆ here) to the table of date formats, to produce this. Greg L ( talk) 17:22, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
On the subject of links: I just can’t see the wisdom of cluttering up articles with even more links if all they do is take readers to random lists of historical trivia that have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject matter at hand. If we’re going to start linking to trivia, that suggests we might as well link to every other possible word; and attitude of “if Wikipedia has a damned article on it, LINK TO IT!!!!” When we over‑link—like with links to trivia—we just turn articles into a giant blue turd. A properly linked article invites exploration and learning by properly anticipating what the typical reader might be interested in further exploring.
If I were writing an article on the speed of light, I might link to meter, for instance. Such topical links properly invite exploration and learning. When articles are over‑linked, we’re just numbing readers to links, such as when we add a link within speed of light that takes the reader to an article that says…
“ | [On this date in] 1600 - Tokugawa Ieyasu defeats the leaders of rival Japanese clans in the Battle of Sekigahara, which marks the beginning of the Tokugawa shogunate, who in effect rule Japan until the mid-nineteenth century. | ” |
Now, I don’t care to try to impress this basic lesson on technical writing upon every damned 8th-grade editor who takes the time to register and become a Wikipedia editor™®©. They can knock themselves out with the power of wikilinking and link the living shit out of everything they touch their hands to. I don’t want linked dates in articles I’ve worked hard to expand and make professional. I’m happy as a clam as long as MOSNUM doesn’tencourage the use of date *formatting* or linking or permit other editors who like to link dates to wade into nice mature articles and junk them up with even more links.
Finally, I’m all for expanding the use of date formatting so it benefits all readers (I.P. readers too, even though they account for *only* 99.9% of Wikipedia’s readership). But such tools currently don’t exist and the developer who ‘rules’ on this likes his damned blue links to trivia and seems to be entirely pleased with what they do so long as he sees what he likes when he’s logged in. So I’m not holding my breath waiting for properly conceived tools that will truly benefit the vast majority readers. And I simply think it was profoundly unwise for a developer to have made a date format like [[2005-08-06]] where registered edtiors are deluded into thinking they’re making some pretty-looking dates like August 6, 2005 or 6 August 2005 but pretty much the entire rest of the planet sees 2005- 08-06. Whoever thought that was a keeno idea should, IMO, be blocked for a week for stupidity. With the use of [[2005-08-06]], not only does the rest of the world see the all-numeric date in in-line body text, but if they have the misfortune of clicking on the blue link, they’re taken to the nothing but random trivia. Greg L ( talk) 21:56, 14 August 2008 (UTC)