Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute. |
|
||||
With a great deal of thanks to MZMcBride, I finally managed to get disabling DynamicDates (setting $wgUseDynamicDates = false in LocalSettings.php) tested on a private wiki. The results are good - autoformatting of article text is disabled, whilst date preferences in article histories/logs are left intact. I've therefore gone and filed a bug here to make the change. Please keep discussion here, so to avoid filling the bug request up with threaded discussion and I'll link from the bug to here. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:19, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
(outdent). Well, from Bill Clark’s reaction on the Bugzilla, he has a firm grasp of the risks. He sounds to be someone with wherewithal, as he will be gathering statistics on just how many of the above junk-style formats will be junked with this move. I especially liked his quick grasp of the big picture at the end: I expect to have that list ready later tonight, at which point a decision could be made to either fix those pages before disabling DynamicDates, or that the problem isn't widespread enough to be concerned with (since bots will be starting delinking of ALL lesser-relevant dates soon anyway. Sweet. Greg L ( talk) 23:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
$wgUseDynamicDates = false
on both well and poorly formatted dates. Many of these examples are contrived and some look just as bad either way. Best viewed with date preferences set to none. Feel free to add examples if needed.Code | Recognized | Before | After |
---|---|---|---|
[[15 April]][[2009]] |
15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 | |
[[15 April]] [[2009]] |
15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 | |
[[15 April]],[[2009]] |
15 April, 2009 | 15 April, 2009 | |
[[15 April]], [[2009]] |
15 April, 2009 | 15 April, 2009 | |
[[April 15]][[2009]] |
April 15 2009 | April 15 2009 | |
[[April 15]] [[2009]] |
April 15 2009 | April 15 2009 | |
[[April 15]],[[2009]] |
April 15, 2009 | April 15, 2009 | |
[[April 15]], [[2009]] |
April 15, 2009 | April 15, 2009 | |
[[2009-04-15]] |
2009-04-15 | 2009-04-15 | |
[[2009]]-[[04-15]] |
2009- 04-15 | 2009- 04-15 | |
[[2009]][[04-15]] |
2009 04-15 | 2009 04-15 | |
[[2009]] [[04-15]] |
2009 04-15 | 2009 04-15 | |
[[2009]] - [[04-15]] |
2009 - 04-15 | 2009 - 04-15 | |
[[2009]][[April 15]] |
2009 April 15 | 2009 April 15 | |
[[2009]] [[April 15]] |
2009 April 15 | 2009 April 15 | |
[[2009]],[[April 15]] |
2009, April 15 | 2009, April 15 | |
[[2009]], [[April 15]] |
2009, April 15 | 2009, April 15 | |
[[2009]] , [[15 April]] |
2009 , 15 April | 2009 , 15 April | |
[[15 April]] |
15 April | 15 April | |
[[April 15]] |
April 15 | April 15 | |
[[15 April]] ,[[2009]] |
15 April , 2009 | 15 April , 2009 | |
[[15 April]] , [[2009]] |
15 April , 2009 | 15 April , 2009 | |
[[15 April]]··[[2009]] |
15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 | |
[[15 April]]··,··[[2009]] |
15 April , 2009 | 15 April , 2009 | |
[[15 April]],,[[2009]] |
† | 15 April,, 2009 | 15 April,, 2009 |
[[15 April]] [[2009]] |
† | 15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 |
[[15 April]], [[2009]] |
† | 15 April, 2009 | 15 April, 2009 |
Recognized indicates whether or not the coded format is currently recognized and is reformatted.
|
It would make much more sense to leave DynamicDates alone until after bots have deleted unnecessary links. Then we will have the opportunity of having a bot go through and revise the syntax on these. Changing, for instance, [[15 April]][[2009]]
to [[15 April]] [[2009]]
would be trivial for a bot, and it could do so fast. Then we can turn off DynamicDates. I’m an engineer. This conservative, stepped approach is least disruptive to our I.P. users and is how things would be handled in "the real world" of engineering.
Greg L (
talk) 01:15, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
In my travels, I have found that formatting errors are rife throughout WP. I already see many of those abominations because I have my preferences disabled. While there are a majority of correctly formatted dates, there is a significant incidence of errors which Lightmouse's scripts work to address. However, Lightbot nor the scripts touch any ISO date formats, nor any of the more weird and wonder permutations such as the ambiguous "12/12/06" and "12-12-06" which also exist across WP. The function was disabled because, I believe, there were a significant number of false positives - most frequently with web links and image names. This may be a significant challenge because the vast majority of references/footnotes I have come across use the ISO format in part or in full. Although MOSNUM guides us to use a uniform date format within the body of an article, the issue of harmonising date links to include footnotes may still need to be discussed. It seems that switching off DD would lead to some red-linked ISO dates, which some editors may be inclined to fix rather than simply remove. Incidentally, I use the code [to convert ISO dates to dmy or mdy] written by Lightmouse in my own script, and need to review all the changes to weed out those false positives.
Another issue which isn't addressed by Lightbot is the inconsistent date formats. It is a bot, and as such is unable to determine the rule as to whether dmy or mdy should apply. However, the monobook scripts perform that function under human supervision/discretion, and can be applied to categories in semi-automated mode in conjunction with AWB. I think there may still be false negatives when running the script, but false positives are now few and far between because the script has been continuously revised following error reports from users. Ohconfucius ( talk) 02:04, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) Wait a minute. Quoting you, Ohconfucius: It's also good to know that UC Bill (Bill Clark) hasn't bailed out on us totally. Do I understand this correctly? If Bill Clark, the individual who responded to Ryan’s Bugzilla 18479 and pledged to come back soon with more statistics, is, in turn, UC Bill, who is a the puppetmaster of Sapphic, who is under an indefinite block, then it appears we are in a rather awkward working relationship with Bill Clark, who is UC Bill, who is now also blocked for other sockpuppetry violations, particularly a threat using an account known Wclark xoom. Wikipedia is one odd place. And I’ve worked in odd places before. I don’t think I would ever want to be an admin. Greg L ( talk) 06:37, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I would be mildly surprised if Sapphic provides us further statistics on Ryan’s bugzilla given the latest events (a series of permanent or indefinite bans). Do we have someone else who can step up to the plate and provide statistical information as to whether problematical date syntaxes shown in Tcncv’s above table are rare or common?
Or can we use the ol’ *grin test* and intuition to advance an assessment as to whether or not it would be a wise thing to first (maybe ever) shut DynamicDates down? I should think that the date syntax that generates April 15 2009 ought to be extraordinarily common. I can see no reason at all to cause so many dates to break. I, frankly, am quite skeptical that it would be a good thing to turn off DynamicDates before a bot can first clean this up (even though doing so anyway might be emotionally appealing at some levels).
Frankly, I’m not catching on with how turning off DynamicDates can be all that appealing; doing so doesn’t get rid of any of the links (other than to turn a few of the blue ones into broken red ones), it just makes many of the dates look incorrectly written, and still others to become essentially unreadable. Come on guys. Lose (most of the links), and keep the blue-linked dates that remain looking half-way nice until there is a sensible plan here. Baby steps. You don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Greg L ( talk) 15:14, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
The majority of people don't have date preferences set. We're worrying what will happen to the people that have date preferences set, well we should thing of what's happening right now. If a date is linked as 2009-04-15, then the majority of users see a red link - it's already broken and will stay broken if dynamic dates are turned off. These dates need to be fixed regardless of what happens to dynamic dates and it shouldn't effect our thinking at all here. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 18:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
[[April 15]][[2009]]
→ [[April 15]], [[2009]]
[[April 15]],[[2009]]
→ [[April 15]], [[2009]]
P.S. The red-checkmarked entries in the Before column are ‘what-ifs’, most of which wouldn’t be found on Wikipedia because they instantly generate broken red links for all editors. These are for illustrative purposes to show us they were examined to evaluate what DynamicDates is or is not capable of parsing. The point is that the syntax shown in rows 1, 3, 5, and 7 should be very, very common on Wikipedia. Even if Lightbot unlinks everything it is supposed to, there will be articles like 1985 that will continue to contain lined dates. Many of the dates in these intrinsically chronological articles have been coded with syntax that will generate the hammered dog shit shown in the After column were we to turn DynamicDates off. Everyone would see that. Greg L ( talk) 19:51, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
[[yyyy]]-[[Month dd|mm-dd]]
to simulate current link behavior.One loose item I can think of is templates: Are there any templates that currently emit portly formatted dates? If so, these will need to be fixed manually. Such cases may not be apparent until after the switch, but I would expect their number to be few (if any) and they should be easy fixes.
Although some might prefer to rush this through, I think a slow methodical approach is better. -- Tcncv ( talk) 00:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
I strongly, urgently suggest that DynamicDates be left on until bots have A) removed all the overlinking on Wikipedia, and B) searched through the remaining dates for code syntax that would read improperly if DynamicDates was turned off. Then we can turn off DynamicDates. There is simply no justification for a rush to set some parameter to “false” (oh, soooo easy) and instantly make hundreds, perhaps thousands of dates look like crap (or worse: become unreadable or have broken links).
I wholeheartedly agree with Tcncv’s enumerated plan, above. Good job, Tcncv. By design, since his preamble stated he was intending to address only the the challenge of “fixing the problem dates”, the only important step unmentioned is that a bot also needs to get to work removing the excess links and converting them into plaintext. Greg L ( talk) 03:45, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Ryan, all:
In trying to figure out the roll of bots in moving forward, we now have a bunch of Wikipedians wandering around in dark caves, curious as to which tunnel to head down to avoid dead ends or pitfalls—and Lightmouse has the torch at the cave’s entrance! Can you address the “naughty naughty—you” stuff in a different venue and time and politely and graciously invite him to this discussion? Wikipedia needs his volunteer services and, right now, we could greatly benefit from his expertise and counsel (and his services to Wikipedia should he elect to contribute them). Greg L ( talk) 14:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
When all the dust has settled, could someone please remember to add in a prominent place at the top of the main poll page a summary of the poll's results and any consequent actions taken. Thanks! 86.161.41.37 ( talk) 03:50, 18 April 2009 (UTC).
I have created a bunch of new pages, whose directory is here as sub-pages of this discussion. I will rename this and continue using this as the central link when more data are available. So far, the data-extraction of ISO formatted dates indicates that ISO dates are far more commonly linked as [[yyyy-mm-dd]] (some 58,000 articles concerned), whilst the [[yyyy]]-[[mm-dd]] form appears only in about 2000 articles throughout the various spaces of WP. Data is courtesy of Bill Clark. Ohconfucius ( talk) 04:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
[[Month·Day]]...[[Year]]
[[Day·Month]]...[[Year]]
[[Year]]...[[Month·Day]]
[[Year]]...[[Day·Month]]
- A very poor format, but it is recognized....
is a combination of zero or more spaces and zero or one comma anywhere in the string (·*(,·*)?)
. This could be no characters. This could be many spaces with a comma at the beginning, end, or anywhere in the middle.Day
is one or two digits (\d{1,2})
Month
is the case insensitive full month name or three letter abbreviation (Jan(uary)?|Feb(ruary)?|Mar(ch)?|Apr(il)?|May|June?|July?|Aug(ust)?|Sep(tember)?|Oct(ober)?|Nov(ember)?|Dec(ember)?)
- (Adapted from Lightmouse's scripts)Year
is one to four digits (\d{1,4})
[[Month·Day]](·*|,|,··+}|·+,·*)[[Year]]
- Excludes the comma + single space case.[[Day·Month]](|··+|·*,·*)[[Year]]
- Excludes the single space case.[[Year]](|··+|·*,·*)[[Month Day]]
- Excludes the single space case.[[Year]]·*(,·*)?[[Day Month]]
- All such cases need reformatting.[[ApRiL 1]][[2009]]
, although the result is typically a red-link like: "
ApRiL 1
2009". It also doesn't like months outside the range 01-12, so [[2009]][[13-01]]
displays as "
2009-
13-01" (empty). However, these cases are already broken. My goal here is to identify those cases that display correctly now, but will break when autoformatting is turned off.A new batch of processed wikilinks — involving articles with incorrectly formatted mdy dates — have now been posted (see Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll/List of articles with potential issues post Dynamic Dates). So far, the data-extraction of mdy formatted dates indicates that these dates are far more commonly {incorrectly) formatted as [[mm dd]]<without comma> (some 120,000 articles are concerned). Note that some of the formatting of foreign language titles are incorrect due to char substitution, which I will attempt to remedy. Data is courtesy of Bill Clark. Ohconfucius ( talk) 12:47, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
just before the poll opened a new (?) autoformatting template was announced: {{formatdate|dmy}} or something like that. i've also recently become aware of the {{ date}} template (it's worth checking out that page for a description). so what happens to those now - will they be deactivated along with Dynamic Dates? Sssoul ( talk) 07:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
{{date|{{{year}}}-{{{month}}}-{{{day}}}|myd}}
(doing that without the template would require {{#switch:{{{month}}}|January|February|...}}
). --
80.104.234.195 (
talk) 10:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)(outdent) okay, thanks for the correction about it defaulting to dmy - some comments from editors who use the template indicate that they think it formats dates in accordance with user settings, but i guess they're wrong, so i'll strike that misconception from my earlier post. but i don't understand - at all - what you wrote about "stuff such as [code]" . maybe i don't have to understand it, but if it can be explained simply/briefly i'd be interested. thanks Sssoul ( talk) 12:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
I have asked this above in another section and haven't heard back, so perhaps I should ask in a new section. I've never been involved in arbitration before. When can we expect a decision from ArbCom and go back to editing dates (i.e. when will the date editing injunction be lifted)? RainbowOfLight Talk 06:15, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Google has recently (last few days?) put up a new method of data aggregation, Google Timeline. It combined metadata from several sources to create a at-a-glance timeline for the information and probably will be expanded in the future. Presently it is pulling three streams of data from WP: "Wikipedia events", "births" and "deaths".
Unfortunately, I can't find out how they are pulling date data, but the last thing we want to do is limit what they are doing. I realize it is entirely possible they are pulling from unlinked data, but it would be helpful to know if they are in any way taking advantage of date autoformatting or if they're using other means. -- MASEM ( t) 01:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I have made a formal request for information about when we are likely to see movement on these matters. Tony (talk) 09:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
In the discussion around the DynamicDates config option, I think we missed something discussed very early on. Someone, and I unfortunately think it was UC Bill (what a sad situation that is, regardless of position) who suggested a one line change to the autoformatting code to turn off date linking within the current version of autoformatting. This would *not* turn off autoformatting, it would just fix the "sea of blue" All without editing one article, let alone millions. Before we unleash the bots, I thought it would be good to at least consider that option for a minute. Personally, I think this is just a first step, but I like the effect it would have of addressing the clear consensus regarding unlinking dates quickly while giving time for the options where there was more balance and which might require more discussion. dm ( talk) 11:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) ah - sorry! you mean the patch that uses linking markup for dates but instead of linking them it autoformats them, apart from serious problems handling punctuation and date ranges? that was thoroughly discussed while the last RfC was being constructed, and even the pro-DA people decided it was not a good idea to propose that route to the community. someone else can i'm sure direct you to that discussion. meanwhile it's very hard to see any justification at all for a "first step" that would entail complicating the editing process simply to prolong the existence of a function that the community doesn't want: that patch would entail eye-glazing instructions for using double square brackets to link/not to link and for punctuating bracketed dates. Sssoul ( talk) 04:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
That would be a silly kludge which would turn off all autoformatted links, including the ones which do comply with the new WP:LINK#Chronological items guidelines, and wouldn't turn off any non-autoformatted link, including the seventeen occurrence of 2007 (without a day link) in the same section. -- A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 17:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
Apologies for the misuse of the {{ seealso}} template, but I think it's important to keep discussion as centralised as possible, or at least have links to where discussion has taken place.
I see that Ryan is suggesting that removal of date links should not be done by bot. I'd like to disagree with that opinion and give the reasons:
If I am correct, then a list of articles containing useful date links would be simple to compile. This could then be used as an exclusion list for any bot tasked with delinking dates. The "thought need[ed] to go into each and every one to decide whether that is important" (actually relevant is the correct adjective) would then all be done prior to a bot run. Manually delinking millions of dates is a complete waste of editors' time, when a bot could accomplish the identical task far more accurately and rapidly. The other advantage of making a page which lists exceptions is that the arguments about whether the articles 12 February or 1809 are relevant to the article Charles Darwin, etc. could be kept in one place and out of the article itself.
As I believe I'm right about the paucity of relevant links to date articles, I'll start by nominating an article that I believe contains a germane date link. If I'm wrong, then other editors should be able to list far more examples. I don't believe that can happen.
-- RexxS ( talk) 23:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Does this result actually solve anything or make edit warring any less likely? surely we will now get into arguments over what 'germane to the subject' actually means in practice. It could be argued that year links are in some cases by definition germane to the subject if they add historical context to a subject of international politics say. G-Man ? 23:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Please see a discussion at WT:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Cleanup up poorly formatted dates. -- Tcncv ( talk) 06:05, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
The community RFC about a proposal for a bot to unlink dates is now open. Please see Wikipedia:Full-date unlinking bot and comment here. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 10:37, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
This
edit request to
Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll/Month-day responses has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Could all the <source>
tags please be replaced with <syntaxhighlight>
tags per
Category:Pages using deprecated source tags?
Aidan9382 (
talk) 17:57, 8 June 2022 (UTC)
Please stay calm and civil while commenting or presenting evidence, and do not make personal attacks. Be patient when approaching solutions to any issues. If consensus is not reached, other solutions exist to draw attention and ensure that more editors mediate or comment on the dispute. |
|
||||
With a great deal of thanks to MZMcBride, I finally managed to get disabling DynamicDates (setting $wgUseDynamicDates = false in LocalSettings.php) tested on a private wiki. The results are good - autoformatting of article text is disabled, whilst date preferences in article histories/logs are left intact. I've therefore gone and filed a bug here to make the change. Please keep discussion here, so to avoid filling the bug request up with threaded discussion and I'll link from the bug to here. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:19, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
(outdent). Well, from Bill Clark’s reaction on the Bugzilla, he has a firm grasp of the risks. He sounds to be someone with wherewithal, as he will be gathering statistics on just how many of the above junk-style formats will be junked with this move. I especially liked his quick grasp of the big picture at the end: I expect to have that list ready later tonight, at which point a decision could be made to either fix those pages before disabling DynamicDates, or that the problem isn't widespread enough to be concerned with (since bots will be starting delinking of ALL lesser-relevant dates soon anyway. Sweet. Greg L ( talk) 23:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
$wgUseDynamicDates = false
on both well and poorly formatted dates. Many of these examples are contrived and some look just as bad either way. Best viewed with date preferences set to none. Feel free to add examples if needed.Code | Recognized | Before | After |
---|---|---|---|
[[15 April]][[2009]] |
15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 | |
[[15 April]] [[2009]] |
15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 | |
[[15 April]],[[2009]] |
15 April, 2009 | 15 April, 2009 | |
[[15 April]], [[2009]] |
15 April, 2009 | 15 April, 2009 | |
[[April 15]][[2009]] |
April 15 2009 | April 15 2009 | |
[[April 15]] [[2009]] |
April 15 2009 | April 15 2009 | |
[[April 15]],[[2009]] |
April 15, 2009 | April 15, 2009 | |
[[April 15]], [[2009]] |
April 15, 2009 | April 15, 2009 | |
[[2009-04-15]] |
2009-04-15 | 2009-04-15 | |
[[2009]]-[[04-15]] |
2009- 04-15 | 2009- 04-15 | |
[[2009]][[04-15]] |
2009 04-15 | 2009 04-15 | |
[[2009]] [[04-15]] |
2009 04-15 | 2009 04-15 | |
[[2009]] - [[04-15]] |
2009 - 04-15 | 2009 - 04-15 | |
[[2009]][[April 15]] |
2009 April 15 | 2009 April 15 | |
[[2009]] [[April 15]] |
2009 April 15 | 2009 April 15 | |
[[2009]],[[April 15]] |
2009, April 15 | 2009, April 15 | |
[[2009]], [[April 15]] |
2009, April 15 | 2009, April 15 | |
[[2009]] , [[15 April]] |
2009 , 15 April | 2009 , 15 April | |
[[15 April]] |
15 April | 15 April | |
[[April 15]] |
April 15 | April 15 | |
[[15 April]] ,[[2009]] |
15 April , 2009 | 15 April , 2009 | |
[[15 April]] , [[2009]] |
15 April , 2009 | 15 April , 2009 | |
[[15 April]]··[[2009]] |
15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 | |
[[15 April]]··,··[[2009]] |
15 April , 2009 | 15 April , 2009 | |
[[15 April]],,[[2009]] |
† | 15 April,, 2009 | 15 April,, 2009 |
[[15 April]] [[2009]] |
† | 15 April 2009 | 15 April 2009 |
[[15 April]], [[2009]] |
† | 15 April, 2009 | 15 April, 2009 |
Recognized indicates whether or not the coded format is currently recognized and is reformatted.
|
It would make much more sense to leave DynamicDates alone until after bots have deleted unnecessary links. Then we will have the opportunity of having a bot go through and revise the syntax on these. Changing, for instance, [[15 April]][[2009]]
to [[15 April]] [[2009]]
would be trivial for a bot, and it could do so fast. Then we can turn off DynamicDates. I’m an engineer. This conservative, stepped approach is least disruptive to our I.P. users and is how things would be handled in "the real world" of engineering.
Greg L (
talk) 01:15, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
In my travels, I have found that formatting errors are rife throughout WP. I already see many of those abominations because I have my preferences disabled. While there are a majority of correctly formatted dates, there is a significant incidence of errors which Lightmouse's scripts work to address. However, Lightbot nor the scripts touch any ISO date formats, nor any of the more weird and wonder permutations such as the ambiguous "12/12/06" and "12-12-06" which also exist across WP. The function was disabled because, I believe, there were a significant number of false positives - most frequently with web links and image names. This may be a significant challenge because the vast majority of references/footnotes I have come across use the ISO format in part or in full. Although MOSNUM guides us to use a uniform date format within the body of an article, the issue of harmonising date links to include footnotes may still need to be discussed. It seems that switching off DD would lead to some red-linked ISO dates, which some editors may be inclined to fix rather than simply remove. Incidentally, I use the code [to convert ISO dates to dmy or mdy] written by Lightmouse in my own script, and need to review all the changes to weed out those false positives.
Another issue which isn't addressed by Lightbot is the inconsistent date formats. It is a bot, and as such is unable to determine the rule as to whether dmy or mdy should apply. However, the monobook scripts perform that function under human supervision/discretion, and can be applied to categories in semi-automated mode in conjunction with AWB. I think there may still be false negatives when running the script, but false positives are now few and far between because the script has been continuously revised following error reports from users. Ohconfucius ( talk) 02:04, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) Wait a minute. Quoting you, Ohconfucius: It's also good to know that UC Bill (Bill Clark) hasn't bailed out on us totally. Do I understand this correctly? If Bill Clark, the individual who responded to Ryan’s Bugzilla 18479 and pledged to come back soon with more statistics, is, in turn, UC Bill, who is a the puppetmaster of Sapphic, who is under an indefinite block, then it appears we are in a rather awkward working relationship with Bill Clark, who is UC Bill, who is now also blocked for other sockpuppetry violations, particularly a threat using an account known Wclark xoom. Wikipedia is one odd place. And I’ve worked in odd places before. I don’t think I would ever want to be an admin. Greg L ( talk) 06:37, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I would be mildly surprised if Sapphic provides us further statistics on Ryan’s bugzilla given the latest events (a series of permanent or indefinite bans). Do we have someone else who can step up to the plate and provide statistical information as to whether problematical date syntaxes shown in Tcncv’s above table are rare or common?
Or can we use the ol’ *grin test* and intuition to advance an assessment as to whether or not it would be a wise thing to first (maybe ever) shut DynamicDates down? I should think that the date syntax that generates April 15 2009 ought to be extraordinarily common. I can see no reason at all to cause so many dates to break. I, frankly, am quite skeptical that it would be a good thing to turn off DynamicDates before a bot can first clean this up (even though doing so anyway might be emotionally appealing at some levels).
Frankly, I’m not catching on with how turning off DynamicDates can be all that appealing; doing so doesn’t get rid of any of the links (other than to turn a few of the blue ones into broken red ones), it just makes many of the dates look incorrectly written, and still others to become essentially unreadable. Come on guys. Lose (most of the links), and keep the blue-linked dates that remain looking half-way nice until there is a sensible plan here. Baby steps. You don’t cut off your nose to spite your face. Greg L ( talk) 15:14, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
The majority of people don't have date preferences set. We're worrying what will happen to the people that have date preferences set, well we should thing of what's happening right now. If a date is linked as 2009-04-15, then the majority of users see a red link - it's already broken and will stay broken if dynamic dates are turned off. These dates need to be fixed regardless of what happens to dynamic dates and it shouldn't effect our thinking at all here. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 18:58, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
[[April 15]][[2009]]
→ [[April 15]], [[2009]]
[[April 15]],[[2009]]
→ [[April 15]], [[2009]]
P.S. The red-checkmarked entries in the Before column are ‘what-ifs’, most of which wouldn’t be found on Wikipedia because they instantly generate broken red links for all editors. These are for illustrative purposes to show us they were examined to evaluate what DynamicDates is or is not capable of parsing. The point is that the syntax shown in rows 1, 3, 5, and 7 should be very, very common on Wikipedia. Even if Lightbot unlinks everything it is supposed to, there will be articles like 1985 that will continue to contain lined dates. Many of the dates in these intrinsically chronological articles have been coded with syntax that will generate the hammered dog shit shown in the After column were we to turn DynamicDates off. Everyone would see that. Greg L ( talk) 19:51, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
[[yyyy]]-[[Month dd|mm-dd]]
to simulate current link behavior.One loose item I can think of is templates: Are there any templates that currently emit portly formatted dates? If so, these will need to be fixed manually. Such cases may not be apparent until after the switch, but I would expect their number to be few (if any) and they should be easy fixes.
Although some might prefer to rush this through, I think a slow methodical approach is better. -- Tcncv ( talk) 00:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
I strongly, urgently suggest that DynamicDates be left on until bots have A) removed all the overlinking on Wikipedia, and B) searched through the remaining dates for code syntax that would read improperly if DynamicDates was turned off. Then we can turn off DynamicDates. There is simply no justification for a rush to set some parameter to “false” (oh, soooo easy) and instantly make hundreds, perhaps thousands of dates look like crap (or worse: become unreadable or have broken links).
I wholeheartedly agree with Tcncv’s enumerated plan, above. Good job, Tcncv. By design, since his preamble stated he was intending to address only the the challenge of “fixing the problem dates”, the only important step unmentioned is that a bot also needs to get to work removing the excess links and converting them into plaintext. Greg L ( talk) 03:45, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Ryan, all:
In trying to figure out the roll of bots in moving forward, we now have a bunch of Wikipedians wandering around in dark caves, curious as to which tunnel to head down to avoid dead ends or pitfalls—and Lightmouse has the torch at the cave’s entrance! Can you address the “naughty naughty—you” stuff in a different venue and time and politely and graciously invite him to this discussion? Wikipedia needs his volunteer services and, right now, we could greatly benefit from his expertise and counsel (and his services to Wikipedia should he elect to contribute them). Greg L ( talk) 14:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
When all the dust has settled, could someone please remember to add in a prominent place at the top of the main poll page a summary of the poll's results and any consequent actions taken. Thanks! 86.161.41.37 ( talk) 03:50, 18 April 2009 (UTC).
I have created a bunch of new pages, whose directory is here as sub-pages of this discussion. I will rename this and continue using this as the central link when more data are available. So far, the data-extraction of ISO formatted dates indicates that ISO dates are far more commonly linked as [[yyyy-mm-dd]] (some 58,000 articles concerned), whilst the [[yyyy]]-[[mm-dd]] form appears only in about 2000 articles throughout the various spaces of WP. Data is courtesy of Bill Clark. Ohconfucius ( talk) 04:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
[[Month·Day]]...[[Year]]
[[Day·Month]]...[[Year]]
[[Year]]...[[Month·Day]]
[[Year]]...[[Day·Month]]
- A very poor format, but it is recognized....
is a combination of zero or more spaces and zero or one comma anywhere in the string (·*(,·*)?)
. This could be no characters. This could be many spaces with a comma at the beginning, end, or anywhere in the middle.Day
is one or two digits (\d{1,2})
Month
is the case insensitive full month name or three letter abbreviation (Jan(uary)?|Feb(ruary)?|Mar(ch)?|Apr(il)?|May|June?|July?|Aug(ust)?|Sep(tember)?|Oct(ober)?|Nov(ember)?|Dec(ember)?)
- (Adapted from Lightmouse's scripts)Year
is one to four digits (\d{1,4})
[[Month·Day]](·*|,|,··+}|·+,·*)[[Year]]
- Excludes the comma + single space case.[[Day·Month]](|··+|·*,·*)[[Year]]
- Excludes the single space case.[[Year]](|··+|·*,·*)[[Month Day]]
- Excludes the single space case.[[Year]]·*(,·*)?[[Day Month]]
- All such cases need reformatting.[[ApRiL 1]][[2009]]
, although the result is typically a red-link like: "
ApRiL 1
2009". It also doesn't like months outside the range 01-12, so [[2009]][[13-01]]
displays as "
2009-
13-01" (empty). However, these cases are already broken. My goal here is to identify those cases that display correctly now, but will break when autoformatting is turned off.A new batch of processed wikilinks — involving articles with incorrectly formatted mdy dates — have now been posted (see Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll/List of articles with potential issues post Dynamic Dates). So far, the data-extraction of mdy formatted dates indicates that these dates are far more commonly {incorrectly) formatted as [[mm dd]]<without comma> (some 120,000 articles are concerned). Note that some of the formatting of foreign language titles are incorrect due to char substitution, which I will attempt to remedy. Data is courtesy of Bill Clark. Ohconfucius ( talk) 12:47, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
just before the poll opened a new (?) autoformatting template was announced: {{formatdate|dmy}} or something like that. i've also recently become aware of the {{ date}} template (it's worth checking out that page for a description). so what happens to those now - will they be deactivated along with Dynamic Dates? Sssoul ( talk) 07:12, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
{{date|{{{year}}}-{{{month}}}-{{{day}}}|myd}}
(doing that without the template would require {{#switch:{{{month}}}|January|February|...}}
). --
80.104.234.195 (
talk) 10:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)(outdent) okay, thanks for the correction about it defaulting to dmy - some comments from editors who use the template indicate that they think it formats dates in accordance with user settings, but i guess they're wrong, so i'll strike that misconception from my earlier post. but i don't understand - at all - what you wrote about "stuff such as [code]" . maybe i don't have to understand it, but if it can be explained simply/briefly i'd be interested. thanks Sssoul ( talk) 12:02, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
I have asked this above in another section and haven't heard back, so perhaps I should ask in a new section. I've never been involved in arbitration before. When can we expect a decision from ArbCom and go back to editing dates (i.e. when will the date editing injunction be lifted)? RainbowOfLight Talk 06:15, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
Google has recently (last few days?) put up a new method of data aggregation, Google Timeline. It combined metadata from several sources to create a at-a-glance timeline for the information and probably will be expanded in the future. Presently it is pulling three streams of data from WP: "Wikipedia events", "births" and "deaths".
Unfortunately, I can't find out how they are pulling date data, but the last thing we want to do is limit what they are doing. I realize it is entirely possible they are pulling from unlinked data, but it would be helpful to know if they are in any way taking advantage of date autoformatting or if they're using other means. -- MASEM ( t) 01:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
I have made a formal request for information about when we are likely to see movement on these matters. Tony (talk) 09:00, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
In the discussion around the DynamicDates config option, I think we missed something discussed very early on. Someone, and I unfortunately think it was UC Bill (what a sad situation that is, regardless of position) who suggested a one line change to the autoformatting code to turn off date linking within the current version of autoformatting. This would *not* turn off autoformatting, it would just fix the "sea of blue" All without editing one article, let alone millions. Before we unleash the bots, I thought it would be good to at least consider that option for a minute. Personally, I think this is just a first step, but I like the effect it would have of addressing the clear consensus regarding unlinking dates quickly while giving time for the options where there was more balance and which might require more discussion. dm ( talk) 11:27, 21 April 2009 (UTC)
(outdent) ah - sorry! you mean the patch that uses linking markup for dates but instead of linking them it autoformats them, apart from serious problems handling punctuation and date ranges? that was thoroughly discussed while the last RfC was being constructed, and even the pro-DA people decided it was not a good idea to propose that route to the community. someone else can i'm sure direct you to that discussion. meanwhile it's very hard to see any justification at all for a "first step" that would entail complicating the editing process simply to prolong the existence of a function that the community doesn't want: that patch would entail eye-glazing instructions for using double square brackets to link/not to link and for punctuating bracketed dates. Sssoul ( talk) 04:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
That would be a silly kludge which would turn off all autoformatted links, including the ones which do comply with the new WP:LINK#Chronological items guidelines, and wouldn't turn off any non-autoformatted link, including the seventeen occurrence of 2007 (without a day link) in the same section. -- A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 17:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)
Apologies for the misuse of the {{ seealso}} template, but I think it's important to keep discussion as centralised as possible, or at least have links to where discussion has taken place.
I see that Ryan is suggesting that removal of date links should not be done by bot. I'd like to disagree with that opinion and give the reasons:
If I am correct, then a list of articles containing useful date links would be simple to compile. This could then be used as an exclusion list for any bot tasked with delinking dates. The "thought need[ed] to go into each and every one to decide whether that is important" (actually relevant is the correct adjective) would then all be done prior to a bot run. Manually delinking millions of dates is a complete waste of editors' time, when a bot could accomplish the identical task far more accurately and rapidly. The other advantage of making a page which lists exceptions is that the arguments about whether the articles 12 February or 1809 are relevant to the article Charles Darwin, etc. could be kept in one place and out of the article itself.
As I believe I'm right about the paucity of relevant links to date articles, I'll start by nominating an article that I believe contains a germane date link. If I'm wrong, then other editors should be able to list far more examples. I don't believe that can happen.
-- RexxS ( talk) 23:59, 23 April 2009 (UTC)
Does this result actually solve anything or make edit warring any less likely? surely we will now get into arguments over what 'germane to the subject' actually means in practice. It could be argued that year links are in some cases by definition germane to the subject if they add historical context to a subject of international politics say. G-Man ? 23:15, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
Please see a discussion at WT:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Cleanup up poorly formatted dates. -- Tcncv ( talk) 06:05, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
The community RFC about a proposal for a bot to unlink dates is now open. Please see Wikipedia:Full-date unlinking bot and comment here. -- Apoc2400 ( talk) 10:37, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
This
edit request to
Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll/Month-day responses has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
Could all the <source>
tags please be replaced with <syntaxhighlight>
tags per
Category:Pages using deprecated source tags?
Aidan9382 (
talk) 17:57, 8 June 2022 (UTC)