Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Date autoformatting: Difference between revisions

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{{SupplementSuperseded|[[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates/Dates and numbers)]]#Dates, months and years}}

{{Rejected|date=September 2008<!--Consensus actually rejected this in two 2008 RfCs, reaffirmed in a followup in 2009, but the feature wasn't disabled until February 2013.-->|comment=<br/>'''The data autoformatting feature is [[mw:Manual:$wgUseDynamicDates|no longer part of the MediaWiki software]]'''}}

Since at least 2004, it has been possible for registered users to set a preference regarding the way dates appear to them. Wikilinking all {{nowrap|dates&thinsp;/&thinsp;years}} purely for the use of autoformatting is now discouraged (See [[MOS:UNLINKDATES]]).

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Autoformatting dates has had several disadvantages:

* Its effects can only be seen by by registered editors who select a date preference ('''My preferences&nbsp;→ Date and time&nbsp;→ Date format'''). (As with other interface modifications, unregistered users are unable to access Wikipedia's preference settings and cannot choose a date format preference.) Therefore, most of the very individuals who have been largely responsible for the correctness and good style of articles have not seen what the vast majority{{fact|date=November 2008}} of readers see.

** As a result, editors did not notice that the source code often had two (or possibly more) date formats in the same article, while most users saw inconsistent date formats on the same page.

** Some dates were entered in source code in one or more of the last two formats. While most editors did not notice this, most users saw a format that was much less familiar to them than either MDY or DMY.

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*<nowiki>[[November 5]], [[1989]]</nowiki>

The square brackets instruct the MediaWiki software to format the item according to thea user's [[m:Help:Date formatting and linking|date preferences]] for registered users who have chosen a setting and are logged in.

The following table shows how the autoformatting mechanism behaves. The preference settings that a registered user can choose are displayed in the second row. The year and the day-month combination are wikilinked separately, except for dates in the [[ISO 8601]] format. Full date formats not found in the first column are not autoformatted when wikilinked, and are likely to produce a redlink; for instance,

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| rowspan="2" | '''What you type'''

| colspan="5" | '''What logged-in registered users see<br>(settings on first row)'''

| rowspan="2" | '''What others will see'''&thinsp;^{<span id="ref_A" />[[#endnote_A|'''[A]''']]}

|-

| January 15, 2001

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|-

| <nowiki>[[May 15]]</nowiki>

| [[May 15|May 15]]

| [[May 15|15 May]]

| [[May 15]]
| [[May 15]]

| [[May 15]]
| [[May 15]]

| [[May 15|May 15]]

| [[May 15|May 15]]

|-

| <nowiki>[[15 May]]</nowiki>

| [[May 15|May 15]]

| [[May 15|15 May]]

| [[May 15|15 May]]

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|-

| <nowiki>[[May 15]], [[2005]]</nowiki>

| [[May 15|May 15]], [[2005]]

| [[May 15|15 May]] [[2005]]

| [[2005]] [[May 15|May 15]]

| [[2005]]-[[May 15|05-15]]

| [[May 15|May 15]], [[2005]]

| [[May 15|May 15]], [[2005]]

|-

| <nowiki>[[15 May]] [[2005]]</nowiki>

| [[May 15|May 15]], [[2005]]

| [[May 15|15 May]] [[2005]]

| [[2005]] [[May 15|May 15]]

| [[2005]]-[[May 15|05-15]]

| [[May 15|15 May]] [[2005]]

| [[May 15|15 May]] [[2005]]

|-

| &nbsp;&nbsp;<nowiki>[[2005-05-15]]</nowiki>&thinsp;^{<span id="ref_B" />[[#endnote_B|'''[B]''']]}

| [[May 15|May 15]], [[2005]]

| [[May 15|15 May]] [[2005]]

| [[2005]] [[May 15|May 15]]

| [[2005]]-[[May 15|05-15]]

| [[2005]]-[[May 15|05-15]]

| [[2005]]-[[May 15|05-15]]

|-

| align="left" colspan="8" | <div class="references-small"><ol class="references" style="list-style-type:upper-alpha"><li id="endnote_A">[[#ref_A|'''^''']] Non-registered users and registered users not logged in</li><li id="endnote_B">[[#ref_B|'''^''']] Editors are discouraged from using this format since non-registered users, who constitute the majority of readers, may see a hard-to-read date format.</li></ol></div>

|}

</center>

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Even when surrounded by square brackets, those dates that do not contain both a day and a month—such as solitary months, solitary days of the week, solitary years, decades, centuries, and month-year combinations—are not autoformatted. One could make them links by using the standard piped-link notation, but the same advice applies here: such links should not be created unless they are of high value to the reader. (See [[WP:CONTEXT]].)

*Autoformatting does not function for piped links to date elements, such as "<nowiki>[[20 June|the 20th of June]]</nowiki>" or "<nowiki>[[1997 in South African sport|1997]]</nowiki>". (Several forms of piped links breakoverride the date-formatting function.)

* Links to date ranges in the same calendar month, such as "<nowiki>[[December 13–17]]</nowiki>" or "<nowiki>the night of [[30/31 May]]</nowiki>" cause autoformatting to fail. The autoformatting mechanism will output such dates in a damaged form: '''30/May 31''', etc.

Date elements on disambiguation pages and section headings should never be linked; the same applies to quotations, unless the original quote is linked.

[[Category:Wikipedia how-to|Manualfailed ofproposals|Date StyleAutoformatting]]