Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Date autoformatting: Difference between revisions
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Autoformatting was implemented by wikilinking dates. |
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** 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.
* Autoformatting was implemented by wikilinking dates. The resulting links point to articles on notable events that happened on that particular date or year. Since these lists of historical trivia typically have little or nothing to do with the subject of the article linked from, the links are superfluous, and only serve to clutter articles unnecessarily. All links from articles should be of ''high value to the reader'', that is, following them should genuinely help the reader understand the topic more fully. (See [[WP:CONTEXT]].)
* The last format, being most like ISO 8601, was sometimes referred to as ''being'' ISO format. However, ISO 8601 format implies use of the [[Gregorian calendar]], and Wikipedia normally uses the [[Julian calendar]] for historic dates before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar—all dates before 1582, many before 1752, and some as late as the twentieth century. <!--Dates before 1583 should not be wikilinked, lest they be autoformatted.|This is advice, not a statement of disadvantages--> Autoformatting into and out of this format could be misleading or erroneous for dates on the Julian Calendar, if one thought this format was truly ISO 8601.
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