Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 12:41, 24 April 2009

Revision as of 13:43, 24 April 2009

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::*Well, MM is a disambig. page, whose function is supposed to point readers to different articles; if you think the reader wouldn't be interested in the contents of [[2000]] there shouldn't be any entry about it on the page; --<span style="font-family: monospace; font-weight: 600; color: #00F; background-color: #FFF;">[[User:A. di M.|A. di M.]]</span> (formerly Army1987)<small>&nbsp;—&nbsp;''[[Special:Contributions/A. di M.|Deeds]],&nbsp;not&nbsp;[[User talk:A. di M.|words]]''.</small> 01:24, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

:::*I understand the point you are making, however I still feel it is okay to associate MM with 2000, but without necessarily linking to 2000. For example, a reader might plug "MM" into WP and say "ah, so it means 2000 does it". Note that there are other entries on that page that have no link, e.g. "Missing Men, a Sky Sports game" (although that might be because no one has created the page yet). [[User:HWV258|<b><font style="color:Navy;background:LightSteelBlue;font-family:Arial" size="2">&nbsp;HWV258&nbsp;</font></b>]] 01:58, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

::::The purpose of a dab page is to direct readers to articles. From [[WP:DAB]]: "Each bulleted entry should, in almost every case, have exactly one navigable (blue) link". Anyone searching for "MM" (for example, if they saw it at the end of a film) ought to be able to reach [[2000]] from that dab page. Annoyingly, they ought to be able to reach [[2000 in film]] as well, but can't! Frankly, I'd either remove "Missing Men, a Sky Sports game" or red-link it, then remove it if nobody creates it after a short time (and that's being generous). --[[User:RexxS|RexxS]] ([[User talk:RexxS|talk]]) 13:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

*Can we all be very careful to specify whether we mean full (three-part) dates or date ''fragments'' (month-day items and years)? I can see confusion creeping in here. First, the proposal ''was'' that a Lightbot remove the square brackets around only ''full'' dates (February 5, 1972). These full items are what we normally think of as date autformatting. Although it's true that month-day links (July 19) are by default autoformatted because of the unfortunate piggybacking of DA on top of wikilinking, these two-component dates were never part of the proposal for mass treatment by Lightmouse (see his talk page). The reason is that Option #1 in the month-day question (Q2) of the RFC left open the rare possibility that a month-day item might indeed meet the relevance test for linking to its month-day article. Solitary year links, the subject of Q3, were excluded from the Lightbot proposal for the same reason. The proposal deliberately avoided the administrative and political issue of mass bot removal of these items because the community has endorsed a relevance test, albeit a very tight one. On the contrary, three-item full dates are not subject to a relevance test, and this was never at issue in Q1 of the RFC. [[User:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">'''Tony'''</font >]] [[User talk:Tony1|<font color="darkgreen">(talk)</font >]] 12:41, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

: I take your point, Tony, but please consider this: a full (three-part) date not only autoformats, but produces links, because of the crazy system we have at present. Any of the date-delinking objectors could claim that the original editor intended not only to autoformat, but also to produce one or two links. They then have a perfect excuse to object to using a bot to remove the markup around full dates, "since the bot cannot determine the original intention and may be removing a relevant link". It is far better to sideline these objections before a bot run. I am sure that a bot will eventually have be used to remove the massive amount of useless date links, both of the full- and fragment- variety. For that reason, I feel we need a solution that is applicable to both varieties, although I can see sense in proceeding carefully. --[[User:RexxS|RexxS]] ([[User talk:RexxS|talk]]) 13:43, 24 April 2009 (UTC)