Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll/Autoformatting responses: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:23, 13 April 2009

Revision as of 16:41, 13 April 2009

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::::::Sorry for absurdly lecturing you without seeing that you are actually from the UK. I agree that standardising on MDY would be an option. However, this is very similar to standardising on Oxford style "ize" spellings for verbs in British English, and it seems that we haven't adopted this either. Therefore it seems unlikely that your argument will convince many in this poll. I think it should really be discussed separately. --[[User:Hans Adler|Hans Adler]] ([[User talk:Hans Adler|talk]]) 16:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

::::I'd just like to concur with this point - whenever I see this debate crop up, I honestly find it hard to remember which variant I'm supposed to prefer, or which one I'm supposed to object to. Written ''numerically'', there's a standard, but written textually then "1st February" or "February 1st" are pretty much interchangeable to a British reader, and I'll often use the two in the same piece of writing, or use one one day and the other the next. [[User:Shimgray|Shimgray]] | [[User talk:Shimgray|talk]] | 15:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

::::::A few of the above UK newspaper examples don't use American date format consistently when digging into the news articles. While the top banner of ''The Sun'' may show MDY, DMY-based content such as "Published: 04 Apr 2009" appear in articles before the current date [http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/money/captaincrunch/article2359823.ece]; [http://www.dailystar.co.uk/football/view/76559/Oh-brother-as-Dickson-shakes-City/ here's a "13th April 2009"] from ''The Daily Star'', and [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169625/Pictured-Student-suspect-Al-Qaeda-North-West-terror-plot.html another 13th April] from ''The Daily Mail''. Such commercial websites may not be reliable indicators for date format anyway as these can sometimes be skewed by software defaults, often biased towards US usage.

::::::Government standards and practice would seem more reliable to consider for this discussion. UK government usage consistently uses DMY and rejects US/MDY format. There are moot differences as to whether ordinal letters (12th vs 12) are used on day numbers, but there is no interchangeability of ordering on official UK levels e.g. [http://www.tda.gov.uk/about/editorialstyleguide.aspx TDA], [http://archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/e-envoy/styleguide/$file/styleguide-glossary.htm#dates Cabinet Office], [http://www3.hants.gov.uk/style_guide-2.doc Hants], [http://www.mansfield.gov.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=1763&p=0 Mansfield District Council].

::::::Furthermore, DMY is generally used by international bodies such as the [[United Nations|UN]] [http://www.un.org/news/], [[Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development|OECD]] [http://www.oecd.org], [[International Telecommunication Union|ITU]] [http://www.itu.int/net/home/index.aspx], [[International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement|ICRC]] [http://www.icrc.org/eng]. That's compelling evidence of what date format is considered the norm on an international scale and where a global project such as WP should be headed. But if we can't get there in the short term, we should make good use of the autoformatting capability (already developed for the most part) for the benefit of the various audiences. [[User:Dl2000|Dl2000]] ([[User talk:Dl2000|talk]]) 16:41, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

'''Silly autoformatting:'''

'''Uladzimir Katkouski''', a well-known and [http://content.tut.by/2006.html award-winning] [[Belarusians|Belarusian]] blogger, editor of several Belarusian websites and activist for the usage of the [[Belarusian language]] on the Internet. He made 1343 contributions to the English Wikipedia and 1286 contributions to nine other Wikimedia projects.<ref>[http://tools.wikimedia.de/~luxo/contributions/contributions.php?blocks=true&lang=en&user=Rydel contributions of Rydel per Luxo's global user contributions tool]. Accessed [[January 7]], [[2008]].</ref> Katkouski mostly edited articles about [[Belarus|his country]] and [[Belarusian language|his language]]. He was hit by a fire truck in [[2006]] and, after being in a coma for about a year, he died on [[May 25]], [[2007]].