Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers

Unofficial anagram of the Manual of Style

Approximate birth dates based on age as of date

Waiting for changes to default behavior of a template

MOS:APPROXDATE says if you have two possible birth years based on an as-of date, you should say for example "born 1912 or 1913". But we have a template for this, Template:Birth based on age as of date, that instead uses a slash: "1912/1913". You can add a param to make the template comply with MOS, but shouldn't that just be the default? Kendall-K1 (talk) 16:07, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Um, late to this discussion but |mos=1 added to the template with this edit quite some time ago ... See the template's documentation.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:59, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Kendall-K1. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:25, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Kendall-K1, Jc3s5h, can either of you add usage examples to MOS:APPROXDATE? I'd also encourage you to suggest that the template be modified as you suggest above -- that will change the appearance of some current usages (i.e. changes / to - by default) but I can't see that mattering enough to worry about. (Obviously in changing the template a new parm would be introduced which would allow getting the old punctuation.) EEng 21:10, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Slashes are a bad idea. If someone was born on "10 January 1701/1702" it is stating that the person was born on 10 January 1702 (New Style). So using slashes can be confusing for years before 1752 and before March 25 of those years for dates given within Britain and the colonies. -- PBS (talk) 17:41, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

The proposal is to move away from slashes as the default, so not sure what your point is. EEng 00:11, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes I did read the proposal, I am pointing out another reason (dual dating) why it is a sensible change to make. -- PBS (talk) 00:32, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. EEng 02:06, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• Reminding Kendall-K1, Jc3s5h -- see above. EEng 02:04, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

I have this on my list of things to do in my copious spare time.

So this was proposed and discussed a couple of years ago at Template talk:Birth based on age as of date#Incompatible with WP:MOSNUM but nothing was done at the time. Maybe time to re-visit? Kendall-K1 (talk) 02:13, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Abbreviation for astronomical unit once again

Au (mixed case, initial cap) is the symbol for gold

I am raising, once again, the issue that au (not AU) should be used as the abbreviation for astronomical unit. It has been discussed both here and on the talk page for Astronomical unit. About five years ago I recommended allowing both abbreviations to be used in the article on the Astronomical unit until the issue was sorted out by appropriate defining authorities. At that time the situation stood as follows:

The 2012 IAU RESOLUTION B2 on the re-definition of the astronomical unit of length, recommends "that the unique symbol “au” be used for the astronomical unit." It looks like we've got a difference between the IAU (2012) recommendation and the BIPM (2006) report. I suspect the BIPM and the IAU will sort this out, but for the moment we probably should let both stand with the more recent IAU recommendation getting some priority. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 17:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Since that time, the situation has changed. The 2014 Supplement to the eighth edition of the BIPM brochure on The International System of Units and the draft ninth edition (forthcoming 2019) recommended the symbol au in both English and French texts, citing IAU resolution B2, 2012 which recommends "that the unique symbol 'au' be used for the astronomical unit." National organizations such as the American Astronomical Society and the Royal Astronomical Society also recommend the use of au in their publications, the AJ, ApJ, and MNRAS. Given this agreement among the authoritative international organization on weights and measures and the primary national and international organizations on astronomy, Wikipedia should follow suit by changing its Manual of Style to reflect accepted practice. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:00, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

For info: A long discussion now at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 151#Symbol for astronomical units (again) was closed on 23 July 2015 as supporting the addition of AU to the table of units. The note excluding "au" was not explicitly discussed then; it was added on 30 July 2015.[1] The close ended "Note that "AU" vs. "au" in the table issue can always be revisited at a later date if the IAU preferred "au" version becomes the more widely adopted unit symbol in the literature." 92.19.30.35 (talk) 21:20, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

The symbol preferred by ISO 80000 is ua, possibly to avoid a clash with the symbol au to mean attodalton. Whatever the reason there seems to be no strong consensus amongst standards bodies, so I think we should make a choice and stand by that choice. Has that much changed since we chose AU in 2015? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:06, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Dondervogel, you are terribly wrong! I cite the Wikipedia page itself:

In 2006, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) recommended ua as the symbol for the unit. In the non-normative Annex C to ISO 80000-3 (2006), the symbol of the astronomical unit is "ua".

You cannot use a decision of 2006 to overthrow a decision of 2012-2014! Especially since is a non-normative annex! You have to follow the last decision! And as a member of the Astronomical Community, I would like that Wikipedia considers more important the decision of IAU than the opinion of an user! Or does it need a letter from IAU? (I know several person there, but also the president because he was the President of my MSc thesis Committee) SkZ (talk) 21:25, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

I recently checked that the Astronomical Journal in its manuscript preparation instructions calls for "au". I take this as an indication that adoption of this version is not merely a few international organizations, so I support "au". Jc3s5h (talk) 21:51, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

@Dondervogel 2: suggested above that the use of "ua" in ISO 80000 was "possibly to avoid a clash with the symbol au to mean attodalton." Lacking any citation to support this hypothesis, it is much more reasonable -- and relevant to our discussion -- that the ISO was following the then current standard set by the BIPM, which in the eighth edition of its The International System of Units (SI) (2006) favored "ua" as the symbol for unité astronomique. This also suggests that since the ISO was following BIPM practice in its 2006 revision, it will follow current BIPM / IAU practice in it forthcoming revision. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:22, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

All we know for sure is that the current (2006) ISO standard favours ua and the current (2014) BIPM standard favours au. ISO TC12 is presently developing a final draft (FDIS) of ISO 80000-3, which means that it is highly likely to be updated shortly. There are five things that can happen, in (my perception of) order of decreasing likelihood:

1. the FDIS is approved, and makes no statement about the astronomical unit;
2. the FDIS is approved, and switches to au, following BIPM;
3. the FDIS is approved, and continues to use ua;
4. the FDIS is not approved and ISO 80000-3:2006 remains current;
5. the FDIS is approved, and switches to some other symbol for this unit.

When the choice of AU was made, it was the worst out of the 3 available (either ua or au would have been better), but I supported AU because it achieved uniformity across Wikipedia. In my opinion we should wait for TC 12 to take its course. In the two most likely scenarios, the de facto international standard becomes au. If it comes out in favour of au we should definitely adopt that symbol, but what if it doesn't? Right now I do not support any change based on speculation. Instead we should wait until TC 12 either publishes or withdraws the draft standard presently under development. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 06:49, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

We also know

1. the draft has reached stage 40.99; it has been published as a DIS and approved for registration as an FDIS. It is available for purchase now but is expensive.[2]
2. the committee has a virtual meeting next week, 23 May 2018, and provisionally will meet in Helsinki in October.[3]

But does that matter, given that ISO tends to follow BIPM and Wikipedia is bound by neither? Can we move instead to considering what's actually in use, per Wikipedia's general principles and the specific 2015 close that the "issue can always be revisited at a later date if the IAU preferred "au" version becomes the more widely adopted unit symbol in the literature"? 92.19.29.193 (talk) 12:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Proposed draft

#1 Proposal to allow au or AU

Rather than discussing an abstraction, I'll propose a specific change for the table, drawing on the discussion to date:

Guidelines on specific units

Group	Name	Symbol	Comment
Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au, AU (not A.U., ua)	au is recomended by the BIPM and the IAU, and is called for in the publications of the AAS (AJ and ApJ) and the RAS (MNRAS). AU is a commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles.

References

--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 14:42, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose: MoS is not an article and does not cite sources, for any reason other than clarification or reference to additional reading (e.g., MOS:ACCESS has references to various accessibility specs, because their detailed technical stuff that people who want to work on it here should be familiar with and which an MoS page should not regurgitate). And WP is not an advocacy platform of any kind, especially over a tiny bits of style trivia, most especially never in the furtherance of some internecine bickering between a field's institutions for which one has longer authoritativeness junk to wave. Furthermore, more times we say "do A or do B" we are making a mistake, and failing as a style guide, and setting up future pointless disputes. We should never, ever do this, unless there's a site-wide completely failure, repeatedly, to come to consensus on something after wide editorial input. This little matter generally has no input from much of anyone but people in astronomy or a closely related field, who favor this organization's specs versus that one's.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:23, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

#2 Proposal discussing options au and AU

Here is a revision which indicates the preferred option, responding to the discussions below:

Guidelines on specific units

Group	Name	Symbol	Comment
Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au, AU (not A.U., ua)	The preferred option au is recomended by the BIPM and the IAU, and is called for in the publications of the AAS (AJ and ApJ) and the RAS (MNRAS). AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles.

References

--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose for the same reasons as above.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:24, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

#3 Proposal preferring au and not AU (but not deprecating AU)

How about this:

Guidelines on specific units

Group	Name	Symbol	Comment
Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au (not A.U., ua)	The preferred option is au. An alternative is AU. Articles that already use AU may choose to switch to au or continue to use AU.

I prefer this wording because it makes it clear au is preferred, permitting AU during the transition (to au) but not promoting it. Also, we do not normally include the reason for our choices in mosnum. I think this is to keep it short. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

#4 Proposal preferring au and deprecating AU

Fourth proposal:

Guidelines on specific units

Group	Name	Symbol	Comment
Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au (not a.u., AU, ua)

I added this simpler option to address SMcCandlish's criticism of the other three. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:45, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

For as long as the ISQ ISO 80000-3 'Quantities and Units - Space and Time' prefers ua, what is the reason for mosnum to prefer au? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:21, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

The ISQ is a system of quantities, not units. It does not prefer ua. A non-normative appendix in a standard that describes part of the ISQ uses ua. That's all. 92.19.29.193 (talk) 21:38, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

I was using the term "ISQ" as a shorthand for ISO/IEC 80000 Quantities and Units, which is about units as well as quantities. I have now spelt it out in full. How can we be sure the same informative annex will not find it's way into the 2018 (or 2019) revision? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:54, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

In view of the questions about what is actual use, I did a very quick search of recent articles in the Astrophysics Data System: Four of the first five articles I could download from Arxiv (to be published this year in AJ Letters, ApJ, and MNRAS) used AU, one (forthcoming in Astronomy and Astrophysics) used au. Since these are preprints, I can't confirm what they will look like after going through the formal editing, but it does indicate that authors submitting papers to AJ Letters, ApJ, and MNRAS still use AU, despite the style guides calling for au. It seems our draft using both AU and au reflects current usage. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:06, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

I have checked articles from MNRAS, A&A, Icarus (all European journals), and there the published articles that I have read use au. In Nature AU, in ApJ and AJ (US journal) I have found AU or au (but more au in the more recent ones) SkZ (talk) 02:42, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

The ayes 'n the nays

Ayes

• Support: As drafter, I support this proposal. In view of the growing support of the form au, I had considered making it au only, but in view of the comments in the discussion of the traditional long-term use of AU, I am willing to concede some value to that form. On the other hand, the old usage of ua, which has been deprecated on this page since this edit by Dondervogel 2, has now been abandoned by the BIPM and is only supported by the ISO, does not seem relevant to this proposal. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:11, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Version 3 looks good to me but to avoid confusion shouldn't we keep AU as an acceptable option in the "symbol" column. as it is the "comment" column contradicts the "symbol" column. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 20:35, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
    • In light of the discussion to date, I'd say we should go with one of the versions supporting au. In order of preference, I find Version 3 or Version 4 acceptable. I believe all the participants in this discussion have had their views heard and it's time to close. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:55, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
• As a active member of the Astronomical Community, and official member of the Chilean Astronomical Community (I still didn't sent the recuest for the IAU membership in time for the IAU General Assembly in August) and as an university professor I support this proposal in the more strict version of using just au in Wikipedia. I don't care what Wikipedia users and no astronomers think, we decided a standard and you have to respect that standard. You have no right to decide astronomical standard. SkZ (talk) 20:41, 18 May 2018 (UTC)

Nays

• Oppose: I'm open to persuasion if someone has a good answer to my question. In the meantime my preference is to wait until ISO 80000-3 is updated or the FDIS is withdrawn. I don't see the point of making this or any other change before then. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:31, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Reply: I would not have opened a discussion of a change, were it not for the fact that the current version deprecates the use of the form au, which has been approved by the two leading scientific standards organizations in the appropriate disciplines, the BIPM and the IAU. That discrepancy clearly calls for making a change now. ISO's present support for the symbol ua, which you yourself added to the list of deprecated symbols, is irrelevant to this proposal. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 21:25, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

Look, let’s face it – AU was a mediocre choice in 2015 and it remains a mediocre choice now. I supported it only to ensure WP-wide uniformity. I can see myself supporting a change that leads to uniform adoption of au, but not one leading to a mix of au and AU. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:14, 14 May 2018 (UTC)

I see your point; you want to establish a single standard usage for Wikipedia. In most cases, I would agree but for astronomical unit we are in a period of flux where standards bodies increasingly favor the usage au but practice (being conservative by nature) still favors AU. In such a time of flux (which may last for several decades) it seems reasonable to adocate the new standard but to allow the older form as an option. Would you, as someone who has worked on this page for some time, see a way to expand on the discussion of options in the lead to provide a preferred (au) and acceptable (AU) symbol for astronomical unit.--SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:44, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

I see this choice as similar to the one made between Mbps and Mbit/s for the megabit per second. At the time that choice was made it was very common, and as far as I know remains common, to use Mbps, while standards bodies recommend Mbit/s. If we want the symbol to instantly recognizable but ambiguous, we would have adopted Mbps. Instead there was a preference for a symbol that was less recognizable (because it was not in widespread use) but unambiguous, namely Mbit/s. Here are faced with the familiar but ambiguous AU against the less familiar but unambiguous au. The answer to your question is that I would support a form of words that made clear au is preferred, while not deprecating. That would create a climate in which a transition from AU to au could start. Dondervogel 2 (talk)

OK, I've revised my draft above following your suggestion; does it look satisfactory? --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:59, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

It confuses discussion when you change text already commented on. Please just strike out your old proposal above and give your new proposal here. EEng 14:17, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

Good point, I've left both versions above for comparison --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 15:43, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

I don't buy that argument at all. "Mbit/s" is not "less recognizable", but more. Recognizability has as much to do with lack of ambiguity and with parsing speed and accuracy as it does with prior familiarity with the string. Anyone with a linguistics background knows this (as does anyone with a machine-learning one, or a cognitive science one). "Mbit/s" may be a less common exact text string by some margin than "Mbps", but it's closer to plain English and much less ambiguous. If you lined up 100 people and asked them what one string means, and another 100 got that question for the other string, far more of them would correctly supply "megabits per second" as the answer when fed "Mbit/s". What we have here it the exact opposite case, where we're being asked to support the extremely unintuitive (in English) "ua", which nearly no one outside astronomy circles will have seen before (or will remember later– it's anti-mnemonic in this language).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:42, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

• Not a rational option (I mean #3; I'm not sure if this comments section is for that or for all of them; I opposed the other two for different reasons, above). "Articles that already use AU may choose ..."? When did our articles achieve sentience? I take a tiny wikibreak and miss the entire AI revolution? Damn. More seriously, we do not go with "three editors at this article and two at that one can make up their own 'rules', and fight with everyone else about it for the next 12 years" pseudo-guidelines, unless consensus abjectly fails to arrive at some kind of standard people can live with. We have very few cases like this, mostly with *VAR in their shortcut names, and generally resolving to either a) English dialect ("variety") matters, or the unholy grail: "the citation style used in my journal can beat up the citation style used in yours". [WP should long ago have set a single citation style and just put an end to that, but we're now stuck seemingly forever with an expanding citation-mess nightmare. Don't create another one.] PS: We only tolerate this kind of wishy-washy recipe for breaking out the "member"-size rulers when WP has no intrinsic reason to prefer one option over the other. In this case, we do: "au" is better supported by standards bodies than any other option, and better supported by the more relevant ones, in non-provisional specs, while the weird one, "ua", isn't recognizable to anyone but specialists, even aside from the "au" vs. "AU" squabbling.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:32, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

New discussion section on 4 separate proposals

The ayes 'n nays were to discuss a single proposal (the first one) and things are getting difficult to follow. Let's discuss the merits of the 4 proposals here. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 09:54, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Pinging SMcCandlish again because I spelt his name wrong at my first attempt. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:04, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Well, I and others have already commented in-place on various things. I agree more extended discussion should probably be in a new section for it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:17, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

I was curious about your position on proposal #4. 'Tisall. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 16:34, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Just use the most recommended version

My proposal, just to put a damned end to this perennial rehash, is to recommend the au version, and deprecate "AU" and "ua" if we mention them at all, because all the actually authoritative/definitive sources that set standards for this stuff codify that version of it, except ISO likes the "ua" version, while we have no support for "AU" other than vestigial use that doesn't have much of anything current to cite to back it up. We should not recommend "ua", because it's sorely outnumbered, and because it's French and not recognizable to (i.e., will be confusing to) English-speakers. Even someone like me who has never taken a single astronomy-related class knows what an au or AU is, but has never seen "ua" in this context outside of an MoS squabble. The average person who reads or watches any sci-fi on a casual basis knows what au/AU means. Probably less that 0.1% of even that faintly-geeky crowd knows what "ua" stands for, and hearing it aloud would mistake it for a reference to United Artists.

Just put this to bed and move on. We've wasted way too much collective time on this. Repeatedly.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:58, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

I would have agreed that AU is merely vestigial and should also be deprecated until I did a quick check (see above) of current usage in the astronomical literature. Since AU is still frequently used by professional astronomers, despite the recommendations of the standards authorities and journal editors for au, I think we should allow those two options to stand. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 12:47, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

No, we shouldn't. Any time room is made for an exception which doesn't actually matter (the way it can matter in, say, Commonwealth versus American English distinctions, e.g. metre vs. meter to give an on-topic example), this is a recipe for endless, pointless fighting over trivia no one else GaF about, at article after article after article. It's would in effect be an intentional call for a non-stop, unproductive, territorialism-based disruption, and strongly against the spirit of WP:OWN. Professional writers do all kinds of things differently – by field, by house style, even by age bracket, but MoS recommends one specific approach regardless, on almost every question. That's how a house style works, and all reputable publishers have one. Doing it this way is especially important in technical material, which is much of what MOS:NUM is aimed at. There are a grand total of zero professional astronomers who are unaware of differing au/AU style and unable or unwilling to use the style called for by the stylesheet of the publication they are writing for, or they would not survive in their career. All of these people have to write for journals, and write in ways that comply with the house style of the journal in question. It's no different from writing for WP. Within units and measures in particular, we are imposing uniform standards on the material written here, despite the fact that, say, engineers and other pro nerds of various sorts are apt to do all kinds of things if left to their own devices, like using run-together measures and units, using alternative unit names, not providing conversions, using "-" (hyphen) when "–" (minus) or "–" (en dash) is called for, using informalisms like 3'7'', using "x" instead of "×", using completely different symbols for multiply/multiplication/times (*, ·), and so on. We don't permit that kind of chaos, because it makes both writing and understanding the encyclopedia more difficult. We have no reason to make a magically special exception to our normalization practices here just to please a handful of greybeard astronomers fighting a badly-losing style battle within their field. Taking up their side in that trivial fight isn't WP's job.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:17, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

I see your point, I just don't agree that 80% of an admittedly small sample of professionals writing about astronomical unit in the major journals is either "vestigial" or "a handful of greybeard astroomers." On that empirical fact, you're wrong; on your editorial principle, you may be right. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 13:42, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

Our job is to make a choice and stick with that choice. We made a choice (for AU) in 2015. If the consensus has changed since then I do not object to changing that choice to au, but I do object to a mixture, for the reasons so eloquently explained by User:SMcCandlish. I can support #3, #4 or the status quo. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:45, 20 May 2018 (UTC)

I could also get behind "AU" over "au", if some frequency analysis shows it to be dominant in current works, for the same reason I support our decision to go against "gibibytes" and related units despite there being a published standard for them – they're not well enough known or used. This case may be different, because "au" isn't coming from just a single spec. As you're both intuiting, I care more about avoiding a mixed-bag approach and the conflict it leads to, than about any particular choice we settle on (other than against "ua", which isn't sensible in English writing).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:18, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

I think that your job is to follow the standard decided internationally in the proper places (like IAU General Assembly, where hundreds of astronomers meet every three years to make decisions). SkZ (talk) 03:02, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@SkZ There are two flaws in your reasoning. For the first flaw I rely on my recollection of what happened 3 years ago, which is that mosnum did follow the IAU recommendation, which at that time was to use AU, in preference to ISO (ua) or BIPM (au); as I say I'm not completely sure of which body recommended which symbol but I am sure there was confusion then, and that confusion has not yet gone away. The other is that mosnum really does trump the IAU or any other single international standards body; the whole point of mosnum, and of the MOS generally, is that it is our house style, the purpose of which is to bring clarity through harmonization. A choice was made to adopt AU (consistent with IAU advice at the time) and I see no urgent need to adopt a different symbol now. As a general rule the guidance of BIPM is more likely to result in Wikipedia-wide harmonization than the guidance of IAU, but given those too bodies are now aligned in their advice, perhaps the time has come for mosnum to follow suit. I do not object to this change. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:26, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish I agree with you about au, but not about GiB. Mosnum's present advice promotes ambiguity and fails in its stated aim of clarity through harmonization. The harmonization is there but far from leading to clarity it promotes ambiguous statements like '1GB of RAM, and 1GB of NAND Flash Memory'. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:39, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

[For the "GB" problem, we should link on first occurrence to the intended unit page, at least unless and until we arrive at consensus for a different solution.] More importantly, MoS's main point is to ensure sensible, properly written, consistent output for readers; it's purpose to harmonize away editorial dispute is secondary (though more often the effect immediately in play in any given discussion about it). So, ua is a poor choice (in English) if AU or au is available, plus we have a strong rationale to not flip back and forth on these things after picking one, since it affects the output of numerous of articles and thus could confuse readers who've already gotten used to one of them. Another issue is that it's emphatically not WP's job to declare this body or that one more authoritative.

Our job is to look neutrally at all the RS (which means publications, not legal entities) and consider them in the context of each other. It doesn't matter to WP what IAU says versus what BIPM says versus what another relevant organization says [as long as none of them are disreputable – we're looking for RS, here], except inasmuch as it helps us be sure the option we do pick isn't stupid and, if we're lucky, does have multi-authority support. But all this focus on organizations is a red herring. What we really care most about is what the majority of non-obsolete RS – in total, not just specialist publications – prefer. That's our first choice. And we might reject it anyway, if there's some kind of problem with it (technical, ambiguity, even social). The end goal is recognizability to the readership, not the approval of a particular group. The readership is everyone from kids to ESL learnings, line cooks to Nobel Prize winners.

Furthermore, we've had rare but serious problems in the past with people associated with off-site organizations trying to use WP as a vehicle to promote adoption of their would-be "standard" or "convention" when it really had little real-world acceptance among relevant organizations and institutions, but a significant "fan base" among individuals in the field. In one case, it led to over a decade of intermittent disruption, and reader-confusing output in thousands of articles. Some WP:COI was demonstrably happening – someone from the on-site editorial clique pushing this supposed convention was regularly updating a blog-style page at the off-site organization's website with news of the "progress" of imposing their spec on our content. [I'll pass on giving more detailed about it here; there's no active dispute now, this isn't a WP:DR forum anyway, and one shouldn't pick at scabs.]

The point is that while we usually think of things like this in terms of commercial, political, religious, and fringe groups, even highly-regarded institutions can be the source or inspiration of programmatic PoV pushing on this site, so we're rightly skeptical of any "our organization has The Truth" stance-taking. While, obviously, no one in this debate has some weird CoI agenda, our averseness to taking sides in off-site disputes between professional bodies and the like serves multiple purposes, and serves us well. For the case I'm alluding to, no one would have thought – at first – that something untoward was happening without really looking into it. I've had my own doubts about a few issues that have recurred on this particular page, including several years of vehemence about gibibytes and the like.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:05, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

• I'd oppose au because the first question anyone will have is what the hell is an au? People know what the AU is, it is the vastly dominant usage, and it should remain the AU until au becomes the dominant form and actually used in more than a handful of publications. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:30, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

RfC about the symbol for Astronomical Unit

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The result of the discussion was to go with Option 3 (au, while not prohibiting AU). Options 1, 2, and the status quo were firmly rejected, leaving only a discussion about whether to make this a "hard" or "soft" deprecation; in other words, allowing existing AU usage or actively discouraging its further use. There was strong support for both options, but more advocated for the position that there was no rush to immediately convert all instances of AU to au. From an administrative perspective, I note that the sentence An alternative is AU contradicts the overall idea and sentiment of deprecation, and it will be struck from the updated table. If there comes a point where au is officially recognized by all astronomical societies and its use has been deprecated on the English Wikipedia, there is no prejudice against starting a new discussion to remove the "Comment" regarding AU, though a formal RFC might not be necessary. Primefac (talk) 22:03, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

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This RfC relates to the options discussed in the immediately preceding section, which has become inactive in the last week. To bring this discussion to a close, I am initiating a formal RfC, which may attract additional participants and has a formal closing mechanism. Below are sections for expressing support of the four draft revisions proposed above. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

The options

Guidelines on specific units

Option	Group	Name	Symbol	Comment
Status quo	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	AU (not A.U., au, ua)	AU is the most commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles, and is hence also used on Wikipedia (though some organizations, including the BIPM and IAU, recommend au).
One	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au, AU (not A.U., ua)	au is recomended by the BIPM and the IAU, and is called for in the publications of the AAS (AJ and ApJ) and the RAS (MNRAS). AU is a commonly used symbol for this unit, both in popular and professional articles.
Two	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au, AU (not A.U., ua)	The preferred option au is recomended by the BIPM and the IAU, and is called for in the publications of the AAS (AJ and ApJ) and the RAS (MNRAS). AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles.
Three	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au (not A.U., ua)	The preferred option is au. An alternative is AU. Articles that already use AU may choose to switch to au or continue to use AU.
Four	Length, Speed	astronomical unit	au (not a.u., AU, ua)
Unicode	length, speed	astronomical unit	㍳ / ㍳	㍳ / ㍳

References

Support Status Quo (no change)

• AU is the best option of all, and we don't need the massive disruption changing to, or allowing, au. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:34, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
• I'm agnostic to both AU/au, but we should only have one. Allowing multiple acceptable variants does more harm than good (the light-year discussion comes to mind, but forget I mentioned that...).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:59, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
• 'AU' is the traditional version; 'au' is the IAU preference. To me the 'AU' seems much clearer as 'au' looks too much like a misspelled word. The standard convention in English for an abbreviation is to capitalize the letters, which leans more toward 'AU'. But I can live with either, as long as the usage is consistent within an article. Praemonitus (talk) 14:26, 8 June 2018 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose the status quo. AU may be acceptable, but the status quo's deprecation of au, which is the internationally approved symbol for astronomical unit, is not. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 01:35, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support. "AU" is far more commonly used, and is far more recognisable amongst readership, who are after all the folks we're trying to service. — Huntster (t @ c) 07:11, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Second choice, though we need not mention "this other organization prefers ...." stuff, other than maybe in a footnote with {{efn}}.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:19, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Weakly oppose: I consider this a poor third choice, and prefer au per international standards (BIPM, IAU). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 06:57, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option One

• I actively oppose this ("au or AU, your choice") because it absolutely guarantees endless article-by-article editwarring and "my organization is better than yours" PoV pushing. Nothing constructive can come of this. The job of a style guide is to set a standard (even if an arbitrary one) to put a stop to both fights and "what do I do?" confusion, and [more importantly] to produce consistent output for readers – not to just throw up it's hands and say "whatever". If we were going to do that, the solution would be to remove any mention of the unit and its symbols at all. We also do not cite sources in MoS or other WP:P&G pages as if they're articles (unless is to point to resources like usability specs that an editor might need which is out-of-scope – not for justification, which is WP's own editorial consensus, arrived at by source comparison, consideration of project goals and reader needs, and many other factors.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:12, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• strongly oppose, per SMcCandlish. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:02, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option Two

• I actively oppose this (another "au or AU, your choice" option), for the same reason as stated for Option One.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:13, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support this as my preferred option, but they're all better than the status quo. The correct form, used by all the relevant professional bodies and in particular the IAU, is au not AU. Modest Genius ^talk 14:33, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

To clarify: my order of preference would be 2, 3, 4, 1, status quo. Modest Genius ^talk 13:43, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• strongly oppose, per SMcCandlish. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:05, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option Three

• Support, as it favors the formally accepted abbreviation au, while not deprecating the widely used AU. SteveMcCluskey (talk) 02:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
• Support, not because AU is widely used in the big bad world out there but because until now it has been required by MOSNUM. This option permits a smooth transition to au. I can also live comfortably with Option #4 or the status quo. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:09, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• Clarification: I now support options 3 and 4 equally. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

• Support. pace SMcClandlish, Option 4 could also lead to fresh conflict if a rush to change AU to au in existing articles triggers a return to the question here. If - or more likely, when - organisations such as NASA and more of the popular press move from AU to au over coming years, we can switch to Option 4. Order of preference: 3,4,2,1 while strongly opposing the status quo's choice of an obsolescent symbol. 92.19.25.65 (talk) 08:37, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Weak oppose, because it leans a bit in the direction of the two options immediately above, in being wishywashy and thus likely to perpetuate pointless disputes over style trivia on an article-by-article basis. This would be my distant third choice, if it came down to it, and only if we moved some of the organizational claptrap into an {{efn}} footnote.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:15, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
• Weak support. As I mentioned above, I favor leaving use of both symbols as acceptable, since the larger community is only slowly moving from the old form AU to the new au. Emerson said "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." For Wikipdedia to ban either of the accepted symbols in the name of consistency seems a perfect example of Emerson's "foolish consistency." Of options allowing both symbols Option 3 is more concise than option 2. I could be brought to a strong support if this option were internally consistent and provided both symbols in the Symbol column, as it already does in the Comment column. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 11:42, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

  You're severely misunderstanding Emerson, like almost everyone who quotes him out of context. See WP:EMERSON. He meant inflexibility of mindset in the face of changing facts – not typographic or stylistic consistency, something he was entirely used to as a professional writer.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  16:55, 18 June 2018 (UTC)

Support Option Four

• Support, as it favors the formally accepted abbreviation au, and deprecating the not more so used AU. I have checked the published version of articles in MNRAS, A&A, AJ, ApJ, Icarus (I am an astronomer) and all the ones published in the last 1-2 years use au. Up to 2015 ApJ and AJ used AU, but it seems they stopped. Also I support it because I am an astronomer and I would like you to respect our decision and not to decide by yourself what is the astronomical standard! Why should Wikipedia users be above International Astronomical Union? SkZ (talk) 02:51, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• Support as first choice (without prejudice toward settling on AU instead, if there's a reason WP should prefer it). KISS principle: Set a single WP recommendation, as MoS does on virtually everything (unless there's a WP:ENGVAR conflict). Otherwise people will fight it out article-by-article until the end of time. We could have a note in it about whose standard it is, in plain English, without a pile of inappropriate "back up my claims" citations, which don't belong in WP:P&G material, or it will inspire "sourcing wars". We already went through that at the main MoS page several years ago, resulting in the WP:MFD of two pages of cherry-picked citation material that people were using to editwar incessantly at MoS. Never again. The discussion above already demonstrates quite a lot of polarization (if that word can really apply to a mostly three-organization conflict), so this should be nipped in the bud right now.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:28, 6 June 2018 (UTC)
• I support options 3 and 4 equally. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 05:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Other

Unicode is coded for an AU symbol. If we change, we should use the Unicode coded version. Otherwise, we should remain at the status quo, per older discussions. -- 65.94.40.190 (talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Option Unicode symbol

Unicode encodes a character for the Astronomical Unit, it is U+3373 (13171) ㍳ / ㍳ -- 65.94.40.190 (talk) 06:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Links to previous discussions

• from 2014 ...
• ... and from 2015.

Discussion

Are we not talking about symbols rather than abbreviations here? That is my working assumption and I have edited the title of the RfC accordingly. I have also requested comment at the Astronomy talk page. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:52, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

• Note - I've taken the liberty of adding the options above the "poll" itself so that they are a little easier to find/remember. Primefac (talk) 12:02, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I have the impression that Options 1 and 2 have the least support, with support for one of them coming only from Modest Genius. May I be so bold as to ask Modest Genius which his or her second preference might be, in the event that 1 and 2 were both withdrawn (think of it a single transferable !vote)? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 20:24, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

My order of preference would be 2, 3, 4, 1, status quo. I'll add that to the !vote above. Modest Genius ^talk 13:43, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. That is clear. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:59, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

• "AU remains an acceptable option as it is a commonly used symbol in both popular and professional articles." This isn't just a colloquialism: it follows the convention in English to capitalize the letters of a multi-word abbreviation (that is not yet common vocabulary). E.g. FYI, YTD, RSVP, &c. Praemonitus (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

• I think it matters whether we are discussing a symbol or an abbreviation. Your argument holds for the latter but not for the former. The reason I prefer au as a symbol is that this symbol has been adopted by international standards bodies, including the IAU. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 19:15, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
  • Regardless of whether you consider it a symbol, AU is an abbreviation for Astronomical Unit. Yes 'au' was adopted by the IAU for the purposes of standard communication within the astronomy community. That doesn't mean Wikipedia needs to stick with it. Praemonitus (talk) 14:20, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
    • I have no problem with "AU" being used as an abbreviation for astronomical unit. My objection is to its use as a symbol. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 14:34, 14 June 2018 (UTC)
• That's not a universal rule for units of measurement. Look at mph/MPH in news reports[4], for example, or psi/PSI, while less common units outside SI tend even more strongly to be abbreviated to or symbolised by lower-case rather than upper-case characters (eg in.w.g. or inH2O rather than INWG, but possibly excepting the British thermal unit, Btu in standards but often BTU in sales literature.) 92.19.25.65 (talk) 09:01, 12 June 2018 (UTC)
  • That is specifically why I said "not yet common vocabulary". 'AU' is hardly as commonplace as 'mph' — most non-astronomy-buffs wouldn't have a clue that AU is an abbreviation if it were in lower case. See the abbreviation article. Praemonitus (talk) 14:24, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

• My position has shifted a little. I think it is time to follow the international standards (BIPM, IAU) by switching from AU to au, and now find options 3 and 4 equally acceptable - I don't think it really matters how quickly the change occurs. The status quo comes a poor third, while options 2 and 3 represent an unacceptable cop-out. I will update my !vote when I find the time. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 04:28, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Closing time?

This has gone quiet and perhaps all the arguments have been presented. How do we precipitate closure? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 21:18, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

 Doing.... Primefac (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Followup: Does this divide along discipline lines?

It strikes me as worth asking, so that a specific variant can be recommended for specific contexts (or so we can recommend to use the variant appropriate to the context, rather than listing them out here). E.g., subspecies is abbreviated ssp. in zoology, but 'subsp.' in botany, which uses it as a symbol in scientific names while zoology does not. Wondering if something similar might be going on in, say cosmology and archaeoastronomy‎ versus astrophysics and exoplanetology, or whatever.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:11, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Regnal years of English monarchs

Regnal years of English monarchs (originally constructed by User:Walrasiad) lists the official regnal year of the monarchs of England and successor states.

The regnal calendar ("nth year of the reign of King X", etc.) is used in many official British government and legal documents of historical interest, notably parliamentary statutes and also historically parliamentary sessions. It may be that the sources used by a Wikipedia editor will use the regnal calendar. I suggest that a subsection is added to the section "Dates, months and years" of this guideline, stating that if regnal years are used the year or year range in the appropriate Julian (prior to 1752) or Gregorian calendar is appended in parenthesis.

The reason for doing this is because most people have no idea which year for example is Elisabeth I, 10 (November 1568–November 1569); and mentioning the article "Regnal years of English monarchs" here will inform editors where they can go to get the information do the conversion.

-- PBS (talk) 17:33, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

I hate to say it but...

• Unless Regnal years of English monarchs is taken essentially fact-for-fact from a systematic source making essentially the same presentation, I fear it may contain a great deal of WP:OR.
• Even getting past that, for sure taking a source's reference to a regnal year and translating it for modern readers is OR. Anyway, I don't see the use case for this under our other policies. What reliable secondary source, of the kind we use for fact content in articles, dates something via regnal year only, so that we have to translate it ourselves? We don't source articles to Roger of Wendover.

EEng 04:11, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

• See the cited chapter in Sweet & Maxwell [[5]] for an introduction and table which supports the Wiki page.
• For a usage example see Weights and Measures Acts (UK), indeed every article citing an English/British/UK Act of Parliament ought to have a reference like this.

Is converting a source's format for modern reads OR? By analogy a statement such as: "The Low Main lies 94 fathoms (564 ft; 172 m) below the surface and is 3 feet (0.91 m) thick." might be held to be OR, and yet the {{convert}} template is built to do just that. Where I do agree with EEng is that I don't see a need to add this to the MOS. Unless there is a dispute over the best way to convert regnal years to historic years we should let knowledgeable wiki editors get on with the job unhindered by instruction creep. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

"case for this under our other policies". This is not discussion about changing policy, but guidance in a guideline. The reason for mentioning both the start of year with Julian dates (MOS:OSNS) and seasons (MOS:SEASON), is for exactly the same sort of reasons (the latter came up because of confusion with seasons during the Falklands War). In both cases "knowledgeable wiki editors" do not need the advise, it is aimed at those who either do not know (as in the start of year) or did not think it through (as in season). This process is exempt from OR as is doing simple maths, calculating someone's age, or converting one measurement into another (WP:CALC). -- PBS (talk) 18:22, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

The problem with guidance and guidelines (sentence 2 of MOS starts "This is the primary page for the style guidelines:" [my emphasis]) is that some people will use them as if they were mandatory and start interminable arguments about them. Better to leave it out unless there is a perceived problem that can't easily be resolved on the talk pages of the article concerned. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 19:55, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Yes, we don't need to add more line-items without a real need for them. But what you said before that has correlation/causation inclarity. It's not something being called "guideline" or "guidance" that causes disputes. It's editors who do not want to follow a particular piece of guidance who do that. Even if they bother to read WP:P&G's "Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply" all take away is "I get an exception!" (because they have also not absorbed WP:WIARM: "must justify how their [WP:IARs] improve the encyclopedia" and "Most of the rules are derived from a lot of thoughtful experience and exist for pretty good reasons; they should therefore only be broken for good reasons." Feeling incorrectly that policy is on their side, their "MoS is only a guideline and there's no policy against what I want to do" crap starts, and there's your interminable dispute. Actually, most of them are short-lived (and settled in the favor of the guidelines); that's not the issue. It's the frequent recurrence of the same style-quirk demand over and over again, either from a tendentious party, or from random people who can't yet understand why they shouldn't write here like they learned to in 10th grade in 1989, or like their boss tells them to at work.

The source of actually interminable style conflicts is MoS making a pseudo-rule like "do A or B, per editorial discretion at the article" (or us knowing there's a perennial dispute but neglecting to account for it in MoS at all). This is guaranteed to lead to repeated disputes at many pages for no good reason, until the un-rule (or lack of one) is replaced with a single instruction.
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:17, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

There is no nothing like what WP:CALC contemplates: Routine calculations do not count as original research, provided there is consensus among editors that the result of the calculation is obvious, correct, and a meaningful reflection of the sources. Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age are some examples of routine calculations. Using the regnal-years table, which has 14 footnotes along the lines of:

Henry VI was deposed by Edward IV on 4 March 1461, officially bringing his reign and last regnal year to a close. However, Henry VI briefly recovered the throne in 1470–1471, so he has an extra regnal year, dated from 9 October 1470 to c. April 1471, and referred to as the 49th year ("Anno ab inchoatione regni nostri") or 1st year of restoration ("Readeptionis nostrae regiae potestatis"). Henry VI's "restoration" year does not mar the continuity of Edward IV's regnal years – Edward IV's 10th Year is counted unbroken as beginning from 4 March 1470 and ending 3 March 1471, his 11th year beginning 4 March 1471, etc.

And that's before we fold in the issue of civil vs. historical years. A process that even sometimes involves considerations like that cannot be called a "calculation" which is "obvious". But I'm back to the question of use case. Are we building article content from sources so old that they give dates in regnal form? Do we really consider those reliable sources? An article on the history of weights-and-measures legislation should draw on modern sources discussing that history, not cobble together way-old sources from all over the map. EEng 18:58, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

But that's exactly why the page cites Sweet & Maxwell for authority. And what is easier that looking up one line in a table? BTW, old != unreliable any more than new == better! That way leads to journalism rather than encyclopaedic work. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:02, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

It seems to me EEng that you are playing devils advocate and that you do not hold a strong opinion on this: "And that's before we fold in the issue of civil vs. historical years." That is precisely what is covered in this guideline by MOS:OSNS. WP:CALC (part of the OR policy) includes the phrase "or calculating a person's age are some examples of routine calculations." Using the "Regnal years of English monarchs" it is no more complicated to calculate the year using a modern format than it is calculating the age of a person. Martin of Sheffield if someone has written an article where the secondary source mentions in passing that such and such an act influenced the outcome (but does not date the act), if that act is found in a list of acts listed by regnal years, then I do think that if the regnal date is added then at least a conversion to the familiar format ought to be added as well, and guidance here on how to do that is I think desirable, just as it is for Old Style/New Style OSNS dates. If someone then runs AWB to add familiar dates to such entries then all to the good. -- PBS (talk) 14:41, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

looking up one line in a table??? 49 Henry VI was when, exactly? – be sure to read the footnotes! Look, make a table with Regnal years, or ranges of them, on the left, and the corresponding calendar year range X–X+1, on the right (something like [6]) and then I'll call it looking up one line in a table. But you can collapse the "inside" years of most reigns via formulas showing how to compute X=Y+REGNALYEAR. There will still need to be some notes about OS/NS, of course, but you can never avoid that. The current table takes skill to apply. EEng 19:38, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Well to be pedantic, two lines I suppose. The footnote only explains the de facto limits; 9/10/70 - ?/4/71 is a subset of the theoretical 1/9/70 - 31/8/71. Calling either the full year or the subset as 49 Henry VI satisfies your equation where Y=1421: 1470 = 1421 + 49. I also fail to see how introducing the Roman calendar aids any understanding in this matter. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:09, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

There is already a Template:British regnal year that uses a Lula module to convert Julian/Gregorian years to regnal ones:

*1649 {{British regnal year|1649}}

1649 24 Cha. 1 – 1 Cha. 2
(Interregnum)

I have used that year to demonstrate how the template handles anomalies. I have asked on the template talk page if it is possible to add an inversion so that if a Julian/Gregorian regnal year is put in it will display the regnal Julian/Gregorian years. -- PBS (talk) 22:26, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

That would solve the problem. EEng 22:59, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep. When I started reading the thread I was going to suggest this could be automated, and here we are. If there are any cases where the reverse-calculated results could have OR in them (e.g. because of historical "who's actually in charge of this country, again?" matters used as illustrations above, perhaps have the template output nothing, or a just a red notice that it doesn't have reliable output for this case. That said, output like "1649 24 Cha. 1 – 1 Cha. 2" needs punctuation of some kind, since it's not easily parseable without it by anyone not already familiar with the system. Maybe "1649, 24 Cha. 1 – 1 Cha. 2" or "1649 (24 Cha. 1 – 1 Cha. 2)". Not sure I care. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:36, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

OK then we seem to have a consensus. Once a template where a regnal year is entered and a Julian/Gregorian years are displayed is written, and the display format agreed, then we will add something to this guideline. Until then lets adjourn. -- PBS (talk) 20:42, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

1GB of RAM, and 1GB of NAND Flash Memory

@SMcCandlish I'm afraid I did not explain myself well. The problem with the quoted extract (from Boxee) is not particularly that GB is ambiguous, but that it is used with two different meanings in the same sentence. When describing RAM it means 1024³ bytes. When describing flash memory it means 1000³ bytes. The problem would go away if we could only think of one symbol that means 1000³ bytes and another that means 1024³ bytes <sigh>. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 11:06, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

And what I meant was to do "1 GB of RAM, and 1 GB of NAND flash memory." There already are separate symbols, GiB and GB, but years of flamewarring has us deadlocked on whether to use GiB except in specialist contexts. I don't think it can last forever, but it's not resolved yet. Frankly, in a construction like this I would use GiB anyway, and cite WP:IAR if anyone challenged me on it, since it genuinely improves the encyclopedia to disambiguate in such a back-to-back case. The fact that "GB" has long been used by RAM manufacturers to refer to 1024³, which is more properly named [by modern standards] a gibibyte than a gigabyte, doesn't force WP's hand to use the ambiguous and now sub-standard "GB" for this, or to refer to 1023³ obsoletely as a "gigabyte" just because some chip plants have their heads stuffed way up their butts. >;-) It's not something I would argue about as a stand alone thing – "1 GB of RAM" it's all that bad, and is more recognizable to the average reader. But "1 GB of RAM, and 1 GB of NAND flash memory" is only barely an improvement over the unlinked version; it's innately confusing. The usual counter-argument is "we deal with ambiguous constructions in our language all the time without the sky falling; the type of device makes the intended meaning clear in the context", but this really isn't true any longer, as storage moves onto chips. The average person who even knows of the 1024³ versus 1000³ distinction probably has no idea which is used by flash memory or an SSD. I think we'll have to revisit the "Gibibyte ban" at MOS:NUM within the year.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:45, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

It is much easier to understand all digital memory sizes (and the movement of information between digital memory) if one does the maths is hexadecimal as the conversion to binary (as used by binary electronic computers) is much simpler. It is a shame that the articles like "Kilobyte" and "Gigabyte" represent numbers in decimal and not hexadecimal. 1000 and 1024 in decimal presents these number as if 1000 is clear than 1024, but if they are written in hex it is the other way around 0x3E8 looks far less clear than 0x400. Therefore writing the lead using decimal numbers presents the information with a specific bias in those articles. They also fail to convey why computer scientists prefer to work with 0x400 rather than 0x3E8 and that it is done for piratical reasons and not on a whim or as a professional affectation. -- PBS (talk) 13:47, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

@PBS: Avast! A piratical reason? Aaarrr...  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:46, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Snigger, thanks for pointing that out. -- PBS (talk) 20:35, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Yes, that would definitely make everything crystal clear to the nonspecialist laymen who are our target audience. EEng 14:54, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

It might help laypeople understand why computer scientists prefer to calculate memory sizes using 0x400 (1024 dec) rather than 0x3E8 (1000), and perhaps lead them onto the subject of maths in other bases. Besides it is assumed by the authors of the article that readers are familiar with handling bits in packets of 8 (ie 1000 bytes is actually 8000 bits, after all if bytes are used then base 8 is used -- 2 bytes is 16 bit, 3,24 4,32 etc and that is no more complicated than pounds and ounces). -- PBS (talk) 20:35, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps use "1 GB (1,073,741,824 bytes) of RAM, and 1 GB (1,000,000,000 bytes) of NAND flash memory."  Stepho  talk  22:04, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

Seems kind of long-winded. Don't we presume that readers' brains won't melt when they encounter "1000³"? And the hex numbers are meaningless to non-specialists as numbers, though PBS's point isn't invalid about x0400's clarity in that format being [part of?] why it was favored over 0x3E8. I'm thinking now that a complex template would be a good idea, like what {{Nihongo}} does with Japanese. These number conversions are something software can do automatically.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:50, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

If one writes the numbers hex 1GB = 0x40000000 bytes and 1GB 0x3B9ACA00 bytes then it inverts the supposed clarity. (As SMcC indidates, bracketed numbers in hex would help explain this issue). Going off-piste: But why stop at bytes and use bits or some other measure instead. In these days when some microwave ovens probably have processors with a word size of 64 bits (if not they are probably not Y2038 safe and will cook something for 137 years starting on a day in 2038), using an arbitrary 8 bits rather than arbitrary 64 bits is quaint, but salesmenpeople know that big is better and 1000 x (8 bits) sounds so much larger than 125 x (64 bits). -- PBS (talk) 20:35, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Except that capacity is measured in bytes whereas word size is a measure of system width. I've worked with people who insisted on sizing jobs in terms of words (usually kilowords) and most confusing it could be. At that time we had the SGI Origins (64 bit), Crays (64- or 56-bit) and support machines (32-bit). Even on 64-bit machines a byte is usually the smallest addressable unit of memory (as well as being one ASCII or EBCDIC character). 8 bits is not arbitary and reverting to word sizing would make my brain explode! Martin of Sheffield (talk) 22:30, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

It's an interesting problem. If we said "one glass of wine and one of beer" would we need to say that a wine glass is 5 oz and beer is 12, 16 or 20? Probably not, depending on the context. Even for someone familiar with the problem, I have to stop and think whether NAND flash is measured in GB or GiB. Whatever you do, please fix the citekill, and insert nbsp between the number and the unit. Kendall-K1 (talk) 22:46, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

With respect Kendall-k1 it's worse than the glass analogy. Virtually everyone knows that glasses come in different sizes. A closer analogy is the long/short/metric ton discussion that's been going on elsewhere. We wouldn't accept a phrase such as "a ton of UK steel is better value that a ton of US steel" and hope that the reader inserts "long" and "short" appropriately. I'd agree with SMcC that a change to the ruling is long overdue. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:42, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Well I know that a barrel of UK beer lasts much longer than a barrel of US beer. I agree that the current MOS recommendation against using GiB should be revisited but I dread the ensuing discussion. Kendall-K1 (talk) 11:32, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Barrel emptying times is not something so easily quantified as quantity against time :-) -- PBS (talk)

It really depends on what's happening. I'm sure a UK barrel will go much faster during the World Cup than a US one, and vice versa during the Super Bowl. >;-)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:12, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Back to the point

If I may steer the discussion back to where it started, it really is not difficult to improve on the Luddite advice we have now. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:57, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Likely, but it's going to take a well-thought-out proposal that addresses the issues raised in the previous rounds of debate about this; it verges in WP:PERENNIAL.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:59, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

It is my recollection that the problems in previous discussions were caused not by the issues but by the lack of goodwill on the part of a very small number of editors and their puppets. The troublesome editors have moved on so I expect the discussion to be constructive, and a constructive discussion will succeed in addressing the issues. The bottom line is that it should not be necessary to rely on WP:IAR to follow an international standard in situations for which it is the obvious solution. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 07:27, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

The noughties

Mae West, one of the naughtiest of the late naughties

-EEng

I am trying to improve an article, Churchill, Victoria, that uses the term "late noughties" to describe a time late in the period 2000 to 2009. That grates terribly with me, so I came to the MOS, especially MOS:DECADE, for something better. It hasn't really helped. (Maybe I haven't looked far enough?) Writing "the late 2000s" would be ambiguous. Does it mean 2008, or 2095? No other option suggested there seems to work either. Idea please? And can something be added to this section? HiLo48 (talk) 04:13, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

I'd just go with late 2000s, since for now that's unambiguous, given that events of the past are being narrated. Editors in the year 2095 can worry about what to do at that point. EEng 05:04, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Love the pic. HiLo48 (talk) 06:02, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

The previous decade is referred to as the aughties by just about every American publication I've seen that refers to the decade in such shorthand. Naughties was considered somewhat seriously, but probably just somewhat, as an alternative, IIRC. Dhtwiki (talk) 19:01, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Dhtwiki - Can you provide a link to any quality source using the term "noughties"? (In writing that I am reminded that my spellchecker disapproves of it.) Anything in Wikipedia? HiLo48 (talk) 23:53, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Note: 0 says that 'nought' is UK English and 'naught' is US English.  Stepho  talk  00:38, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Ah, wasn't aware of that difference. Thanks. The article I am working on is Australian. Australian English, while being recognised as a distinct variety of the language, is more like UK English than US English. The "Naughties" sound like they were a much more fun decade. HiLo48 (talk) 00:50, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep, I'm Aussie too (WA). I remember in the late 90's the radio stations got all excited about what to call the next decade (noughties/naughties, nothings, oh's, etc) but then it fizzled out and nobody thought of it again. It never really got a name that stuck with a significant amount people.  Stepho  talk  02:24, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

@HiLo48: I have seen "aughts"—not "aughties", come to think of it—in The New Yorker and Harper's Magazine. An article in the first-named magazine is referenced at the "aughts" article, but it doesn't describe the usage they settled on, just the difficulty of coming to a conclusion on which term to use. However, it's my impression that "aughts" is the term generally used, at least in American journalism. So, possibly "noughts" would be the British English equivalent, "noughties" sounding like someone being a bit naughty. Dhtwiki (talk) 00:07, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Using late 2000s isn't ambiguous, since the late 21st century hasn't happened yet. It's always fine to use "the first decade of the 21st century", something more specific like "from 2007 through 2010" or whatever, or some other approach. "The noughties" and "the aughts" are silly slang and aren't encyclopedic wording.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:07, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

• The expression "late 2000s" doesn't pass WP:RELTIME, meaning: it will eventually become ambiguous. Will 80 years from now someone think about rewriting sentences that use such expression? And what would be the downside of doing such rewrite without further delay? As it happens, I WP:CHALLENGEd the entire sentence in the Churchill article, as possible WP:SYNTH. Find a reliable source for these assertions, without conflating if it is in separate sources. If a reliable source uses "late 2000s" or "noughties", there's always a possibility to quote literally, in quotation marks, with an in-text attribution that makes clear which noughties or 2000s are meant. --Francis Schonken (talk) 10:41, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Let's invent Category:Articles with Y2.1k problems and rig some sort of atomic-powered alarm clock to draw attention to it around 2090. EEng 12:10, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Date ranges vs. full birth–death dates in biographical leads

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#The lead date-range vs. full dates thing
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:39, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Why is the yyyy-mm format not allowed

If u want to use format 2001-07, why is it not allowed on the manual style of dates yyyy-mm-dd is allowed, so why is yyyy-mm not allowed then? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A000:1103:5EB:1097:199B:8DE1:7098 (talk) 13:16, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Because 2001-07 could mean July 2001, or it could mean 2001 to 2007. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:24, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

And yyyy-mm-dd format isn't allowed universally anyway, just in particular contexts where the format is especially useful; see above for some disputation about how that list may shrink, e.g. because wikitables can now sort the other date formats chronologically.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:02, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

What is the advice for a situation where yyyy-mm-dd is allowed, and the dd is not known? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 16:55, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

You don't use YYYY-MM format. You use something else. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:08, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

This may entail changing all the dates in the article with the YYYY-MM-DD format to a different format, such as Month d, yyyy. Too bad the editor who introduced YYYY-MM-DD into the article in the first place didn't plan ahead. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

The ISO specification allows for dates along the form of YYYY-DD-00 to indicate that the day is unknown--the spec does not allow for someone to trim digits off. I would personally advocate against it generally and agree that conversion of format is preferable. --Izno (talk) 18:07, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I have read a draft of the next version of ISO 8601. It has two parts; the first part is supposed to be the same as the 2004 version, and the second part is extensions. You can find it at the Library of Congress if you choose appropriate search terms. (I don't have an official copy of the 2004 official version). Nowhere does it allow for zeros to be substituted for unknown digits. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:48, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I misremembered what our article says on the point (ISO 8601). It does allow us to specify dates without day precision (YYYY-MM) as well as dates without year precision (or, 2000 did: --MM-DD). --Izno (talk) 19:57, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

The forbidding of yyyy-mm dates bothers me. In an article such as Tesla,_Inc. there are 477 reference. 476 of them have full dates with year, month and day. Only a single reference lacks the day (May 2009). The current guidelines suggest the following ways to handle it:

• Display that single date as 'May 2009', violating WP:DATEUNIFY
• Display that date as '2009-05', violating WP:DATEFORMAT, WP:BADDATE
• Change all the dates to '31 December 2018' or 'December 31, 2018' style, violating WP:DATERETAIN.
• Provide a fake day (eg '01'), which is lying
• Provide a '00', which is new to me and potentially confusing to the majority of readers

Personally I've always thought that readers who see a dozens to hundreds of references with dates in yyyy-mm-dd format will not suddenly think that those exact publication dates have suddenly swapped to inexact date ranges covering years. Especially since 2001-2005 is now the preferred format over 2001-05.  Stepho  talk  21:30, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I would the urge conversion route, because we have no encyclopedic interest in using reader-hateful ISO dates, except in particular contexts with good reasons. I even say that as a professional geek who works with ISO dates all the time, and is a huge fan of their value in technical contexts, like filenames that sort by date, or the ability to operate easily on dates with a script. We've been permissive of ISO dates mainly because of the wikitable sorting problem, and it has been fixed. If people at that article pitched a fit about it, go with "May 2009" as a minor IAR inconsistency, and let them have their playground; it's not worth the drama.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:15, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

I've seen how people who don't like ISO dates use emotion charged words like 'hateful' and 'pitched a fit'. Far from wanting to convert away from ISO dates, I would prefer to find a way to consistently use ISO in all references on articles that choose to do so. Converting 476 dates just because of a single reference is an unbalanced way to do things.  Stepho  talk  09:49, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

I'm with Stepho on this. It's really hard to misinterpret a date like yyyy-mm when all other dates are yyyy-mm-dd. Should be permitted. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 17:26, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Please read rather than react. You missed both points. You can just IAR, with "May 2009" and move on, without changing any ISO dates. I'm not among "people who don't like ISO dates"; repeat: I'm huge fan of their value in technical contexts. This isn't one, not even in citations.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:26, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

React? You used emotion charged words to urge me to follow a certain action and I calmly expressed that I didn't prefer that reaction. That's called a conversation. Unless you're simple trying to shut it down by ridiculing anyone who doesn't agree with your opinion.

Yes, I read both of your points, even though I was only responding to one of them. As I stated, I prefer not to convert away from ISO dates. Your second option of IAR is what I have been using since the yyyy-mm ban came into place. Older articles that used yyyy-mm I have turned a blind eye to. For new references I have used 'July 2018' type dates. There is no action that is 100% correct under the current rules. I prefer to stay within the rules when possible, so I am asking for clarification (in case I missed something) or possible rule changes.  Stepho  talk  23:59, 7 July 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)That particular citation is, I think, fixable. As written right now, it has the form:

[http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers]" ''Economic Analysis Group Competition Advocacy'', May 2009.

It alone, of all the references in that section, is not templated. It probably should be; perhaps like this:

{{cite report |last=Bodisch |first=Gerald R. |url=http://www.justice.gov/atr/public/eag/246374.htm |title=Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers |orig-year=2009 |date=15 October 2015 |work=Economic Analysis Group |publisher=United States Department of Justice}}

Bodisch, Gerald R. (2015-10-15) [2009]. Economic Effects of State Bans on Direct Manufacturer Sales to Car Buyers. Economic Analysis Group (Report). United States Department of Justice.

The 15 October 2015 date is at the bottom of the page.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:28, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

I recently worked on an article where the source that ultimately was used was a parish register of vital events. It spanned several decades. Later it was microfilmed, and then the microfilm was put online. WP:CITE#Dates and reprints of older publications says to cite both the original date and the date of the re-publication where you saw it. The original date might be something like 1706-11, or some might write it 1706-1711. If the second year in the range were written with 2 digits, there could be genuine confusion whether it means 1706 to 1711, or November 1706. Indeed, an editor trying to "correct" it should examine the source to discover which is the case.

Such a date (1706-1711) could be valid, in the sense that during the period when the book was only partially full, members of the public could look at it, so in a sense it was "published" throughout that period. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:23, 8 July 2018 (UTC)