User:Ikara/SAND
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This page is currently being used for the construction of a new page for Wikipedia:As of to reflect the change from "As of..." links to the {{As of}} template. You are welcome to help write it, or alternatively you may wish to make suggestions on the project's talk page. The current proposed page is shown below, all unnecessary comments will be removed from the final page. Thanks – Ikara talk → 18:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:As of
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The "as of" technique is a method to deal with statements that date quickly. Some articles have information that is valid only at a specific moment in history, such as population statistics and current events. If you suspect that a fact in an article will become dated at some point in the future, and want to ensure that people will update it, include a tag of the form
with the year of validity in place of year and the month number in place of month. See the {{As of}} template for additional options and detailed examples.
Every individual, non-contiguous statement in an article that may date quickly should be so tagged, even if there are several such statements that link to the same year. Otherwise, it is possible that when one statement is updated, other statements in the article might be overlooked, and no one will realize that they need to be checked also.
Usage guidelines
Usually "as of" is used only in cases where an article is intended to provide the most current information available. It should not be used for historical information that is not intended to be updated. For example, an article that mentions population changes in Toledo, Ohio should not tag the official U.S. census figures for each decade. However, the latest available population figure stated in the opening paragraphs of the Toledo, Ohio article itself should be so tagged. The date used for a given statement should be the current date (for currently valid statements) or the date on which the data was obtained (for example, when using census figures).
"As of" can be used with future dates when events are anticipated but not definite, or when the tense of the reference will need to be changed. For recurring events it is often better to use {{Update after}} to mark when the next event will occur. Here is one way to use "as of" with future dates:
- {{As of|2008}}, construction is expected to finish in 2012 and cost 28 billion USD.
Remember to always use precise language when writing about future or current events. The statement should make sense to a reader years into the future, even if the information has changed. If it is possible to predict when a statement will need updating you should also use the {{Update after}} template to indicate when a statement will become out of date. In the above statement the most obvious date is 1 January 2013, by which time construction will have finished or the statement will be inaccurate. In either case the article should be updated to reflect this.
"As of" categories
When statements are tagged using {{As of}} the article they are in is automatically added to one or more of the categories in the table below. This allows editors to browse the statements by date of origin. Statements from 2005 onwards will be sorted into categories by month and year if a month is specified, otherwise they will be placed in the parent year category. Statements from 1990–2004 will be categorised by year only, and all other statements will be placed in the top-level category.
New categories should be created every month using the {{Cat ASOF}} template, and the navbox below should be update to reflect the changes. No other maintenance should be required for these categories.
Maintenance tasks
If you are looking for work and are interested in helping this project there are a number of routine tasks that you can perform. The most demanding, and also most important, is to go through the above categories checking the statements that have been tagged, updating the statement or "as of" tag wherever possible. You may not be able to update some data at this point in time, for example census figures. You may find it easiest to work through the subcategories chronologically, or you may prefer to look through all tagged articles or work on today's focus letter.
If you have less time to spare, you can check if this month's maintenance category has been created yet. If it hasn't, create it using the {{Cat ASOF}} template, and update the above navbox to include it. You can also help by adding "as of" tags whenever you come across an appropriate statement while editing articles.
See also the next section for tasks relating to converting articles from the previous "as of" method.
Previous method ("as of" links)
Up until July 2008, an alternate method for handling statements that date quickly was in use. The statements were linked to "As of..." pages that would redirect to the article for that year, using code such as:
- [[As of 2008]], construction is expected to finish in 2012 and cost 28 billion USD.
This method is now discouraged as it creates misleading and unhelpful links that are of no benefit to readers. If one such link led you here, please either change it to reflect the above policy using the {{As of}} template, or report it on the project talk page.
As of July 2008[update], we are still in the process of converting the old links to the new tagging system. You can help by looking through the "what links here" pages in the next section and replacing all "as of" links in the listed articles with the correct tag. When there are no more pages in the list mark it by writing (empty) after the link. Once all the "As of..." pages are orphaned they will be nominated for deletion to discourage further use of this method. Please do not create any new "As of..." pages, if you find links to pages that do not exist convert them to the new tagging system instead.
Deprecated "as of" pages
The following pages were all created for use with the previous method mentioned above. They are listed here for maintenance purposes only, and will be removed after all links have been converted to the new tagging system. Please do not create new "As of..." pages to add to this list. All pages marked with (empty) are not linked to by any article.
Listed by year
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Listed by month
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See also
- Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly for guidelines on using precise language when dealing with information that may date quickly.
- Wikipedia:Updating information and the accompanying
{{Update after}}template.