Wikipedia:Redirects from dates

So many different dates!

Redirects are navigational tools that help readers find what they want. Sometimes the readers know something by its former name, or an alternative name. Alternatively, they often format their search terms differently than Wikipedia formats its titles. Readers don't know about our titling policies, and they don't care. Other times, the readers just make simple typos or phonetic misspellings. The goal of redirects is to easily guide the reader without to much hassle or peering through search results.

This essay (and yes, it is finally getting to the point) addresses what to do about date redirects, such as 2 November 2012, 11 November 1918, 16 August 2006, and 11 September 2001. (Remember that non-year-specific dates have articles, e.g. February 17.)

Also, a note: don't read this essay through from start to finish. You can if you really want to, but it is more helpful and efficient to pick out the specific section that seems relevant.

Primary topic, and related considerations

The primary topic of a title is always an important consideration, and something reasonable people can disagree on. Search results, using Google, DuckDuckGo, or other reputable search engines, can be useful to help determine the primary topic – but they needn't be considered the end of the debate. There is a lot of room for reasonable discussion.

For date redirects, it's important to consider whether the primary topic is the date (most cases) or one specific event that happened on on that date. For example, 11 September 2001 and 7 October 2023 are the dates of well-known terrorist attacks. Instead of pointing to a page that gives general information about the date, the attacks are the primary topic.

The primary topic can still be contested. 11 November 1918 points to the article on 1911 instead of Armistice of 11 November 1918, but perhaps that is the primary topic. 24 February 2022 points to Portal:Current events/2022 February 24, not Russian invasion of Ukraine. An important consideration is that if the reader is searching for a date, they may not be looking for a specific event, but instead looking for other things that happened on that day.

The primary topic doesn't have to be an event. Perhaps there is a book or poem with the title, or something else.

What's most helpful for the reader?

If the primary topic has been established to be the date, the next step is to decide what the best target for that date is.

Current events portal

The current events portal maintains daily logs of incidents, ongoing events, and trends on the day. It has guiding rules and is maintained by a specialized WikiProject. The current events portal log for a specific day can be a useful target for date redirects.

Limitations

• Only goes back to circa 2002.
• Sometimes goes into too much detail.
• Cited to external links instead of citation templates.

Advantages

• Quite detailed
• Sorts events into different sections (e.g. "Law and crime", "Health and environment").
• Combines links to articles on ongoing events and specific incidents that don't have their own articles.
• Comprehensive information on one page for the reader's desired target.

Year and month articles

Another useful target is year articles. For example, 2006 lists notable events that happened in each month. There are also month articles, such as February 1956.

Limitations

• Less detail
• Doesn't explicitly include ongoing events.
• Year articles usually don't include events for every day.

Advantages

• Goes further back into history than the current events portal.
• Gives context, given the surrounding sections.
• More concise.
• Uses citation templates and is presented in standard article style.

When to target where

Given a choice between the portal and the article, choose the more encyclopedic target. An encyclopedic target is

• Comprehensive,
• well-written,
• and well-cited.

Choose the target that most helps the reader and is more encyclopedic.

When these redirects should be kept

Date redirects, when they are correctly and reasonably formatted (see below), and unambiguous, help the reader navigate the encyclopedia by giving them the information they want. There is no need to delete such redirects, and they are not WP:COSTLY.

When they should be deleted

If the redirect is ambiguous or malformed (see below), it could be deleted.

If Wikipedia has no information on the date, it should be deleted as it is misleading the reader. See: WP:REDYES.

Title format

Day-month-year or month-day-year? How many commas? Chronological ordinal or not? There are many different ways a given date could be formatted.

Regular, irregular, and ambiguous formations

Legend

Regular

Regular but less common

Uncertain

Sometimes ambiguous

Irregular

Table

The date of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is used here only because it is a well-known dates for which these redirects already exist.

This is not hard-and-fast guidance, or really guidance at all, just some suggestions. Feel free to make changes.

	DMY	MDY	YMD
No comma, no ordinal	11 September 2001	September 11 2001	2001 September 11
Yes comma, no ordinal	11 September, 2001	September 11, 2001	2001, September 11
No comma, yes ordinal	11th September 2001	September 11th, 2001	2001 September 11th
Yes comma, yes ordinal	11th September, 2001	September 11th, 2001	2001, September 11th
All numbers, hyphens	11-09-2001	09-11-2001	2001-09-11
All numbers, slashes	11/09/2001	09/11/2001	2001/09/11

Formations to avoid

• "Irregular" formations are merely those which are not used as much or don't make sense. "Malformed" are just wrong, such as September 2001 11, or include needless disambiguation, such as September 11 (2001).
• Abbreviations are WP:CHEAP, but there are limits. A few searches and some reasonable conjecture can help determine how plausible a given abbreviation is.

Don't forget to tag!

Redirect categorization templates are very useful for maintenance.

• If the redirect is targeting a portal page, use {{r to portal}}
• If the redirect is targeting a single event, use {{r from date}}
• If the redirect is targeting a year or month page, use {{r from subtopic}} and whichever of {{r to section}} and {{r to list entry}} is appropriate.
• Consider marking the redirect {{r printworthy}}; in practice, the decision is subjective.