Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll/Archive 3

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Vandalism by Ohconfucius

For about two hours, almost a day ago, Ohconfucius spent his time vandalizing this page:

Recommendations for how to deal with this? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

  • The only true disruption to Wikipedia was your slapping {disputed} tags on an ongoing RfC. False accusations that others are vandalizing Wikipedia is an actionable offense (with ample remedies) so I advise you to not be quite so bold in your attacks on other editors. Greg L (talk) 01:56, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
    • I ask that Pmanderson remove "vandalism" from the section header. This is a bad-faith accusation. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:59, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
      • Do you assert that none of these diffs, which include splitting a !vote, are vandalism? You are free to argue that case eelsewhere. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:10, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
            • Of the diffs you provided, only 01:42 could potentially be vandalism. I don't believe any are, but I'll stop short of making a bad-faith accusation. CRGreathouse (t | c) 20:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
              • Please explain why 02;24, which is refactoring in such a way as to change meaning, is not. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:10, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
                • I think you've reversed the burden of proof. CRGreathouse (t | c) 12:51, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
                  • No. I've presented evidence that Ohconfucius has vandalized a vote, and blanked comments, and gotten no substantive response whatever. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:58, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm Confused...

I have never voted on Wikipedia before, however I cannot access any other pages except help articles and this. Hence, when I noticed the topic I was only looking for SIMPLE INFO. In other words, I just wanted THE FACTS AND OPTIONS IN SIMPLE TERMS. Not "hick/idiot" terms, mind you, just the basic facts and options for the common man.

However, I got none of this - and even more confused. The suggestions and comments don't help, as they are all made by people who know more technical terms in regard to this site and its inner workings than I ever will.

I am merely an editor and reader - I do not use programs to revert edits, nor do I use them to MAKE edits; I merely go into an article, make my edits, and leave.

Hence, I wish to request a SIMPLE explanation of the issue at hand and the options. I know it regards the formatting of the dates seen in articles and Infoboxes...maybe. My point is, I request a "simple" version of this and future polls for those who know of the subject (and those who don't) and don't know Wikipedia's technical terms, not wishing to look through scores of help articles only to result in more confusion. Daniel Benfield (talk) 23:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think I'm permitted to do that. Please ask Ryan. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:53, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
OK, I will try to explain this the best I can:
Wikipedia operates a system of autoformatting, which means that dates can be formatted to look a certain way to registered editors who set their preferences. There are four formats (first of Jan 2000 used as example): January 1, 2000; 1 January 2000; 2000 January 1; and 2000-01-01. These dates are autoformatted through markup; that is, the dates used for autoformatting text are marked up with some sort of syntax. The current autoformatting markup is the double square brackets, which are used to wikilink text. In recent months, many have complained that the usage of linking as markup is harmful because of overlinking resulting from the fact that date links often have little to do with the articles that they are linked on. This led to the practice of date linking being deprecated in August. Users began to remove date links (and therefore remove date autoformatting) through a variety of methods. However, some have complained that there was not enough consensus to deprecate autoformatting or to even remove date links. Previous date polls have established that using links to autoformat text is not a widely supported practice. This poll aims to 1) establish whether autoformatting is desirable at all; and 2) determine how often dates should be linked, regardless of autoformatting.
I hope that helped. Please feel free to ask more questions. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:02, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't have much objection to that, although "many" is probably an overstatement, and there is considerable disagreement as to what was agreed to in August, and whether there were more than 4 editors who agreed at that time. There have also been bots written to rapidly delink dates, assuming that no "date fragment" should be linked, except from articles on other date fragments.
Still, the first part has to do with the concept of autoformatting, rather than the current implementation(s). {#dateformat was added while the poll was being constructed.)
The second and third parts have to do with the rules for links to date fragments, years, such as 1919, and month-day combindations such as March 1. Due to the previous consensus that autoformatting and autolinking was done on full dates, there are a lot of linked dates. Many editors think there are too many such links, but there have been various changes made to WP:MOSDATE and WP:LINKING without consensus. There have also been at least 3 RfCs (Wikipedia:Request for Comments) on date linking, none of which has a consensus as to the consequences of the results. There also have been a couple of user RfCs, and a Request for Arbitration. One of the proposals was that ArbComm draft an RfC which would decide consensus. This is Ryan's attempt to put one together.
Does that seem a neutral description of the problem? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:16, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Thanks, I appreciate that. I've already voted, if I understand the arguments correctly. Daniel Benfield (talk) 01:27, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Sorry, but "... on date linking, none of which has a consensus as to the consequences of the results" is incorrect. Have a careful read of the comments here and perhaps try to work into your future posts reasoning based on the fact that over 94% of respondents at that RfC had serious reservations with the linking of dates. Please don't reply too rapidly as it will take you some time to properly read the comments there (you can also examine a summary here).  HWV258  01:42, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • There may be consensus against linking all dates, although there is considerably more support for it here. The poll HWV258 cites is an attack on a straw man, posted by a user who began by voting against his own proposal. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:24, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • I can only reiterate that anyone interested in this should have a careful read down the list of comments posted by the 94% of oppose respondents (here). Even detached from the poll question, those comments are illuminating, and undeniable.  HWV258  03:55, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • we should link to dates, as to other words and phrases, when the link is useful to readers.
  • Linking dates should stay as the exception, rather than the rule,
  • Date links should not be treated any differently than other links.
These are some of the 94% which have serious reservations about linking all dates; decide for yourself if they sre reservations with the linking of any dates. Misrepresentations of this point grow tiresome. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • No, I refer to the multitude of comments along the lines: "Such links provide nothing useful to the reader, and only serve to confuse". Please read the entire list of oppose comments (here) and see if your views are still so strong (misrepresentations?). I agree that you will be tired though after reading the entire list of oppose comments. :-)  HWV258  04:22, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
I have done so; such comments are less than 50% of the total; many oppose the idea of linking every date, which was the question asked. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
Irrelevance removed, per request
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
  • Less “waah-waah” please, PMA. Greg L (talk) 02:34, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
    • If anyone cares to factor out Greg's animal noises, they are welcome to do so. But he'll probably resort to scatology; he has before. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:51, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
  • “Animal noises”? Jeez, I thought I was clear. Baby noises. It’s an appeal to you to act like a grownup and stop endlessly complaining about what is clearly out of your control now. It is what it is. I’m going to ignore you now on this thread. Post more “waaah-waaah” below. Greg L (talk) 02:59, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
I really wish both of you would factor yourselves out of this whole situation. You are making this dull affair even more tiresome than it should be. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 03:08, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
Done. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:17, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

There is an essay at Wikipedia:Why dates should not be linked, but that's already linked in the text. Dabomb's and Arthur's explanations above are clearer and more neutral than the existing explanation, and should be considered if the unfortunate plan of more RfC's is contemplated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:17, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

  • Very good, PMA. Greg L (talk) 04:21, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

I've removed all threaded discussion from the support/oppose/neutral columns on the poll page. I've left discussion in the comments section for now because I feel it's important (although should it get out of hand, I'll start moving things to the talk page). Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 11:19, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately this leaves no way to address the current dynamics with 4 of the last 5 oppose voters to autoformatting (108–111) apparently thinking this is about date linking. For 3 of them I have no idea how they would have voted without the misconception. I am pretty sure that this kind of thing, when uncontradicted, makes the following voters more likely to make the same mistake. There are similar misconceptions among support voters, but of course the losing side is more likely to claim the poll was invalid because of such issues. --Hans Adler (talk) 12:30, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
Hans: I do not agree with the assessment that these four voters have confused formatting with linking. Voters are under no obligation to give all of their reasons. A challenge should be regarded as exceptional, and should be via Ryan, now and not after the poll closes. We do not want unseemly horse-trading on the validity of individual votes after the close. In any case, I think (1) challenges would result in very few, if any, changes by voters; and (2) there would be challenges on both sides (I can see plenty of "Supports" I'd like to challenge). Is it worth all the fuss, or should we trust voters' inner reasoning? Tony (talk) 14:03, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
I am not talking about challenging voters. I am talking about ways to avoid that we get even more such votes which, while opposing autoformatting, enable certain editors' predictable attempts to declare the vote invalid. I want autoformatting to lose this poll fairly, and transparently so. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:31, 31 March 2009 (UTC)
(ec) Currently the latest support rationale reads: "Its really confusing if you're editing an article in one format and your display is in the other format". The latest oppose rationale reads: "We should stop date linking for the sake of auto-formatting. There may be other, less intrusive, ways to auto-format dates." No, we can't trust the inner reasoning of such voters. They are obviously confused to the point where they had better not bothered to vote. If we can't respond to such obvious mistakes, others obviously follow their lead. --Hans Adler (talk) 22:47, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Notice placed at top of Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll/Autoformatting responses

To try and clear up any confusion regarding autoformatting and linking, I've placed a notice at the top of the autoformatting responses. It's important that people commenting are 100% sure of what they are commenting on. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:43, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Ryan—helpful. However, I believe that there is not the confusion of the two terms that is being assumed. The headings are clearly labelled "I support the general concept of date autoformatting" and "I oppose the general concept of date autoformatting". People know what DA is, and if there was any confusion in their minds, it would soon have been dispelled when they proceeded to Questions 2 and 3, specifically on "linking".
Critically, I want to scotch now any sense that Locke Cole et al. will wait until the poll closes and then brand it invalid on the basis that there was such confusion. I say now to the linking camp: If you seriously believe this, you should post a query at the talk page of every voter of whom you suspect such confusion. I do not believe this is necessary, but here is your chance—not after the poll. Tony (talk) 04:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
"you should post a query at the talk page of every voter of whom you suspect such confusion" - for the record, apparently this is being done: here are one editor's notes to !voters. Sssoul (talk) 05:30, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

would it be worthwhile to repeat the "this section is about autoformatting not linking" statement as a so-called editnotice that would appear above the edit boxes? i don't know how to create editnotices, so this is a suggestion for someone else to follow up on if it seems worthwhile. Sssoul (talk) 06:21, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure it would help, and I don't see any problem with contacting each person who provides an inappropriate reason for their vote. As you (and others, but you at least saw what I was doing for what it really was) have already noticed, I contacted all the people who have given "confused" votes so far, and most of them have already clarified their positions on their talk pages. I just re-contacted those that replied and asked that they do so again on the poll page, so hopefully that will resolve the issue. If a few more trickle in (as things seem to be trailing off) then it's not a big deal to contact them, as well. In all honesty, my eyes kinda glaze over when I'm reading things I already agree with, so if somebody on the "oppose" side could look over the "support" !votes and see if any of those are providing inappropriate reasons, that'd be good. I did do that a couple times already, and didn't see any, but I may have missed some, especially if there aren't many (which there don't seem to be — even on the oppose side.) --Sapphic (talk) 06:57, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Mailing list

I posted a note on wikien-l telling them about the poll. There may be some people who are interested who have missed our other notices. Worst case we get no extra opinions - I don't think any harm will be done by prodding people a little more :-). Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:59, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Deprecation

Not the right venue for this, I know, but deprecation is simply Wikijargon. See WP:Jargon: "It is often helpful to wikilink terms not obvious to most readers".

  • Good point. I think I spent something like ten minutes researching the term the first time I encountered it. Sometimes we combatants tend to get too accustomed to wikiwords. We should deprecate the practice and refactor posts that use such verbiage. ;-) Greg L (talk) 04:39, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, it simply means discontinue the use of. GeorgeLouis (talk) 05:10, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I always thought it meant "expressing strong disapproval", so I checked it. It seems it originally meant "pray for deliverance" from something.[1] Maybe it's the right word after all? --RexxS (talk) 15:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

If WP uses it often enough to mean discontinue the use of, eventually the dictionaries may list it, provided the compilers are keeping an eye on Wiki usage. (Let's hope not.) Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 20:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

We should start a campaign to bring back the original use. I'll begin:
Think it will work if we all join in? --RexxS (talk) 21:02, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Deprecation is a perfectly acceptable term in a software context, for features and practices that are "superseded and should be avoided". – ukexpat (talk) 21:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

War & peace posts

Post comments like autoformatting-support #90 really should have its treatise moved off the main page. The space afforded in an RfC is a bit like toilet paper at a highway rest stop: sure, it’s there for everyone, but how about not walking off with three whole rolls of the stuff? Greg L (talk) 04:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Large essays starting to appear in the voting section

Ryan, two more in the past few hours, (Numbers 90 and 92 in the Support section). Rather long for a vote, don't you think? I wonder what the "Comments on date autoformatting" section is for? Where is the boundary. I'd have though four or five lines maximum.

I see that Ckatz removed a much smaller post by HWV258 earlier, and again, but has acted to reinstate the essay (No. 90) I earlier relocated to the Comments section.

I want to take issue with these points. Why are people being allowed a soap box to push poll? If this is not redressed, I'll be expanding my vote into a huge essay, responding to these other essays. It will lead to a migration of long discussions from the talk page and "Comments" section right into the voting sections. Unwieldy and probably an introduction of a whole lot of push polling. Tony (talk) 06:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

It appears that User:Sapphic has taken to heart the idea of challenging voters on their Oppose votes, on their talk pages. This appears to be a campaign, whereas what we need is an orderly notification here that a vote is believed to be mistaken, with supervision by Ryan. As I said above, this should be exceptional. Otherwise, both sides will be encouraged to go around to a large proportion of voters, challenging their stated reasoning. It will be chaos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Dominus&diff=prev&oldid=280986568

Please note that at the above post, Sapphic admits that she edits through another account nowadays. I want to be reassured that push polling is not occurring through that other account. What is the name of that account? Tony (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

    • Difficult to say. I only have a few reasons for my !vote, so I didn't think a detailed list of points is needed. Others may differ. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 07:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


Tony, sorry, but two out of almost one hundred "support" comments go long, and now you wish to limit what people can say? As for your comment regarding HMV258's posts, there is a marked difference between your actions and mine: you and Greg L refactored and moved large portions of original vote text to new locations. (While you didn't edit the text, you both arbitrarily split it up and relocate it, once to the talk page and the other time to the bottom of the page.) This is unacceptable behaviour, especially while the RfC is under way. On the other hand, the two sections of text I moved were both responses to votes, not the original user's vote and comment. This was identical in nature to Ryan's earlier action to maintain the stated "no threaded responses" requirement. (Note that if Ryan objects to my actions, and prefers to be the only one doing so, I'll certainly stop.) If you have a concern regarding the length of a posted vote, your response should be to notify Ryan or the original posters, not to rework it yourself. --Ckatzchatspy 09:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

But ... "sorry", you left your own "response to a vote (No. 85), which I felt so biassed I had to say something directly after it. Why one rule you and one for HWV?
If there is more push-polling via either large essay-type posts—especially in the Support section, which enjoys the benefit of being first—or by challenging users on their talk pages (without prior notification here), I believe action should be taken. I'm quite happy for dialogue in the voting zone to be removed, too. I'm still very unhappy about the two essays. These are far beyond what counts as a vote comment, and belong down in the comments section. These supporters should be content with four, even six or seven lines. These are over the top—one is about 40 lines, the other nearly 50 lines. These are equivalent to more than a page each. Tony (talk) 10:59, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
There's only one rule, period... to be perfectly honest, I'd presumed that our dialogue had been moved along with the other comment of mine that Ryan had relocated during his cleanup of all responses to comments. --Ckatzchatspy 16:47, 1 April 2009 (UTC)


Hear me. READ MY POST. Hear meeeeeee!
  • I don’t oppose the practice of long- treatise-like vote comments because I think the practice gives anyone an advantage of any sort. Indeed not. I oppose the practice because it’s an ineffective form of cheating. Editors who come late to RfCs and spew gigantic comments fifty times bigger than the average Joe have, in my opinion, an overinflated sense of self-esteem because they 1) think they have something new to say, and 2) have deluded themselves that anyone actually reads these tomes. For the most part, they are wrong on both counts. It’s just a form of “hear me – hear meeeee!

    Further, it’s just a desperation move by those who now recognize there isn’t a WP:SNOWBALL chance that a consensus could ever form that the Wikipedia community wants UC Bill’s “Son of autformatting” (I thought he deleted his code and quit Wikipedia) or any of the other ideas being proposed by a small cabal of volunteer developers. Ignore these long RfC comments and take satisfaction that they now perceive the need to fly their Kamikaze posts into the flotilla of inevitability. Greg L (talk) 14:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Whilst there are some very large comments on the poll, they all form part of a vote. At the minute, I don't think it's getting out of hand and the comments are useful - my main concern was the poll turning into a load of threaded discussion making it difficult to navigate. I've removed a few replies from the poll, but for now I'm going to leave the vote comments. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:25, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Suspected canvassing by User:Sapphic

I believe that User:Sapphic may be canvassing in the above. She has been leaving messages on talk pages of 19 editors in an apparent attempt at influencing the debate. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. (see her contributions for full list)

Although she claims she is not trying to influence the debate, it is difficult to arrive at that conclusion as the unescapable fact is that she is contacting only opponents to autoformatting, with arguments which may undermine their support. According to her, she uses an alternative account which is not apparently declared. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:12, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, canvassing seems to be a real problem. Just look at the RfC-related spamming here, here, here, here, here, and here, along with at least 25 other instances all listed here. The editor has even gone so far as to create and distribute four userboxes promoting his position on the RfC. --Ckatzchatspy 09:44, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that the "canvassing" by Ohconfucius was directed to those who had already voted the way he would like them to – so where is the problem, that they might change their mind or that Ohconfucius instantly radicalises them to the point where they try to sockpuppet? (Note that I don't agree with the concept of divisive userboxes, but that's an unrelated matter.) What Sapphic is doing is much more problematic. Actually I was thinking about doing something similar, but not restricted to one side, and strictly pointing out only the apparent confusion with no advocacy. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I think some of those posts are leading to a certain POV but also some are asking for clarification (as I did with user:Nihonjoe here). The ideas of date linking and autoformatting are often confused. Hence my above proposal to "vote to discontinue autoformatting through the use of wikilinks", but no one seemed to be listening. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 13:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
I was listening, but it seems you weren't. The issue of "vote to discontinue autoformatting through the use of wikilinks" was settled conclusively in the Nov/Dec RfCs as "Deprecate". The problem that then arose was that some editors posited that those RfCs showed support for "date autoformatting without creating links". In other words, the issue of "date autoformatting by some other means" was raised. This RfC is designed to answer that specific question and not to go over old ground where the consensus is already clear. I'm sorry I've been so blunt about it, but it does nothing to help move forward, if editors continually raise questions that have already been settled. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 15:41, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
If this was really the case then why do we have an RFC based on autoformatting and how to link dates? If the result was deprecate then why are these two unrelated topics still coupled together? It's too late now (again, for the third time) but people will continue to misunderstand what they are voting for if we keep holding joint RFCs on these topics. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 09:49, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Ckatz: as you have taken an interest in this issue (by responding to Ohconfucius' post), and based on the information supplied by Greg_L below, could you please respond to the content of the original post? Thanks.  HWV258  21:27, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Ohconfucius is just giving voters a lapel pin to wear as they exit the polling booth. He gave one to me. That isn’t disruptive. Sapphic is badgering Wikipedians who voted one particular way in an effort to get them to go back in and change their vote. That must stop right now. She should be warned and taken to an ANI if the canvassing persists. I doubt that the effort—and the trouble she could find herself in as a result—will pay off with a change of a single vote; it’s just that she is cheating, which doesn’t impress. Greg L (talk) 15:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
    • In an actual election, providing lapel pins (which support, as Ohconfucius' do, a particular side) to those leaving the polling booth would be unlawful; this analogy needs work. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I've had a look at this and I believe it is canvassing. I've therefore asked Sapphic not to contact any other users on their talk page for the remainder of the poll. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:23, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
No disrespect, but you're wrong here, Ryan. Maybe I violated some other policy/guideline/whatever (though if that's so, I can't find it anywhere) but WP:CANVAS applies to messages sent to people who have not already participated in a poll. I explain my actions in a lot more detail in the sub-section immediately below. So, unless you can point me at some policy I actually did violate, I'm going to just keep doing what I've been doing. Glad you're feeling better. --Sapphic (talk) 23:35, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • As it is common practice in WP for editors to change their votes up to the closure of polls in light of new information and arguments made, it remains arguable that your actions could be considered canvassing as they appear to be aimed at influencing a voting intention. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:07, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Hi all. I'd like to give my support to Sapphic. I'm one of those that were contacted by her and, even if our opinions diverge, I did appreciate she took contact with me and asked for clarification. To my opinion, this is legitimate. Apparently, she invested a lot of time and efforts in debates about autoformatting. All those, like you and her, that involved deeply in this issue, deserve that those like me that did not take part of past discussions, respect your work and do not vote lightly on false basis. If she had a doubt on my understanding of the vote, she was right to bring me information I didn't have and ask me to clarify myself. And if some editors changed their mind after discussing with her, I don't see any wrong in this. Sincerely, how would you value a vote outcome if half the voters display a clear misconception of what they are voting for? I just hope she also took contact with unclear voters that were on her side, but I would not condemn her if she didn't: everyone that has a true interest in a fair vote should be welcome to do the same.
In addition, I do agree with her understanding of what canvassing is and is not. In the past, I've seen some wikipedians attempting to twist the outcome of an RfD or a poll by massively drawing attention of others to it, either by IRC on on their talk page, no matter they were not concerned by the subject. This is exactly what I call canvassing. What Sapphic did is in no way comparable. She started a discussion with people that 1. have shown an interest in the topic, 2. have already made up their mind and expressed themselves with a vote, but 3. didn't make themselves clear, at least in her opinion. This has nothing to do with raising an army of voters from nowhere.
It doesn't matter we do not agree on date autoformatting, I believe what she did was right, and I wish you would see things the way I do. — Xavier, 22:27, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Possible canvassing

(Copied from my talk page.) --Sapphic (talk) 03:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

It has come to my attention that you may be attempting to influence the voting at WP:DATEPOLL, and may be in breach of WP:CANVAS. Please be informed that a complaint has been filed at Wikipedia talk:Date formatting and linking poll‎#Suspected canvassing by User:Sapphic. Ohconfucius (talk) 07:28, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

On my reading, WP:CANVAS only applies to notifying editors about a poll who haven't already participated. However, even if you want to try applying it to what I've been doing, it's still okay because I'm attempting to "improve rather than to influence a discussion." I've been contacting only those people who have justified their opposition !vote by some inappropriate (a.k.a. "confused") manner — something along the lines of "I'm against autoformatting because I hate all the bluelinks" or "I support autoformatting because I click on date links all the time" which clearly show a lack of understanding of the question being asked. It just so happens that there are no examples of the second kind, and I've only been contacting people on the "oppose" side. Maybe I'm just not reading closely enough and have missed some in the "support" side, but out of over 200 replies (at the time) there were only a dozen or so in total that seemed to be genuinely "confused" about the question. Most of them have now expanded on their reasons for their opposition (on their talk pages, but perhaps they could still be persuaded to do so on the poll page too) so if anything, I've done a favor for the opposition. But I've also eliminated one possible source of contention in interpreting the results, which was my actual goal. So will you please just cut me some slack and have a little faith? Jeez. --Sapphic (talk) 03:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
We still haven't been apprised of User:Sapphic's other account. Without this information, it is impossible to know whether she has voted twice, and whether she has engaged in canvassing. Tony (talk) 12:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I was going to ask you what the hell you were talking about, but I just now saw that part of Ohno's comment above. Ohno misinterpreted my statement. I have not been editing with another account, I've simply stopped editing with this one, which is what I said originally anyway. I may be a rude bitch at times, but I'm not stupid and wouldn't advertise being a sockpuppet, if that's what I was doing. I'm probably going to abandon this account once this date fiasco is concluded, and maybe I will and maybe I won't register a new account... but it won't be for a while, if I do, and it won't be any of your business, as long as I don't continue to use the old account. --Sapphic (talk) 14:23, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I did not mean to offend you. You did announce yesterday that you edit on the dates issue with the "Sapphic" account and on all else with another account. I was understandably concerned, but I accept what you say. Tony (talk) 14:36, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry to have misinterpreted your remark. Of course, I felt it made little sense to write what you wrote, which is why I got it wrong. However, on re-reading, it is indeed what you wrote. I stand corrected that you did not say you run another account concurrently with User:Sapphic. Ohconfucius (talk) 14:38, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
No offense taken, and apology accepted. For once I wasn't actually angry over being falsely accused of something, just confused. The reason I was pointing out my account status was because I didn't expect to be checking either that talk page or my own, so I wanted any reply to be made on the poll page.. although I seem to be sticking around longer than I'd planned, so the point ended up being irrelevant anyway. Also, ohconfucius, I wasn't trying to make fun of your name by calling you "ohno" I just couldn't remember how to spell it (and was editing in a new subsection so I couldn't just scroll up) and for some reason thought it was "ohnoconfucius" by mistake. (I only just noticed the mistake now, and figured I'd join the merry apology-go-round.) --Sapphic (talk) 23:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Wait, the new subsection I was replying in had other comments by you. So I was really just being lazy and have no excuse for getting your name wrong. I suspect you don't care and may not have even noticed, but nonetheless, happy merry apology-go-round an all, you know. --Sapphic (talk) 23:49, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sapphic: Whatever your reading of what "canvassing" is, you are clearly irritating voters. Take this response, from earlier today:

I still think you're taking a lot upon yourself to hassle people (especially me) over their vote. Doesn't WP:CANVAS prohibit this? I'm not unsympathetic that some people oppose autoformatting because "date links are useless" but that's life - all the time people vote and proffer their opinions without understanding the issues and it's just something we have to learn to put up with or ignore.

And then this one:

Do you have a userbox that tells people that I do not want spam on my user talk page?

Pestering voters whose decision doesn't happen to suit you is a little desperate, don't you think? I see what I would take as misrepresentations at some users' talk pages, too. Tony (talk) 07:22, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Exit strategies

It's probably too early to say, but I think this poll is hopelessly compromised, as well.

Comment about Ryan's "What we want is for the poll to get one proposal from each section....". It can no longer be done for the linking sections. Because of the biased subtitles (link only to relevant dates), the only conclusion possible is that that statement has consensus, but not necessarily proposal 1. It's still conceivable that a clear consensus for one of the proposals could develop, but it's unlikely, as we have to consider a !vote for any of the options which says only "link only to relevant dates" as a vote not showing a preference between 1, 2, and 4. I'm not saying I think this is the only fatal flaw in the linking sections, but it seems sufficient.

As for the autoformatting, a large number of voters seem confused as to whether this refers to linking; probably enough to effect whether "oppose" gets a supermajority. I think Ryan needs to clarify that it does not refer to linking, and spam all !voters who voted before the change. (He made a change, but it doesn't seem to have helped.)

But we don't have an exit strategy, unless Ryan or ArbCom has one hidden. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Buddhism: Accepting what life throws at you with grace and dignity
  • “Oh dear! Nothing but confusion, confusion, confusion. What is an editor with *pinky promise* good faith to do??”

    Nothing is confusing, Aurthur. You guys have had your asses handed to you on a plate. As Ryan pointed out above (21:47, 30 March 2009):


So cease with your posturing about how the entire Wikipedian community is doomed to have this issue drag on endlessly like a herpes infection because you can reach into your wikilawyering bag of tricks and spew B.S. about how there is this or that you don’t like about how the RfC was conducted. Tough. The community has spoken: just write out the damned dates in non-linked, fixed text and be done with it. You don’t like that outcome? Fine. How about accepting that the community has spoken and accept its will with grace and dignity? Greg L (talk) 17:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Define "Relevant" in a way so as to distinguish between the options. The options basically boil down to:
  1. Link some dates
  2. Link some more (but not all) dates
  3. Link all dates
  4. No guidance.
Have a look at the spread of the votes as to what "some dates" means, and tell me that you could write a MOSNUM guidance based on that. You've got the whole band between linking nothing and treating dates like other links. How on earth do you distill that down? About the only thing which is clear from this poll so far is that there is no consensus on autoformatting in either direction. The other stuff is just too non-specific.AKAF (talk) 17:19, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Isn't the MOSNUM guidance exactly what people are voting on? Each option lists what text should be inserted into MOSNUM. Am I misunderstanding your response? I think the next RfC is supposed to further clarify how to implement the guidance. Karanacs (talk) 18:36, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Arthur Rubin: You appear to be building a case to challenge yet another RFC result that you do not like. Perhaps it is time to accept the vote after more than three RFCs on this matter. Attempts thus far to query voters' reasoning, on their talk pages, have apparently resulted in no changes in their vote and, in a few cases, irritable responses. Tony (talk) 17:28, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like the cases of William Penn and others. The jury found them not guilty and the judge wasn't happy with the verdicts. He said:
  • "You will not be dismissed until we have a verdict--a verdict that the court will accept. And, until we do, you will be locked up, without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco; you will not think to abuse the court. By God, we will have a verdict, or you will starve for it!"
Lightmouse (talk) 17:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
  • AKAF: Your arguments fall on the deaf ears of any rational person. As of this writing, the voting on “month-days” is 159 - 5 - 4 - 23. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how one should proceed. What part of “Accepting what life throws at you with grace and dignity” don’t you understand? Greg L (talk) 18:17, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I would agree with you about month-days, except that some said, and I quote "link only to relevant dates" for their vote reasoning on option 1. And I did object to the subtitle before the vote, but, since I'm not on 24/7, it was after the lockdown. I also objected in the comment section, but I really don't expect most editors to read down that far. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
As for "any rational person": "Any rational person" would assume that any situation where where the proposer votes "no" on his proposal, is hopeless. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't see your problem about month-day links. Option 1 is essentially option 4 plus a clarification that such links are almost never relevant. It draws attention to the fact that there is no longer a special exemption for them. This clarification has become necessary because of the past practice of making irrelevant date links for autoformatting purposes. I searched for "relevan" among voters for option 1. Most of them specifically express the sentiment that such links are almost never relevant and seem to feel (like me) that this needs saying to prevent conflicts with the minority of editors who disagree. --Hans Adler (talk) 01:46, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
No, it does more, and been used to assert much more. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:31, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Care to give an example of a relevant link forbidden by this language? --Hans Adler (talk) 08:03, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Rubin's right. Barring some unlikely surge in the polls, it's pretty obvious that the result is going to be "no consensus" on the question of autoformatting (a roughly 60-40 split is hardly definitive) so which status quo do we preserve? Each side is obviously going to argue for their own preference, and absent any clear consensus from the community, I don't see how to break the deadlock. If autoformatting is kept (and fixed) the other questions are basically irrelevant, so it's really the central issue. I wish people had taken it to heart when I pointed that out last month, and if we'd gone with a simple up/down vote "poll" on that one issue, I bet we'd have a clearer way to proceed now. I don't mind the prospect of "losing" the poll as much as I do having the cloud of uncertainty continue. That said, I'm not going to give up my argument based solely on that factor. So where do we go from here? --Sapphic (talk) 06:22, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, that's a skewed argument if ever I saw one. Autoformatting has been deprecated since August on the style guides; it is totally absent from the Featured Content process, without a blink. It is whistling in the wind for a few people who don't like the results of this poll 38.5% (versus 61.5%) to claim that the clock should be turned back to the old days. Move on and get over it: the WP community has matured and is telling you yet again that it does not want dates messed around with. How many RFCs that say the same thing on this do we have to have? Tony (talk) 09:41, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
Not to throw around firecrackers but (given equal strength of argument) doesn't 61/39 give a majority? Albeit a slim majority but why are these polls regarded as "no consensus"? I know that "Wikipedia is not a democracy" but surely if there is a prevailing view out of two opposing views then we should go with that one? Why can't we just remove the current double brackets autoformatting system (as people have been blocked for) and then discuss a proposal for a new autoformatting system when a better (non-date-linking) system/syntax is created? If past polls show that "autoformatting through wikilinks" is deprecated then why can't we remove that old system? Sillyfolkboy (talk) 13:16, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
For some issues (such as deciding what default date format we should use, some kinds of style guidelines, etc.) a majority is fine, but when you're talking about altering core software features and editing millions of articles, there should be overwhelming support, and here there isn't. We usually won't even delete a single article (through AfD) with as slim a majority as there is here. Also, the double-bracket markup around dates isn't the autoformatting system, it's just the way of triggering the autoformatting system. We could remove (or better, just disable.. since it's one true/false setting in the config file) the existing autoformatting system, but while that would stop dates from being autoformatted, they'd still be linked and the markup would need to be removed. Just removing the markup without disabling the autoformatting software would make it too complicated when editors do want to link to a date (they'd have to use either the [[:15 January]] stynax or [[15 January|15 January]] syntax to avoid triggering the still-active autoformatting software.) The problem with removing all the markup (and disabling the software) before a replacement system is put in place is that it would result in a lot of duplicated effort, since any replacement system would need its own markup similar to the double brackets. Removing the markup is easier than adding it back (mostly because of quotations of dates, which should never be autoformatted, and which are hard to distinguish from other unlinked-but-potentially-autoformattable dates) so it's not even a matter of just "undoing" what bots already did... unless of course we kept detailed logs of all the unlinking. --Sapphic (talk) 14:35, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
How many quotations of dates are there? What fraction of currently linked dates are going to remain linked? I'm not convinced that unlinking is going to be any simpler than re-linking, since nobody is going to argue over whether a date is inside a quotation, but lots of people might argue about whether a date should remain linked or not. As for exit strategy, I think it might be reasonable to look at all the "support" votes and see which ones actually support the existing autoformatting software and which support autoformatting "in general" and see if we can get a supermajority in favor of at least getting rid of the old autoformatting system. Then, assuming there is such a supermajority, we could disable the existing autoformatting immediately by changing whatever config setting you're talking about. That'll let every editor see the inconsistent formats, and get more people involved in fixing that problem. At the same time, we can start working on a detailed specification for the replacement software, which enough people seem to want that it's probably worth at least looking into. Yes, it might mean a lot of wasted effort in de-linking and then re-linking dates, but a lot of the effort won't be wasted, such as fixing format inconsistencies and figuring out which dates are more relevant than others, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 169.229.149.174 (talk) 15:55, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Point of information: the community voted in August 2008 to deprecate date autoformatting, and endorsed it overwhelmingly (i.e. by a supermajority) in (1) and (2) specific questions in December 2008. Therefore, Date autoformatting as we knew it is dead, and the software should have been disabled at that point. What we are now discussing is the desirability in principle of a new system. Any eventual consensus to adopt would need to be followed by a formal consultation process and vote on detailed specifications. Looking at the stability of the 60%+ vote opposed to that principle, it is likely that a consensus will not be attained. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:28, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm.. I guess you have a point about de-linking being harder than re-linking would be, once you factor in having to deal with disputes over linking particular cases in individual articles. Figuring out which date-like-things are actual dates and which are quotations of dates (or other things that should never be autoformatted) is hard for computers, and simple for humans — but figuring out which dates are really relevant to an article is hard for both computers and humans. In other words, a date re-linker bot would probably have a low error rate and the errors would be simple for any editor to fix in a way that everybody agrees with (like reverting obvious vandalism.)

So as one of the most ardent (i.e. loudest and annoying) supporters of date autoformatting, I endorse the immediate disabling of the existing date autoformatting (set $wgDynamicDates = false) on the English Wikipedia, followed by the resumption of manual and/or (semi-)automated "mass" de-linking of articles with human correction (according to an as-yet-to-be-determined set of criteria) — coupled with the establishment of a community specification and review process for developing a replacement system, which will be presented in a subsequent poll for final approval or rejection (with possible abandonment of the development process, pending any changes in community opinion and/or new information and experiences gained in the intervening time.)

The key piece in getting my (and I suspect a lot of other autoformatting supporters') backing for that proposal is that the development process receive some kind of official blessing (by ArbCom?) with enforcement against anybody trying to "derail" it. If we accept that practically nobody wants the old date autoformatting, then you accept that enough people want a new autoformatting that we have to at least give it a serious go. In the meantime, you get your way 100% and don't interfere with the development process. Deal? --Sapphic (talk) 00:20, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Quoting you, Sapphic: (a roughly 60-40 split is hardly definitive) so which status quo do we preserve? and …coupled with the establishment of a community specification and review process for developing a replacement system [for formatting]. And you see a consensus that the Wikipedian community wants a new system of autoformatting… uhm… where? The old system of autoformatting with it’s attendant linking to trivia is gone. Dead as a door nail.

    So what to do next? It was conceded by Locke and UC Bill that such “specifics” as UC Bill’s “son of autoformatting” idea would be rejected out of hand by the community. So Locke insisted that the RfC be put forth just in terms of the “generalities of autoformatting”. So that’s just how we structured the RfC: on the “generalities”. Really, though, what few specifics snuck in were based on Werdna’s “specifics”. And the community’s reaction to this? There is clearly a significant majority of Wikipedians who don’t want some newfangled autformatting technology. Yet, you cite the community rejection (it wasn’t a colossal rejection, just a sound drubbing) as evidence that you should get busy, roll up your sleeves, and start working on some newfangled methods of autoformatting. Because… why???  Fine. You go ahead and work your head off. But in case you haven’t been keeping up on current affairs, the community is sick to death of this issue and doesn’t want to see it darken their doorstep for a long, long time. So if you come up with some new autoformatting idea that is the coolest thing since steam power and antibiotics, just keep it to yourself.

    You see, just because Sapphic and a handful of enthusiastic volunteer programmers really, really want something just isn’t good enough. Wikipedia’s Chief Technology Officer and a clear majority of Wikipedians don’t. Maybe we ought to listen to what they want, huh? Or does your right to hound the community on this issue exceed the majority’s right to be free of houding? Greg L (talk) 05:14, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see a consensus at all, at least on the issue of autoformatting. That's the point. We need to figure out a way to proceed from here, with no clear consensus in the poll results. Yes, a majority have opposed autoformatting, but that's not enough. At roughly 40% of the respondents indicating support for autoformatting, you can't dismiss the supporters as "a handful" like you have been previously.
So, as a compromise, I'm suggesting we try it your way while those who want a new software system work in peace, then we put it to another poll to see if we try that. I'd think you'd be delighted, you're getting what you want and all you have to do is not try to poison the effort to develop a new software replacement. Given how long it took to put this poll together, and the need for even more transparency and community buy-in for the new software, I imagine you'd be getting your way across the site for at least a month or two. If we agree to have the existing date autoformatting system turned off right away, it would speed up the process of getting inconsistent date formats fixed and get more people aware of the issue, because right away every editor would see the site as anonymous editors currently do, regardless of what their (now non-functional) date preferences specify. Addendum: Disabling it in the config also allows dates that should be linked (whichever those may be) to be linked using the simple [[15 January]] syntax instead of some more cumbersome variety needed to defeat the autoformatting, if it were left turned on.
If after a month or two of that we don't see an increase in date format or date linking edit-warring, complaints from editors who start demanding their preferences start working again, etc. then it's entirely likely that the poll to approve the new software will show that people no longer support it at the same level as now. Maybe it really will dwindle to "a handful" and a clear consensus will emerge. Or maybe you'll see that date autoformatting (even in its current, flawed form) is really protecting us from worse headaches, and welcome the new improved replacement.
Either way, I'm willing to run a little experiment to get some real-world feedback, if you're willing to keep your nose out of the development process (unless it's to genuinely contribute to developing the specification or something, which I doubt you'd ever want to do anyway.) --Sapphic (talk) 05:16, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you: I don't see a consensus at all, at least on the issue of autoformatting. The trouble is, you need one to push what you’re pushing. I’m quite content to let the RfC run its course, and for the ArbCom committee and the other admins to look at how the community has spoken, and for them to instruct you handful of volunteer developers as to whether or not they think the community has asked you to keep coming back again and again, pushing your latest & greatest. I’m just not seeing this invitation from the community so far. Greg L (talk) 05:24, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • You think they're sick to death about date-related arguments now? Just wait until they've experienced life entirely without autoformatting for a while, without a way to end the arguments by saying "just go set your preferences that way, then." If you're so convinced that any replacement system is doomed to fail, why do you care if it's developed by other people who want it and believe it's useful. Let it be developed, and let the community decide whether to use it or to continue on without autoformatting. You seem to keep missing the fact that you can have autoformatting gone as soon as Ryan (or whoever on ArbCom) convinces the Wikimedia sysadmins to turn off autoformatting for real, and not just the work-around way you've been doing so far. It could seriously be gone in a day or two from now, if we go this route. You'd still need to deal with the links, but I'd support whatever bot or scripted delinking method you wanted to use, as long as there was a clear way of dealing with disputes over whether to keep specific date links. With a large part of the dispute (autoformatting) made moot for at least a month or two, I bet those link-specific disputes would be less stressful and easier to resolve. Seriously, what have you got to lose, except the right to sabotage the development process? --Sapphic (talk) 05:27, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Just wait until they've experienced life entirely without autoformatting for a while. Not that! Oh the humanity! Greg L (talk) 05:33, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • P.S. Sorry. I’m tweaking your nose and I see you are sincere. I just looked at your edit summaries and I see your mood and intentions are quite different from the last time I had the pleasure of encountering you. Now I feel bad. Please, just let the RfC run its course and accept with grace and dignity that the community isn’t asking you do do what you’re doing. Moreover, they’re really, really fatigued of this RfC issue. Let it die. At least, give it a rest for a week until this RfC concludes. Greg L (talk) 05:37, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
Wow, okay, thanks for the apology. I probably don't even deserve it, given how shitty I've been toward you in the past. Anyway, I'm concerned that the poll isn't going to resolve anything (I seriously doubt ArbCom will want to endorse one side with only a 60% majority, despite what you seem to think) and we'll remain stuck in limbo forever unless we work out some kind of compromise. If you don't come around heckling the development process, I think we really can come up with something pretty good as a replacement, and I'm convinced that when they see it (and have had a taste of the old date format wars coming back.. I don't think people have become quite so "enlightened" on the matter as you seem to believe, either) that a lot more than 60% will want it. A lot of the opposition is because of how the current software works, and if people see a working, tested, fully-specified system developed through a transparent community-driven process that doesn't suffer from the same flaws, I think they'll embrace it. Maybe I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be easier to just find out, rather than continue arguing about it forever? --Sapphic (talk) 05:47, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Time for bed. Goodnight. Greg L (talk) 05:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sapphic, a > 61% versus > 39% result is not what you wanted, is it, to claim that people want any kind of date autoformatting. Now you are trying to twist the result around in contortionist ways to claim that you should still have your way, as though it were the converse result. Ah ... let me think about that ... I don't think anyone would buy that, except for you, Cole, Katz and a few other devotees. Six months of plain fixed-text dates has rapidly convinced Wikipedians that there is absolutely no problem to solve ... as though they are concerned about "realize" versus "realise"; they are not. Nor are they concerned that some people pronounce "either" with an ee, and others with an ei as in "bite". It's all too silly. We do not want dates messed with; that is what people are saying, again and again and again. Now you're talking of another RFC as though you can force people through tiring them out. Tony (talk) 07:32, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, a very clear sub-text to the feedback is that the community is thoroughly sick of this whole lame debate. Most agree there is no problem to solve, and some have stated their annoyance at being asked their views again and again. We all know the reason for this is that the Dead Parrot is still nailed to its perch although it is "pining for the fjords". Just put the "ex-parrot" in its box, and let it rest in peace. Ohconfucius (talk) 08:44, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
It seems to me that a lot of the votes in favour of the principle of autoformatting were empty. It's a bit like being against sin - nobody could possibly argue with the principle, but the reality is a bit harder. The difficulty would come when the principle butts up against the reality of having to mark up millions of articles and dates. If the developers want to spend time trying to come up with a neat autoformatting solution, some work was done a while back on trying to develop a minimum spec. But we shouldn't be discussing it again unless and until there's a working system that meets the minimum requirements. It may indeed be that we'll welcome it with open arms in a few months as an escape from an outbreak of formatting wars, but I doubt it. And absent that, I think there would be no possibility of persuading the community to take on the massive task of building in the necessary markup, just for a 'nice to have' feature. There are plenty more productive ways to spend our time. Colonies Chris (talk) 12:51, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not asking to preserve markup anymore — that's the compromise part. Go ahead and de-link. My offer even still stands from long ago (remember the date formatting wikiproject?) to generate work lists from analysis of the wikipedia dumpfiles to help in fixing articles with the worst mismatch of date formats. All I'm asking in return is that nobody try to derail/naysay/heckle or otherwise interfere in a non-constructive way (enforced by ArbCom) with the development of some replacement software, which will be put to a final RfC whenever it's ready. In the meantime, the existing date autoformatting software is disabled by a change in the site's config file (takes effect basically instantly, across the entire site) and then de-linking and format fixing can proceed however it's decided upon. --Sapphic (talk) 04:39, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

(ec) Oh sorry, I just realized you were probably alluding to the work needed to re-link (or otherwise mark up) dates, if some new software were to be used. It has been pointed out to me that there really aren't many cases where a bot would fail, and correcting its errors would be simple for human editors ("is this inside a quotation, or not?" will people really disagree on that?) as opposed to the error rate and need for correction/disputes over which dates should be linked on their own merit. So putting markup back around dates could be done almost entirely by bot. It has also been pointed out to me that de-linking actually adds more useful metadata (in virtue of the more relevant date links that are left behind) than it destroys (by failing to distinguish between less important dates and quotations of dates) so de-linking isn't as bad as I thought, even if I hope to eventually re-mark-up the dates anyway (but at that point, preserving the new information about which ones are more and less relevant.) --Sapphic (talk) 04:58, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
  • How can it be a compromise if more than half the voting public don't want it??? It is not how consensus works. What you are offering 'in exchange' for the "compromise" is the ability to delink. Well, it's mighty kind of you, but I think we have that already if not for the injunction. Remember that our objection is not about the links - it seems that you are the one confused that we are talking date autoformatting here. If you fail to achieve consensus for this principle - and I really don't see a cat in hell's chance of programmers running amok now with the share of vote of the supporters hovers just below 40%) the community is getting a raw deal if the opposers stand aside and let the techies run riot; that would be irrresponsible of us knowing it will be another big mistake. The writing is already on the wall: well over half the voting members of the community do not want it. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:54, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you think a 60-40 split is going to get you a favorable ruling from arbcom, or the right to disable the existing date autoformatting. All it's going to get us is more deliberation, more "phases" of the polling process, more drama. What I'm offering in "exchange" is to put a stop to all that right away, at least with regards to myself and anyone else I can convince. If a hard-core supporter of autoformatting like me can live with that plan, I suspect enough others will that we can get something like 80-90% of the concerned parties behind it, if not more, and actually convince the Wikimedia sysadmins to turn it off right then and there (which I have to admit I'm now getting really curious about, just as an experiment to see if it really does bring back the old date format arguments, to what degree, how quickly, what articles/topics, etc.) The dates would still be linked and there's still probably a lot to argue about there (though I'll stay out of that part; I don't care) but at least every editor would immediately see the dates the same way anonymous readers do, and be aware of the problem of inconsistent date formats that (I think) everybody agrees is a genuine problem. I think that's a better outcome for you than trying to "wait it out" and let the whole process play out, still not resolve itself, start anew, etc. that you know is pretty likely. How long has all this been going on for? --Sapphic (talk) 05:13, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh I just saw the part about me be confused. (Jeez I really am tired.) No, I'm just not being clear, I guess. I'm saying to turn off autoformatting immediately. That doesn't require changing any articles, it just requires a one-line change in the server config file. If enough of the community asked for that, I'm sure they'd do it right away. So I'm saying do that like tomorrow (or however long it takes to get enough people on both sides to chime in that they're cool with it, given the other conditions about leaving the development process alone) and then proceed with de-linking according to however that part of the debate pans out. Which seems to be a lot of de-linking, which is actually fine with me. (I want the date links to be controlled by user preferences remember, so I couldn't really care less about what the defaults are, which is how I view those questions.) Now I'm really going to bed. Please think over what I'm proposing and forget that I'm the one proposing it and just consider if you really have anything to lose. --Sapphic (talk) 05:22, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
  • There's nothing tempting on any channel. I'm switching off ;-) Ohconfucius (talk) 05:58, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
... could an interested onlooker get some clarification, please? does Sapphic have some sort of mandate to negotiate "deals" on this issue, and if so, on whose behalf? and who has been authorized to represent the "other side"? thanks Sssoul (talk) 06:05, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Even if she did, none of us individually on 'the other side' have the authority to negotiate on behalf of those who oppose, either, so it's a meaningless discussion. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:17, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
that's what i thought. thanks for confirming. Sssoul (talk) 07:14, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sapphic's "What I'm offering in "exchange""—I myself would not presume to do "deals" that cut across the community's opinions. Please note that ArbCom deals only with behavioural issues. Tony (talk) 06:51, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

The only people I'm "negotiating" for are the ones I already mentioned, namely "myself and anyone else I can convince." I happen to think that if we can work out a deal acceptible to me, Locke, etc. and the people with extreme positions on the "other side" like Tony, Greg, etc. then it would be much easier to convince the more moderate folks. If something like 90% of the participants all agreed to a common plan then we could get the software setting changed (so linked dates become just linked dates, like anons see them) and the injunction lifted right away. You get the blessing of arbcom for delinking less relevant date links, ones that were linked solely for autoformatting (and nobody except the most extreme "link everything" would disagree), anyone that argues with you can have a statement from them (with enforcement) to contend with. The pro-autoformatting side isn't allowed to harass you about your date delinking. Similarly, you're not allowed to interfere with the development process. The fighting children are each sent to their own room, and not allowed to pester each other for a while. --Sapphic (talk) 22:19, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

  • As I said before, this is a faux compromise. For me to agree to it would be a sellout not only to myself but also to the 200+ people who have joined the opposition to the principle of DA. BTW, I am with the majority of moderate/conservative wikipedian, and I really, truly, and wholly object to being labelled as one with "extreme positions on the 'other side'". Speaking of labels, I wonder how to label you 'guys' who are pushing this new-fangled techie agenda of a once-failed solution. Ohconfucius (talk) 03:41, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • "Similarly, you're not allowed to interfere with the development process" There ought always to be proper checks and balances; it should always be a right and responsibility to exercise that counter-balancing role. The reason we have been dealing with this crap autoformatting which nobody wants for the last 6 years is because it was a techie project without proper community input. Techies should never be given completely free rein on Wikipedia. Ohconfucius (talk) 04:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Yep, while respecting the skills of "techies" and their right to have a say as individuals like all others in the community, there's a problem when programs/patches can be knocked up at a moment's notice and slapped into WikiMedia's system ... no questions asked. Ironically, to run a bot on WP, you have to go through the hoops of community input. As HWV258—himself a professional programmer—pointed out last week, there's something very fishy about this.
  • Now, there's still talk here of bargains and deals. Sorry, but to repeat myself, it is inappropriate for individual editors to strike deals that cut across community opinion. Unless it's a deal like ... "I'll collaborate with you, Sapphic, Cole, and Rubin, on WikiProject working bees to fix up the lamentable state of year articles, if you agree to do so too." Then yer talkin'. Not that good year articles would change the issue of relevance and linking to them; not that it would change the fact that they are privileged in continuous main-page treatment. Worth doing, don't you think, and a damned sight better use of our time than bickering over a risky solution to a non-problem. Tony (talk) 06:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • So, you're suggesting that Brion, Werdna, and the other Wikipedia developers just slap in any old bit of code they like into the system without thinking it through? Seems to me that "assume good faith" should be extended to the folks who maintain the system as well. --Ckatzchatspy 09:21, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't know what Tony would say, but I am happy to adopt your words as my own. Brion, Werdna, and the other Wikipedia developers just slap in any old bit of code they like into the system without thinking it through. I assume good faith, but I do not assume any ability on the part of developers to envision how their changes will affect the wider community. --Jc3s5h (talk) 15:14, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Please don't presume as to what I do and don't understand... I've asked previously why someone doesn't simply ask Brion to clarify whether he still holds that opinion, and how he feels about the current RfC. Instead, there seems to be a pattern of speaking for him (rather than to him), and also of interpreting his statement as best benefits the "against" cause. --Ckatzchatspy 18:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Jc3 is generally agreeing with us on the issue. Ckatz, your edit summary appeared to imply that I'm sticking the knife into programmers; I should not have to refute that implication. I assume good faith too on the part of programmers; but although they have their own particular skill-sets, they're not all professionals like Brion Vibber. Apart from his authority as CTO of WikiMedia, in the quote above he's just applying the normal, common-sense observation that simplicity is valuable in its own right. We don't have to read Edward de Bono's book on Simplicity to work that out in relation to advantages of not messing with dates.

In any case, even if members of the WP community who dabble in programming were all top professionals, the community still deserves to know ahead of time what is happening, and to be able to comment. By analogy, we have an extraordinary pool of professional talent in areas that are germane to WP (prose, research fields, copyright, to name a few), and I hear no argument that the normal checks and balances and community input on their activities is somehow an affront to their professionalism. I suspect that even Brion would not mind the establishment of a proper process for notifying programming changes/innovations/requests ahead of time, in a forum in which the community can comment. Tony (talk) 16:00, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

That "proper process" you describe is exactly what I'm calling for. I'm just asking 1) that nobody try to derail it (which is a behavioral issue that arbcom can enforce) and 2) that any end result of the process be put to a public rfc/poll/whatever-euphemism-for-vote-you-prefer. In the meantime, you get to have DA completely disabled and you get to resume delinking on a mass scale — with the blessing of arbcom and without interference from the pro-autoformatting side (the pro-linking side might be another matter, but I'm not actually one of "them" so I don't know.) I'm pretty sure I could convince most any autoformatting supporter to go along with the proposal, and if you think you could convince most autoformatting opponents, then right there we have enough people to get Ryan (and whoever) to take the proposal seriously, and act on it. --Sapphic (talk) 18:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sapphic, I’ve learned to look at your edit summaries first, as they are a valuable resource for gaining insight into your mood and motives. The edit summary accompanying your above post was this: one last try, then we can just go back to keeping the injunction and having lots more phases of polling. In response to this, I feel I should draw your attention to something Ryan wrote (21:47, 30 March post, above) only six days ago:


Ryan’s words are important, in my opinion, because they speak not to the issue of how he feels, but of how the community feels, and how he thinks the arbitrators are inclined to satisfy the wishes of the community. This is rather like one of those classic situations where “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one.” The community is sick to death of this autoformatting/linking issue and I would be utterly shocked if the decision, given the past and current RfC results, was that there ought to be yet another RfC. You will note that some of the most vociferous (“textiferous”?) proponents on autoformatting seemed to have looked at the early RfC returns and accepted what fate has handed them. I encourage you to sit back and watch. And when the arbitrators have rendered their decision, I hope you accept it with peace and tranquility. Really, this entire issue isn’t at all important in the grand scheme of things. Greg L (talk) 19:49, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing that to my attention, Greg. I agree that what arbcom actually does isn't a matter of opinion, but something we can just sit back and wait for. I'd been working on the assumption that their actions following this poll would be consistent with similar actions in the past, and that a 60% majority wasn't going to be used to justify a site-wide change. But if you (and other autoformatting opponents) really believe that the result of this poll will be to sanction your position, then so be it. I still think it's more likely that we'll just have more polling and a continuation of the injunction... but I'm willing to just wait it out and see. If things don't turn out the way you like, and we find ourselves with continued deadlock on this issue, my offer will still stand. I'll pick this back up, then. --Sapphic (talk) 21:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

One last note on the results of this poll: I find it odd that date formatting opponents see it as a "victory" that about 60% of the respondents (actually slightly less than than now, but whatever) sided with them — when their whole argument from the get-go was that it was only a "handful" of holdouts on the other side. Over 40% of respondents want autoformatting. That's not just a handful, that's a lot. I think it would set a really really bad precedent to make a site-wide change based on those results, especially if it happens in the half-assed way of unlinking (mostly) all the dates but leaving the DA software turned on that might result. --Sapphic (talk) 22:08, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
Buddhism: Accepting what life throws at you with grace and dignity
  • I’m a veteran of the IEC prefix wars (“megabyte (MB)” v.s. “mebibyte (MiB)”). They used the same argument: that it was easy to implement a dumb-ass idea with 24 hours of discussion on a remote, backwater venue with about thirty participants and only a roughly two-thirds approval. And for three solid years and fifteen “Binary” archives on WT:MOSNUM dedicated to the issue, they successfully argued that Wikipedia’s use of the IEC prefixes (which made Wikipedia the only publication on the planet that used such terminology when communicating to a general-interest audience), was somehow effectively grandfathered in because it should take an overwhelming supermajority to undo something once done. Think about it: For three years, Wikipedia was the only general-interest publication in the world using “KiB” and “kibibyte”; the terms aren’t even in Microsoft’s dictionary of computer terms to this day. What a stupid thing to have done.

    I’d love to see just how many developers participated in blowing the now-deprecated autformatting system out of their ass and how long it was discussed by the Wikipedian community before being implemented. I’d hazard a guess that the decision to autoformat dates was *sorta quick & easy*. Regardless, after four RfCs, the community’s mood is abundantly clear now. And now, fresh off the IEC prefix issue, I don’t have much sympathy for an argument that amounts to this:

Nope; no sympathy at all. If there is one thing I hope the arbitrators settle here, is this: A simple, clear majority of Wikipedians is sufficient to establish a consensus whenever the issue has enjoyed an enormous amount of discussion and wide community participation. Greg L (talk) 23:57, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I'm exhausted, and I think this thread is, too. Ommmmmm, Namaste. Ohconfucius (talk) 01:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

OKAY, ASSHOLES. If you want to play the "last word" game then I can too. Here I was thinking Greg was finally being reasonable and at least addressing the relevant points rather than blindly repeating the same thing over and over and over, then he goes and pulls some shit where he not only fabricates a "quote" by me out of thin air but repeats the same tired bullshit that he had just acknowledged was irrelevant to the discussion in his previous reply. What the FUCK does the MB vs MiB argument (which affects what, a whopping few thousand articles at most?) have to do with this one, which affects the overwhelming majority of articles in the project? (Hint: nothing.) And thanks, Ohconfucius, for letting us know you're sick of the thread. JUST STOP FUCKING REPLYING THEN. I'm probably going to be blocked (again) for my potty-mouth (somehow all the personal attacks made by other people that don't involve curse words are okay, though..) so I won't be able to reply here anymore, but just in case I'm not blocked, I'll make you a deal — I won't reply to this section, or bring up this proposal again, as long as nobody else does. If you're so sick of it, then prove it. --Sapphic (talk) 01:52, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

  • No yoga this week? As usual, the most interesting part of your post was your edit summary: this would also let me win the last word game, so there! Greg L (talk) 02:21, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sapphic, a lot of people will find this language offensive. I have a pretty thick skin on the matter of incivility (i.e., I'm on the tolerant side); but I find the overt aggressiveness hard to take. Can you please calm down? Tony (talk) 08:54, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Semi-arbitrary break

C'mon, this is just the poll about the "general idea" of autoformatting. The next step will be about its implementations. 60% does not a consensus make by Wikipedia standards, but it is entirely possible that the 40% of people supporting it will not support any of the actual implementations which will be proposed in the second stage of the RfC. This whole thread is entirely pointless. (Why the hell I am bothering to write this post after a 6.7-magnitude earthquake in the town where I study. which I was able to feel even at my parents' house about 63 km from there, at 4:41am, is something I can't even understand myself, FWIW...) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 02:41, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

(And, like Sapphic, I'd turn off the current autoformatting system, Dynamic Dates, right now. Very few of the people supporting the "general idea" support it. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 02:46, 6 April 2009 (UTC))
I don't quite know why we'd have yet another RFC, just because those who keep loudly pushing for their pet way of messing with plain dates think that 60% against the general concept of autoformatting gives the green light to ask everyone how to implement it. Hello? Am I reading this correctly? I think a clear majority has said it doesn't want dates to be messed with; this has to be taken together with how many recent polls that have said the same thing. It's not as though this result is a great surprise coming after those previous results. Tony (talk) 08:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
  • No kidding! Sapphic’s logic comes straight out of the “mebibyte” crowd’s playbook, where they kept people on Wikipedia all bubbly with the shear joy of arguing about our unilateral use of the IEC prefixes for three whole years: “a clear majority doesn’t want autoformatting… soooooooooo that means we ought to start another RfC to discuss WHAT KIND of autoformatting that the community doesn’t want.” “How’s that?!?” you say? It’s old‑school Wikilogic. Embrace it. Learn from it. It’s how we burn up terabytes of server space with endless arguing (but we have soooo much fun arguing on talk pages instead of editing articles). Greg L (talk) 03:21, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I think the argument makes more sense if you read it like this: The relatively small majority for autoformatting is no excuse to start a discussion on technicalities of implementation because no single implementation is likely to get overwhelming support from a large fraction of the minority that supports autoformatting. Perhaps this was the intended meaning. --Hans Adler (talk) 09:16, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
Try getting sympathy for this type of technocratic debacle from an outsider. When I informed my girlfriend why I spent over an hour reading through this poll and various related essays, guidelines and sub-pages, her spontaneous reaction was a rather annoyed "who cares". I'd say that's a very normal reaction. Like others have already pointed out: start acting like normal people. Bury this issue for at least a few years and don't even think of reviving it until something positively groundbreaking has come up. Stop wasting time.
Peter Isotalo 06:04, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you: Like others have already pointed out: start acting like normal people. No. The Klingons killed my brother, Petorovich! Greg L (talk) 06:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

"Option 0"

I'm moving this from the main page to here, as no discussion took place before this was added to the RfC. Should this be added or not? Karanacs (talk) 19:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I support Option #0 (don't link years)
  1. Support - I prefer not linking year numbers at all. If you want to link the year, then do a proper link that more clearly says what it is linking. --David Göthberg (talk) 18:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
  2. Support - I was disappointed that the date linking poll didn't have this obvious option as an option. Tempshill (talk) 19:00, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

Although I mostly agree with the sentiment, I feel it is too late to add any more options at this point (after so many editors have already registered their opinions). I encourage people who feel this way to use comments. Karanacs (talk) 19:23, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

You first changed my vote to another option. Then when I reverted that you deleted my vote. That is you doing vote fraud and vote censoring.
Had you just moved my vote down to the comment section, then at least it wouldn't have been a clear case of vote fraud.
--David Göthberg (talk) 19:57, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Please calm down, and note that I left a message on your talk page explaining the situation and pointing you towards this section, where I had copied and pasted your new section in full. Karanacs (talk) 20:00, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
This should be removed asap - it can go in the comments section if needs be. I'm on my iPod now so I can't deal with it.--Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 20:05, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I contacted David on his talk page and suggested how he can get his point across more effectively by working within the structure of the RfC. Greg L (talk) 20:25, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
  • It is customary for approval polls to add new options; when evaluating the new option, its late appearance can be taken into consideration. Since a belligerent minority supports Option 1 as a form of Option 0, and another section of opinion supports Option 1 because it is not option 0 adding it should help to clarify the real situation. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Yeah, I understand the point, PMAnderson. But can you imagine the chaos when new options that weren’t available at the start of an RfC are introduced piecemeal midway through? Throwing out new options in RfCs is better suited for the first RfC to address a new issue; it’s not a good fit at this late stage, where we are on our fourth RfC and have a well discussed understanding of the implications of all the nuances.

    If a user wants to add a comment into the comments section saying they think there should be an “Option 0” for no links at all, or an Option ΘβΔ” for some other whiz bang idea, that is still input that can be considered when trying to determine the nature of the community consensus on the matter. But the numbers of votes means a lot too in RfCs and it is probably wiser—if an editor wants to have the maximum voice in the outcome—to vote for the option that best represents their views and explain precisely what they really desire in their vote comment.

    It’s also a bit more, uhm… *humble* of an approach, since it doesn’t assume that the editor is throwing out something new that hadn’t been considered and discarded for a good reason. We had discussed this option but previous RfCs made it clear that the overwhelming number of Wikipedians felt that linking dates was appropriate in some circumstances. So there was no point in throwing out a space-filling option that we knew didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning. Greg L (talk) 04:45, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

    P.S. We could also have an option for “Negative 1: Don’t link any dates; and those editors who agitated to keep on linking the crap out of them should be given an eye‑bulging Wikipedia wedgie.” I bet that would have received 20+ votes. But it wouldn’t have won so there is no point siphoning votes off options that have a prayer of becoming the community consensus. Greg L (talk) 05:11, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Minus 1 is redundant, unless someone manages to support 0:Never link month-day, and 0:Never link years, without supporting Don't link any dates. Possible, I suppose, but not likely.
  • An overwhelming number of Wikipedians felt that linking dates was appropriate in some circumstances. Thank you; I shall quote you on that.
  • That the present !votes for Option 1 contain 20 votes for Option 0, (and a comparable number that would personally prefer #4 but think it bad strategy) would be very interesting. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:29, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • You can also quote me on this one: “…previous RfCs made it clear that the overwhelming number of Wikipedians felt that linking dates was appropriate in some circumstances.” This RfC has added greater specificity as to what “some” means. Greg L (talk) 15:42, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Not much specificity, even on the question of birthdates. As llwyrch comments, much of the support for #1 is likely to assume that birth and death dates are relevant; for such people, #1 is equivalent to #2 but with less verbiage. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:29, 2 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Wikilawyering. There will always be editors who stand with pouted lower lip and their arms folded across their chest and say “I think the guideline leaves wiggle room to link day-month in the birthdate of the asshole who invented trivia” or some such nonsense. I’m not even thinking of trying to argue with them. Never try to teach a pig to sing; it only wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    The wording for Month-Day Option #1 says this: Month-day articles (February 24 and 10 July) should not be linked unless their content is germane and topical to the subject. Such links should share an important connection with that subject other than that the events occurred on the same date. Moreover, year linking Option #1 has similar verbiage: Year articles (1795, 1955, 2007) should not be linked unless they contain information that is germane and topical to the subject matter.

    Together, they are infinitely clear for Wikipedians in the middle of the bell curve (and your ordinary, 50th-percentile 6th-grader). And notwithstanding your protestations that you are utterly confused about what both Option #1s portend for linking birth dates, I know you really aren’t so confused. So stop with your pre-verdict posturing (accomplished via proxy by citing other editors) about how the crushing support for both Option #1s is *actually* a validation by the community allowing you to link birth dates and all the other horsecrap you’ve wanted to link all along. No, it doesn’t. And to suggest as much sounds like just the sort of argument from another editor I’m familiar with; it doesn’t impress. Greg L (talk) 21:19, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Remember that this is only Phase 1 of the poll, we can always address "relevance" in the next phase. Dabomb87 (talk) 12:40, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • The difficulty is this poll doesn't really address any of the questions of importance (except perhaps which ambiguous language is to be inserted in the worthless MOSNUM; I don't care what it says, only whether it is used to harass other editors). It doesn't decide whether date links are to be treated like other links, which is the question really being disputed; it doesn't decide whether there is consent for bottery, since bots cannot decide whether a sentence is germane, topical, or relevant.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 00:53, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you: The difficulty is this poll doesn't really address any of the questions of importance: Well, silly us. Greg L (talk) 01:16, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I don't fully agree with PMAnderson's statement, although any of the options (including option #2, for which I can take primary credit/blame; remember I started drafting it less than 2 weeks before the vote), without further guidance, could be used to harass editors who do not agree with your interpretation. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:56, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • However, a large number of votes for option #1 state "link only to relevant dates", or some similar verbiage, which may suggest that they didn't actually read the option. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:59, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Americans voted for Bush… twice. That would suggest they weren’t listening to the debates. But we respect the vote—even if their reasoning is “I voted for the dude who wouldn’t look funny with a six-shooter on his hip.” Greg L (talk) 05:50, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Arthur, I already asked PMAnderson the same question [2] and so far he hasn't replied: Can you give an example of a relevant link that would be forbidden by option 1? People like me have voted for option 1 exactly because it is option 4 plus a clarification that linking the year of death of an obscure Albanian writer was previously considered right not because it's a relevant link (it's obviously not) but because there was an exception for such links which is no longer in effect. --Hans Adler (talk) 11:19, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not a vote. The categories are to help with interpreting the results of the opinion poll, nothing more. If people place themselves in one category, but give reasons more relevant to a different category, it's perfectly valid to question what they really meant. It's more like the invalid ballots in Florida when people voted for more than one candidate — and those ended up being thrown out entirely. Since the total count isn't really the point, just determining if there's an obvious consensus view, then there's no reason to "throw out" anyone's comments, but they do need to be considered more carefully. I honestly haven't paid much attention to the linking part of the dates debate, but I'd think we'd need some kind of more flexible policy to let regular editors decide on (somewhat of) an article-by-article basis which dates were "relevant" enough to warrant links. Too strict and black-and-white a policy is just going to invite arguments. I guess I'll actually go and look over the options, so I have a more informed opinion here on some of the specifics, then maybe I'll comment further. --Sapphic (talk) 06:05, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

i'm not sure "it's perfectly valid to question what they really meant". some of the comments sound strange to me too, but being gifted at summing up all one's reasoning in succinct unambiguous statements is not a prerequisite for !voting in the poll. !voters are entitled to assume that when they've chosen "i support Option X" it's clear enough that they support Option X. Sssoul (talk) 06:56, 3 April 2009 (UTC)
That is not reasonable, if they give a justification which supports option W or Z, but not X. If they give no justification, and the subtitles are clearly misleading (as they are in this case), I'm just not sure. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 00:22, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
Bear in mind also, that people may express their opinion that seems contradictory, if that's the only way to express their opinon within the (bogus) constraints of the poll structure itself. That's what I did - and my opinion is intended to convey support for two options even in the face of any rule forbidding support for two options. Reading it otherwise, as support for only one of the two, is a misinterpretation. Likewise, ignoring part of some other voter's opinion in order to better pigeonhole it is probably also a misinterpretation. — Gavia immer (talk) 04:05, 4 April 2009 (UTC)
as noted elsewhere: if people seriously feel some of the !voters need to confirm or clarify their votes, they should get the clerk to oversee the formulation and posting of a neutral statement to be left on those !voters' talk pages. Sapphic's independent effort to get clarification from some !voters showed that most of them did indeed mean X when they said X, even if their rationale is not worded the way you or i would word it ... but asking for clarification is better than second-guessing them or "rejecting" their !votes for being worded weirdly. Sssoul (talk) 06:38, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

I just gave my opinion, and I agree that the choices are a bit confusing. I don't think it matters much though, because I think the clear (and in the first case overwhelming) majority is against almost any date linking. I like date links, but I don't think of them like regular links, and don't think they are usually "relevant" to the topic in the same way that normal topic links are. I think they're a different kind of tool, equally useful, but different nonetheless. I don't think people should be forced to see those kinds of date links, if they don't find them useful. I'd rather see us distinguish between dates that are linked by default and those that aren't, with users being able to override those defaults via preferences — but I still think the default should be pretty conservative. Then we'd have even better metadata, with the ability to distinguish between dates that are just dates, and those that are also more specifically relevant in their capacity as a date to the topic of the article (like with Christmas and 25 December, for example — or a person's birthday, in my opinion.) People that wanted more date links could have more date links, etc. You know the routine. I like the software solution. But I think on the linking issue, the outcome is pretty clearly on the side of fewer date links. So I say delink most of them using bots and/or scripts, then let people add back ones they think are important — and don't be too concerned about challenging people on that, at least right away. --Sapphic (talk) 06:29, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Back to discussing "Option 0". Comment: why would we want to forbid a link from the article 1340s to the article 1346? The latter article clearly helps and expands an understanding of the 1340s. What would David Göthberg think was a "proper link that more clearly says what it is linking" in this case? --RexxS (talk) 22:27, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

!Vote

Per WP:DEMOCRACY and WP:POLL, we do not vote here, even when it looks like that's what we're doing. Particularly in a consensus-building effort regarding Wikipedia convention, it is probably less than optimally productive for us to encourage users to "vote". I have changed the text Please submit your vote to Please record your preference. —Scheinwerfermann T·C13:28, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I've reverted your change, not that I'm supporting or disputing it, but simply because we should leave it as is given that the RfC is under way. --Ckatzchatspy 14:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree. Also, this poll is a very unusual one whose purpose it is to settle the question before the community breaks apart because of this completely irrelevant detail. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:29, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

This isn't just about dates

Since so many people have the reaction of who cares? to this issue, it's probably important to explain why people on both sides of the issue feel so strongly about it. The real issue is whether to deal with style differences via user preferences in software, or by establishing guidelines that apply to fixed text. Dates are just one instance of this. Opponents of date autoformatting point to WP:ENGVAR as an example of their preferred solution. Supporters of date autoformatting point out that Wikipedia is not paper. Opponents argue that we should focus on keeping the markup simple. Supporters counter that we should use software tools to let readers see things the way they prefer (whenever possible) and thus eliminate even the possibility of format disputes. Both arguments have merit, and apply to a lot more than just dates. Whatever happens here will help to establish precedent, and will be used as a point of reference for future disputes over software preferences vs. style guidelines, just as WP:ENGVAR is being used here. That's why it matters so much to (at least some of) us. --Sapphic (talk) 15:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Holy smokes Sapphic. You seem to have a galactic-grade inability to see others’ point of view. Coupled with your über‑aggressive nature,[3] you are quite something to deal with. Quoting you: The real issue is whether to deal with style differences via user preferences in software, or by establishing guidelines that apply to fixed text. You’re missing two important elements of what the “real issue” is about: 1) whether “style issues” (a stupid date format) is worth fighting like savages on the battle field and eating the raw, still-beating hearts of your enemies; and 2) “user preferences” settings are something that is not available to regular I.P. users (99.9% of our readership)—in other words, autoformatting is a bunch of fuss to benefit a damned small group of people. Open your eyes and read the vote comments. You will see that many, many Wikipedians see these two issues as being highly germane to why the voted the way they did. Greg L (talk) 17:55, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Could you calm down please? Personally I think Sapphic is right about the main problem; that (1), while an issue for some, doesn't justify the hyperbole in this instance; and that (2) could be addressed by completely reworking the Wikimedia caching system, or perhaps by setting up en-uk.wikipedia.org etc. (it isn't worth the trouble of course). And you didn't even mention any of the points that bother me personally. --Hans Adler (talk) 19:40, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Who do you think you’re talking to Hans? I am calm. Your posturing by suggesting that I am not does not somehow establish you as a sage, wise voice of reason here who smooths things over with unassailable logic. Juxtaposing my post to Sapphic’s above meltdown/rant (which is too rude to even quote here), reveals the laughable degree to which you are partisan on this issue. Just calling them like I see them. As for And you didn't even mention any of the points that bother me personally, that’s fine, I didn’t claim that my points did address your concern. What is abundantly clear from any rational reading of the RfC results is that it is a widely held view of the community. Greg L (talk) 20:55, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • "[...] reveals the laughable degree to which you are partisan on this issue" – You are entitled to your opinion. I hope you are not too offended if I leave my anti-autoformatting vote as it is, even though it sounds as if you are objecting to people who are only laughably partisan about the issue. After all, I am against autoformatting not because I seek your approval but because it's obvious feature creep and inconsistent with the proven ENGVAR approach. --Hans Adler (talk) 21:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Uhm… no. No complaints here with your vote. Your 19:40 post didn’t lead me to suspect that you might have voted that way. Good Hans. Greg L (talk) 21:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Sorry for my tone. I see now that "right about the main problem" may have been a bit misleading. I meant the connection between autoformatting and ENGVAR and that this is a far-reaching decision. --Hans Adler (talk) 23:06, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Thinking ahead....

Without prejudice to the end result, the autoformatting part of the poll isn't looking as conclusive as I'd have liked to see it. I recommend we move to a second poll that breaks down autoformatting into individual sections (like we did for the year and month-day linking). Proposals would include turning off autoformatting completely, keeping the status quo, and exploring other methods of autoformatting for the future that wouldn't require date linking. I think it's going to be the only way to get a conclusive result. Whilst some may say that the poll is clear, I'd say it's far from it in the Wikipedia sense of polling/consensus. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

What about the linking issues? Dabomb87 (talk) 22:42, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
They don't need discussing at this point in time in my opinion, we can wait till after the poll finishes (We can wait till after for autoformatting as well, but I just wanted to float an idea around). Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:43, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Shit! Don’t you think the community is sick enough of this dispute, Ryan? Are you getting paid by the hour on this? Again, the IEC prefix issue (mebibyte, MiB v.s. megabyte, MB) took three years to undo because of Wikipedia’s outdated sense that no action can be taken unless there is a colossal landslide of a vote. The litmus test of overwhelming lopsided vote should be applied only when an idea is being tried the first time. But, rarely is that the case. For example, Wikipedia’s use of “256 MiB” was retarded beyond all comprehension. Yet, the decision for Wikipedia to adopt that practice was made by a few dozen editors on some remote, backwater page after only 24 hours of deliberation. And after all that *infinite wisdom*, it took fifteen “Binary” archives on WT:MOSNUM to finally get that fiasco reversed. And “Why did it take so long to abandon that idiotic practice since no other publication on the planet wrote that way?” you might ask? Because the propeller-headed proponents of the practice insisted that only an overwhelming lopsided vote could revert the move.

    It’s time for the leadership of Wikipedia to get some balls here. The three past RfCs can be taken into consideration here too. Between those, and this one, it is clear that there has been ample community debate and share of views.

    I would argue that the wisest course here is to state that

Wikipedia simply must, IMO, get away from this mindset that a clear majority is insufficient and grandfathers in any practice. I’ll bet $100 that one-hundredth as much debate and deliberation went into implementing autoformatting as has been devoted to trying to decide whether to jettison it. Greg L (talk) 22:49, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Support
moving on about the issue of autoformatting. The number of !votes has doubled in a week, but the percentage of supports/(supports + opposes) has remained practically unchanged. The result won't become any more or less clear than it is in another week. (And I'd propose the first question of the second poll should read: Should the current system of autoformatting of linked dates, Dynamic Dates, be disabled (i.e., writing $wgDynamicDates = false in the configuration)? And I think that there would be a "colossal landslide of a vote" on such a question.) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 23:24, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • On the contrary, I dont think anyone wants the status quo. Let's break the connection between date linking and autoformatting forever. I'd suggest if you wanted to break this out, it would focus on tagging first: "I support metadata tagging of relevant dates to an article", then expand to "I support the current autoformatting system with date-linking turned off (ie: the simple change)" and finally "I support a more capable autoformatting system for all viewers, registered or not (ie: the more complex change)". dm (talk) 23:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you Army: And I think that there would be a "colossal landslide of a vote" on such a question. Yeah, I completely agree. It doesn’t take an Einstein to look at the vote comments (there are quite a few to read now) to figure out what would happen in another one—that is, if everyone doesn’t respond with Awwwe Crap! Not another RfC?!? Greg L (talk) 23:39, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
  • If we must have another RfC, I suggest that we set up something like voting subscriptions. E.g. we could have a dozen or so pages where we can sign statements such as "I am opposed to each and every form of date autoformatting other than perhaps in citation templates and I want the RfCs to stop and all autoformatting code that isn't supported by a majority of the community removed". These could then be transcluded to all the upcoming RfCs in the appropriate sections. --Hans Adler (talk) 00:01, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
I will repost what I wrote for the benefit of those who may have missed the entry I made earlier in the discussion:
  • Point of information: the community voted in August 2008 to deprecate date autoformatting, and endorsed it overwhelmingly (i.e. by a supermajority) in (1) and (2) specific questions in December 2008. Therefore, date autoformatting as we knew it is dead, and the software should have been disabled at that point. What we are now discussing is the desirability in principle of a new system. Any eventual consensus to adopt would need to be followed by a formal consultation process and vote on detailed specifications. Looking at the stability of the 60%+ vote opposed to that principle, it is likely that a consensus will not be attained.
I think the poll votes (questions 2 and 3) are transparently clear that the linking of dates is considered highly irrelevant and unpopular by the community. I believe, based on the present result, it is hard to argue that there is insufficient consensus to remove the vast majority of date links. Furthermore, that they do not want another vote on the desirability of date links. Many respondents already made comments that they do not want any prolongation of the debate. For your recollection, the background statement said:
  • What happens if autoformatting is accepted? Consensus will be sought on specifications, which will then be used by developers and editors to establish a system based either on a modified version of the existing software or on a new markup or template scheme; dates will be marked up accordingly.
  • What happens if autoformatting is rejected? The markup used by the previous system will continue to be removed, and any dates that are inconsistent with the overall format for their article will be corrected, manually or using automatic means.
Without needing much interpretation of the results, it is obvious that the previous system of DA based on date linking was highly unpopular. While there may be some belief within the community that an autoformatting system may be desirable for readers, the threshold for general acceptance of the principle was clearly insufficient. Many are still wary of the pitfalls and risks of development of a replacement - whether expressed in terms of 'there is no problem to solve' or simply the rejection of the failed system such as 'I dislike date linking'. Then, there is the 'inegalitarian' argument which is also a significant concern.
In accordance with how things have always worked here on WP, the status quo ante prevails where a consensus is not reached for the adoption of a new proposal. There is no denying that both Ryan and Ohconfucius would be happier if there was a 6% swing for a "conclusive result", but I think the only reasonable conclusion to draw at this point is that acceptance of autoformatting has not been gained by the community, and we must accept that it is about as clear it is likely to get. If we fail to recognise this inherent limitation of consensus, we would be rightly accused of indecision. Whilst accepting that consensus can change, the next question which should be asked is whether the community is prepared to accept a prolongation of this discussion ad infinitum until it is conclusive enough for you or I? Ohconfucius (talk) 02:38, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I endorse what Ohconfucius has written here 100%. His logic is unassailable. I ask that you, Ryan (and the other arbitrators) read it thoroughly. The old system of autformatting has been officially dead for months now. The motion to adopt a new method of autoformatting has now failed muster. Moreover, the Wikipedian community is about ready to put a pistol in its mouth on this issue. I’m quite done fighting and dwelling on this issue; it has to end. There has clearly been enough debate. I’ll accept what the arbitrators and admins decide with grace and dignity. I just ask that they grow some huevos here, step up to the plate, and do something. Lead, follow, or get out of the way. Greg L (talk) 02:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Oh, something else in Ryan's post which struck me upon further reflection after making my post above: I would pertinently remind all that this RfC vote is not on a specific DA scheme but for the general principle. However "far from it in the Wikipedia sense of polling/consensus" the poll result may be on the issue, to go and explore "other methods of autoformatting for the future that wouldn't require date linking" seems to me to be counter-intuitive and "anti-consensus", as it would presuppose the eventual adoption of DA when the community will have voted 60% against it en principe. Of course, if you were to include the 'oppose' in the second poll, the outcome may be something interesting like this: 'keep old DA' 5%, 'new DA with {{#formatnumber}}-style markup' 12%, 'new DA with no markup' 20%, no DA at all 58%, undecided 5% - what will fractioning that vote change??? Anyway, as there is supposed to be a 2 week discussion based on these results, I think perhaps Ryan may be jumping the gun here a little... Ohconfucius (talk) 03:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • This is crap. You present some non-linking date-autormatting system and > 60% of people say they don't want autoformatting in concept. Why do you see a need to prolong this accursed issue? Just what kind of result do you ever think you'll get out of a fractionated RFC? It beggars belief. Tony (talk) 03:58, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Indeed. The trial balloon Ryan floated here amounts to “OK, we heard you. The old system of autoformatting has been dead for months. And now, as to whether the community wants some new kind of autoformatting to replace it, only forty percent of you said you do. So, just what specific kind of autoformatting technology do you want to have?” Greg L (talk) 05:15, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Thinking ahead, if the arbitration committee drags this out too long, what is the procedure for removing the committee from office? --Jc3s5h (talk) 04:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

  • LOL!! Greg L (talk) 05:02, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I would like to know when/if the date linking case will set a new record for the length of deliberation by Arbcom? Ohconfucius (talk) 05:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Quit your complaining. I already suggested a way to end this right away, so you can get back to your de-linking. All you have to do is agree not to interfere with the development of a candidate system to replace the existing date autoformatting. You agree to that, and the autoformatting supporters agree (and I see no reason why they wouldn't) then we can turn off the existing DA immediately, lift the injunction, and everybody gets busy either de-linking or developing new software. In a month or two (or however long it takes to develop the new software) we have one last poll to either adopt the new software or drop the issue once and for all. There is absolutely no downside for the autoformatting opponents. The only downside for autoformatting supporters is that (if the new system is adopted) we'll have to re-link (or otherwise markup) the dates you've de-linked.. but that's not a huge deal. --Sapphic (talk) 06:22, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

  • I don't presume you're talking to me, because I wasn't complaining. However, in case you were, RP bounced a recommendation, and I was responding to it with my thoughts. I am entitled to my views, and nobody but me can articulate them, so I do my best. If you can't stand that, then it ain't my problem, Sista! As to your suggestions, I believe you very simplistically glossed over a huge chunk about 'How to get there'. Anyhoo, I already responded to them: Thank you, but nyet. Ohconfucius (talk) 08:19, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Oh, and I thought you promised to stop flogging your "compromise"? Oh well, ho hum... Ohconfucius (talk) 08:23, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Since nobody (except Greg — once) on your side has explained why they're opposed to my suggested compromise, I'll ask again: What have you got to lose? You get everything you want immediately, without futher debate and with the full blessing of arbcom (to keep people from disrupting your delinking, at least on autoformatting grounds) and all you have to do is not interfere with the development process for coming up with a possible replacement system. Then you have to let it be presented in a final poll... which it looks like there'd be anyway (and possibly more than one) so it's not like that last part is anything special. Give me an answer (that actually applies to the suggested compromise, not just autoformatting in general or arbcom's deliberations or the polling process itself) and show you're acting in good faith, here. I may be obnoxious, but I've never once acted in bad faith. --Sapphic (talk) 14:25, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
I believe that people are opposed because it would render the current poll impotent. The results of this poll are supposed to show whether the general community wants people to work on an autoformatting system. Your suggested compromise, as reasonable as it sounds, would cut across any decisions made from analysis of the results. Furthermore, no offence but you aren't in the position to propose such a compromise at this moment, and neither is anyone here in the position to accept it. Let's wait for the closure and analysis of the poll to happen before we further discuss this matter. That way we can be informed by the results of a fully completed community poll. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 15:13, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
... if you're really interested, Sapphic, i can explain why i haven't leapt on your "compromise offer": 1] the main points in your "offer" (turning off autoformatting, ArbCom rescinding the temporary injunction, etc) are things you have no authority over, so i don't know why you keep "offering" them; and 2] neither i nor anyone else is authorized to accept or reject "deals" on behalf of "this side". Sssoul (talk) 16:52, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Ryan, what, yet another one? Or as Greg puts it, do you really not think the community is sick enough of this dispute? You are on the way to destruction! You have no chance to survive make your time! Bishonen | talk 16:41, 8 April 2009 (UTC).
  • Awe, don’t shoot the guy. I think he recognized that there was a dispute amongst the combatants over where to go next. So he floated a trial balloon to provoke discussion here to sort out the issues. Greg L (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

  • Sapphic: Rules are rules. Reality is reality. History is history. A review of that history is in order here:

    As Ohconfucius correctly pointed out, the old autoformatting system was tossed on its ear by an overwhelming supermajority in Dec. ‘08. Lest anyone forget why we were all dragged here by a certain someone, it was because a bot was doing mass de-linking (and was removing all those not-so-precious links to trivia while it was at it). Since this practice was sucking the Wikipedia lifeforce from that certain someone, he teamed up with a developer and started promoting “Son of autoformatting” and the bot delinking was suspended to see if there was a community consensus to adopt this NEW™®© kind of autoformatting technology. The previous RfCs (like, there hasn’t been enough of these now) made it clear to “that certain someone” that “Son of autoformatting” didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of being well received by the community so he insisted that only the “generalities” of autoformatting be run by the community in this RfC. So how did the “generalities” fly? The bottom line from the community is this: Hell no! There is clearly no consensus that the community wants to have anything to do with the new stuff you’re selling. Far from a “clear consensus for”, there is clear majority against. And as you can also see from the RfC results, the community likes the old system’s links to trivia about as much as finding half a worm in their apple core. So…

    We’re going to let this RfC continue its course. And if/when the results conclude with results largely like they are today, bot-delinking of the old autoformatting/linking must continue, and the small cabal of volunteer developers will go away and stop agitating on this subject. The community doesn’t want what you’re selling.

    And, like Peter Isotalo wrote above (06:04, 7 April): “Like others have already pointed out: start acting like normal people. Bury this issue for at least a few years and don't even think of reviving it until something positively groundbreaking has come up. Stop wasting time.” Greg L (talk) 16:49, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

  • I echo Bishonen's, Greg's, Ohconfucius's, Sssoul's and Sillyfolkboy's comments. In particular, talk of individual editors' doing deals, offering compromises, etc, seems weird when the community has spoken. Who are we to cut across community opinion in so many RFCs on this topic. (Is this the fourth? Hmmmm ...)
  • Since 50% more people oppose the general concept of DA than support (247 to 167 at the moment), there is no point in holding yet another poll (with fractionated questions about what the community by a sizeable majority has said it doesn't want? 15% want this, 11% this, 8% this, 6% that ... do they add up to 40%?). There is almost no support for the creaking old DA, and the job of auditing and removing the coding needs to be resumed (just switching it off centrally may be a good idea, but would leave the blue-linking). The resumption of cleaning up the date mess involves checking consistency and format choice for each article, as was being achieved gradually until the temporary injunction. We enjoyed the skilled, dedicated and responsive wikignoming of users such as Colonies Chris until then. We need to move on and resume this program of detailed improvements to our articles, for the sake of our readers, our editors and the broader project. Tony (talk) 16:57, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Ok, well I see people don't like this idea. I think perhaps that people could have expressed their disapproval in a more collegial manner - when people start attacking users based on something that was merely supposed to promote discussion it doesn't really get their point across well. When the poll's over I'll poke a few developers and see what their thoughts are on the results. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 18:27, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
Sadly, Ryan, I think you have put your finger on the problem in the RfAr -- a lack of collegial manner over this issue. One side is eager to enforce what it believes to be a mandate to fire up a bot & remove all links to dates and years, without consideration of opposing opinions no matter how they are expressed. Launching a systematic removal of all of those links without making any exceptions will only take us back to this same impasse, maybe with some new players. As others have pointed out, I feel that there is a flaw in this poll that the option I admittedly prefer -- linking birth & death years & dates -- is not clearly approved or disapproved. While I can accept that the consensus of the community does not favor these links, from the categories & comments I am not certain that one can objectively determine what that consensus is: the majority say they only want relevant dates & years linked, but do they consider these relevant links? -- llywrch (talk) 20:03, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
If you only count !votes, yes, it is obscure. But if you look at the comments, you'll see that consensus is for very few or no date links. Dabomb87 (talk) 21:13, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you llywrch: One side is eager to enforce what it believes to be a mandate to fire up a bot & remove all links to dates and years, without consideration of opposing opinions no matter how they are expressed. Wrong. The opposing side’s views have been considered. You are confusing “considered” with “bought into and adopted.” And with specific regard to …no matter how [those opposing opinions] are expressed, you can paint lipstick on a pig of an idea and dress it up as a prom date, but you’re still not going to get any takers.

    The problem is that developers have been circumventing “consensus and approval” for too long (witness Werdna's recent shoving in of the new patch without so much as a warning). You may not like it, but this has been a problem with an attitude of “I’m a lotus leaf-eating programming god and can just post my code to Wikipedia and my children will love it.” Uhm… not always. Giving a select few registered editors a view of editorial content that all the rest of Wikipedia’s readership can’t see (autoformatting of dates) what brain damaged at inception. And it was finally tossed on its ear in December.

    As for the developers’ desperate attempts to pitch a replacement, the community has turned its back on a handful of volunteer programmer gods and said “we’re not interested in this sort of thing.” Over and over and over with RfCs, the community has said “No”. C'est la vie. The developers can simply shrug their shoulders and go find something to offer the community that it truly wants. Greg L (talk) 22:11, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as the developers are the ones that actually implement any autoformatting changes that we may require (i.e. turning it off), they most certainly won't have to just shrug their shoulders. If they don't think that the poll reflects a big enough consensus, they won't do anything. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 22:31, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Ryan, perhaps you could rephrase your comment above as it appears to imply that developers have a veto on community consensus? Whilst it could be a mere statement of fact that their cooperation is necessary and desirable, they are not the guardians/supreme court of the consensus; if they were, I am certain the community would have something to say about that. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:56, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • What I'm saying is that the developers don't act unless they have consensus for a change. I'm not 100% convinced that the developers will see our current poll on autoformatting consensus for anything so won't act. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 07:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • If all it is is your fear, we can work on that. But we are agreed that they cannot and should not stand in the way of consensus, right? Ohconfucius (talk) 11:20, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • "In a month or two (or however long it takes to develop the new software) we have one last poll to either adopt the new software or drop the issue once and for all"—to the programming community: please be very careful with this approach. This strategy smacks of the approach that was taken many years ago—the one that delivered the current problem-riddled date formatting and linking system. If you want to get your programming teeth into something beneficial, then get consensus for a replacement system from the community before any coding takes place. At the very least, create a page that has the specifications for what is being developed so that there is transparency and the possibility for comment. The best programmers that I've seen in my career are the ones that don't want to operate in secrecy from their end-users. A happy and safe Easter to all.  HWV258  22:25, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Every here needs to chill out and discuss this calmly and stop bashing the clerks, who are only trying to do their jobs in a neutral manner. Yes, consider this is a final warning. — Rlevse • Talk • 22:40, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

I will second my colleague's stern and very final warning. — Coren (talk) 22:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I completely agree: no clerk bashing. Calmly too. I wrote above (16:49, 8 April) that people shouldn’t “shoot the clerk” for floating a trial balloon to gauge community reaction on how to deal with the RfC results.

    Whereas it would be nice if Wikipedia’s volunteer developers would abide by the community’s wishes regarding autoformatting, what they do or don’t want to do is irrelevant in this particular matter. The community voted in December to deprecate autoformatting by no longer putting double-brackets around dates and to just write out dates in fixed text so that everyone sees the same thing. It doesn’t take any developer buy-in if editors aren’t using double brackets or double-curly-brackets and template names. Further, a bot was busy removing the double-brackets already in place when Locke dragged us all kicking & screaming into an ArbCom because he refused to acknowledge that the past RfCs were a legitimate measure of the community consensus. We don’t have too much longer to go on this (fourth) RfC and there isn’t a WP:SNOWBALL of a chance that a consensus will suddenly develop that the community wants something new to replace the now-deprecated old system of autoformatting.

    I’m glad you floated this trial balloon, Ryan. Why? Because Sapphic had been exceedingly uncivil the last few days[4] (without so much as a warning, let alone a block) arguing her point. I don’t mind the uncivil tone; I focus on the message. And her message is that there must be a clear consensus for the community to not eat any new ideas a small cabal of volunteer developers desire to force upon us. That’s simply not the way anything works in the real world and I see no reason for Wikipedia to be some sort of exception.

    I’ll remind everyone here that there was no community consensus in the first place to bring the first version of autoformatting to bear. Ponder the ramifications of that sentence for a moment. It took an overwhelming supermajority of a consensus in December to undo that fiasco. Sapphic has consistently made a case that amounts to the argument that any volunteer developer can continue to implement new ideas on autoformatting without first obtaining a clear community consensus inviting them to do so. That idea seems bankrupt to me.

    I take issue with that attitude not because I give that much of a dump about date links to irrelevant trivia. It’s just that Wikipedia is actually a valuable resource that is truly a benefit to all mankind and thousands of man hours have been squandered arguing over this issue instead of contributing to articles. It’s a darn shame too, because—like the IEC prefix issue before (mebibyte, MiB versus megabyte, MB)—ill-considered ideas are far too easy to implement and far too difficult to reverse. The community has spoken clearly enough (and often enough) that it has not invited any developer to keep pushing what it is they’re selling. It’s simply time for the needs of the many to outweigh the incessant demands of the few. Greg L (talk) 23:50, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Arbitrary break 2

Sigh.. okay, where to begin?

  • My incivility (which I acknowledge as such) was in response to your (Greg) fabricating a quote by me out of thin air, immediately after an exchange in which I thought we'd been making some progress. That type of bad faith behavior always rubs me the wrong way, and I tend to lash out with profanity.
  • No "authority" is needed to either suggest a proposal, nor to accept it. It's only enacting a proposal that takes some official authority, and that's what I've explicitly left up to arbcom, every time I've mentioned this.
  • My compromise proposal doesn't undercut this poll, because it's pretty clear that this poll didn't uncover any pre-existing consensus. I'm hoping that enough people will support my proposal (or one by anybody else for that matter — come up with one) that we can get arbcom (or whoever has the authority) to act on it. That's not presumptuous, that's not trying to subvert process, and it's not disruptive. It's being helpful.
  • I have never suggested that the developers work on software in isolation from end-user input. I've simply pointed out that some of the date autoformatting opponents have intentionally disrupted previous development efforts, and want to make sure that they won't be allowed to do so again.
  • I don't think it makes sense to have a poll/rfc/whatever to approve a specification before starting development work, mostly because it's unnecessary and people are obviously sick of these polls. Without opponents actively disrupting the process, it's quite easy for interested parties to collaborate on a specification in a more informal manner, in parallel with the actual coding. Also, a significant number of date autoformatting opponents have made it very clear that they only want new software presented to the community in the context of a working, tested, already-completed version, so that people aren't giving an opinion on "vaporware" that might never be developed.
  • I agree that what Werdna did wasn't really very cool. I do think the development of new features should occur with community input, which clearly wasn't the case with the new parser function he committed to the code without so much as a word to the folks who had been discussing the issue (and developing a workable, if incomplete, specification for how it should work.)

--Sapphic (talk) 00:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

  • OK, I’ll meet your (*sigh*) and raise you a “Oh… jeeeeeez”. As to your first bullet point, if you had read what I actually wrote, you’d see I didn’t even imply that I was directly quoting you, but was summarizing your position. I wrote this:


(emphasis just now added) It seems clear enough to me that I wasn’t implying those words were a direct quote.

I’m ignoring the rest of your post; you and I have both become quite redundant. Since getting in the last word seems to be desperately important to your getting a good night’s rest, you may have the last word tonight. Lots of white space below. Greg L (talk) 01:35, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

  • If I am guilty of clerk-bashing, please forgive me. I would once again reiterate my polite opposition to Ryan's recommendation as well as Sapphic's suggestion, for the reasons already stated in this section and the one above respectively. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:47, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

With respect to the Werdna thing, why is anyone bashing him? From what I can tell, all he did was address a bug request that had been around for years, and that had been actively discussed. There was community input, and it had to be approved by other developers before being incorporated into the software, so it's not as if he "went rogue" or anything like that. --Ckatzchatspy 02:31, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

  • With all due respects to Werdna's contribution to WP, I would say that that little piece of code was probably relatively harmless, and I'm sure he was confident it wouldn't crash anything. However, if he were my IT Director, I'm sure I would have had words with him about it for potentially risking the stability of my live servers by running a test piece of code. Although a bug-fix request may have been lodged a long time ago, it was a completely new piece of code and not a "bug fix" by any meaningful/commonly-accepted definition/interpretation of the word. If in fact it was done after adequate testing, then I would apologise, but add that the process is lamentable for its completely opacity. In contrast, User:UC Bill did the right thing by running his code 'Son of DA' thingy on a test server, completely off-wiki. Ohconfucius (talk) 06:07, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I find GregL's plea for calm language disingenuous. Your response to me above at 22:11 shows no sign that you bothered to read my statement, or tried to even understand what my concerns are. I don't give a rat's ass about autoformatting! Further, I find your confusing my interests with that issue offensive. What I refer to is the same single issue I have brought up before, & still stand on. Last summer I asked a question about making an exception over linking dates of birth & death on the MoS -- & had a slab of the MoS tossed at my head while you lot giggled over who "Harvey J. Wallbanger" was. Not a "yes" or "no" -- just the equivalent to "RTFM", a response which still leaves me angry. When I brought a related issue up some time later -- that the MoS is advisory, not mandatory -- Tony responded again with a curt dismissal. Discussing a matter, & losing the argument is one thing; but you lot are acting as if only you understand how Wikipedia works, & the rest of us are in need of correction. The whole point of a Wiki is for people to discuss issues; consensus is rarely permanent; & if you cannot provide a convincing explanation for your edits, they will be reverted. You bunch simply don't get it. -- llywrch (talk) 05:39, 9 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you: …had a slab of the MoS tossed at my head while you lot giggled over who "Harvey J. Wallbanger" was. I don’t know jack about who or what Harvy J. Wallbanger is nor could I possibly care less. I don’t know what you are talking about. Don’t care either. I frankly don’t even recognize your majuscule-deficient name (llywrch) although that doesn’t mean we hadn’t cross paths before. It sounds like you’ve got an axe to grind. If I offended you in the past, I’m sorry; it wasn’t personal. I see you’ve voted in the appropriate places in the RfC; that’s nice.

    As to if you cannot provide a convincing explanation for your edits, they will be reverted, again, I don’t know what you are talking about (which is probably a good thing) because I might make one date-related edit per month. But I note, from your pledge/threat to revert, that you seem to have an *extra special* attitude about how collaborative writing works. As to Tony responded again with a curt dismissal, I’ve had an epiphany here. I will not respond to you anymore. Goodbye and happy editing. Greg L (talk) 22:21, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

    • CKatz, no one is "bashing" developers; for heck's sake, we need them. What people are nervous about is that major technical changes can be made by anyone without reference to the community. I don't even see one mention of Werdna's response to the three-year Bugzilla discussion. What I do see there is a pointed message from Brion Vibber in relation to UC_Bill's program strings: "Since this tweaks around markup, it really needs some parser test cases." Well, yes. Development needs to be more open to community comment, just as bot running is. You cannot blame us for feeling more caution and step-by-step community input is required ... this is now not even world-best practice: it's standard. What company board or public organisation would allow people (no matter how skilled) to come in and make changes to their programming without due process? Tony (talk) 06:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Addition of 1346 to Background statement about year linking

User:Wrad has added "1346" to the background statement about year linking. Adding this particular year link may lead readers to believe that year articles generally follow that format. This is misleading, as it is unrepresentative of the vast majority of year links. As Wrad has been reverted by three users now (me; User:Coren, an arb; and User:Tony1), I suggest we discuss this addition first. It took weeks to decide on the wording of these statements, adding things to it after those discussions—and when it is clearly disputed—is, as Coren said, "not proper". Dabomb87 (talk) 15:06, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Your statement has been added to plenty of times since this discussion started, so let's not apply a double-standard. People need to see what a year article can be if they want to make a fair judgment on the issue. It's a very important thing to point out. What an article can be is almost more important than what it is at the moment. Some people in this poll seem to think year articles shouldn't exist. Would they think that if they knew about what they could be? I think that fewer would. People have a right to know. Wrad (talk) 15:19, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I agree that it's misleading to add it. However, I congratulate Wrad on bringing a year article into some useful kind of semblance. If year articles were generally as good as this one then I would have no problem encouraging a few more links. However, this is not the case. Perhaps one problem is that when IP editors see the usual "list" style year articles, they only add to the list and don't try to create a more logical, useful prose style article. Year links may have to be re-evaluated in the future if they significantly improve in standards. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 15:22, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
It is misleading not to at least mention it. People need to know that there is some hope! Stop trying to hide this from people! This just seems silly to me! Why are we making a "special" rule about linking years when it was a "special" rule that caused problems in the first place! Mark my words. This poll is going to backfire big time down the road. Pretty soon there will be almost no links to year articles, and year articles will never improve once that happens. Wrad (talk) 15:27, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
You have this nice little summary of the debate about year links, but you don't even mention 1346, which brings a very important point to this debate: Year links can actually take you somewhere! There is hope! Why shouldn't this at least be mentioned, with it's own point and counterpoint? Wrad (talk) 15:39, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
I appreciate the sentiments but I'd be inclined to stick to the original, especially as there are only 3 days left on the poll. I don't think all those editors will review their responses within this timeframe. It will be worthy of discussion once the poll is closed. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 15:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
Exactly what SillyFolkboy said. Dabomb87 (talk) 16:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • It is misleading to mention it. It's totally unrepresentative of what year articles are, and moreover what they all could be. Much of the information in that year article would need to be duplicated in the surrounding articles; it sucks out the available information. However, this ignores the fact that you cannot possibly change the text like that after the voting has started. Tony (talk) 18:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
In principle, I would have been in favour of adding a link to 1346 in the statement, to show that articles such as 1987 don't have to suck; they happen to suck. But so late, I agree with Coren that changing the statement after the poll has been opened would be "not proper". As for [i]t's totally unrepresentative of what [...] they all could be. Much of the information in that year article would need to be duplicated in the surrounding articles, this might be the case for articles for years far in the past (which, as for me, I would rather merge to one article per decade), but as for more recent years, I can easily imagine a 1968 article and a 1969 article with no more overlap than, say, between the Quark and Electron articles. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 18:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Linking 1346 is a pathetically minor, trivial detail that isn’t going to materially affect the RfC. Let them have their way. The past three RfCs can’t be affected at all. Moreover, this RfC is quite clear that the community has not asked a handful of volunteer developers to run to their basements and dream up new ideas on this issue.

    So much disruption caused by so few. If they want to keep pushing it after this is over, they can do so in a less disruptive fashion; they can just submit their ideas to Wikipedia’s Chief Technology Officer. If someone comes up with an idea on how to make it so I.P. users have a preference setting too, or some other improvement that addresses a key community objection, and if our CTO thinks someone has finally come up with something worthy, I’m sure he would be more than pleased to advance it to the community for consideration. Greg L (talk) 19:36, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

On 10 March 2009, I suggested that year-linking might offer this advantage: "Allows for the possibility that at some future time, year articles may provide a useful background to an article." As it was not specifically included in the final draft of this poll, I can only assume that it was left out for a reason. I'm afraid Wrad will need to ask Ryan or who whoever drafted the appropriate section why. Considering the amount of effort that has been put into setting up this poll, it is clearly inappropriate to attempt to bring in further wording now, particularly as something similar was proposed and rejected already. --RexxS (talk) 01:03, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Until July 2008, the article 1346 was like any other year article: a fragmentary, incomplete and culturally biassed collection of factoids. (I say this as a member of the WikiProject Years.) Wrad then embarked on a major exercise in writing a running-prose introduction. After nine months, It's quite good (although ignores several continents and many other parts of the world (meso America and Ceylon and Cambodia had MAJOR low-density cities at that time, for example); however, I suspect it was done to prove a point: "this is what all year articles could be like". Perhaps it's true, but there are two impediments:
  1. Multiply this effort by a thousand or two, and you realise that this is not going to happen in even 10 years. This would be the case even given a concerted effort, which I've called for at the WikiProject page, but which hasn't been taken up as a strategy.
  2. There's the "suck-in" phenomenon, where much of what is treated in such a large, broad article, pertains to the surrounding years as well; would 1345 be largely similar? I think so. This is why I called for year pages in the pre-modern period to be merged into decade pages; again, a bit of discussion, but no progress.
But this is all beside the point: year pages are not generally going to be like 1346, in its incomplete and unrepeatable uniqueness, any time in the next few decades—not as we see the situation now. If it ever changed, in a future world, bots could easily link year pages with a minimum of human oversight. At the moment, linking years in unlikely and distant hope is whistling in the wind. Year pages are hardly orphaned when one is highlighted on the main page, if you please, every day. Tony (talk) 04:19, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
"any time in the next few decades" - pretty big words for someone who's been with the project for less than four years. There are a lot of things here now that we would never have expected back when I signed up. — Hex (❝?!❞) 14:46, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
But Hex, you do agree with the gist of my thread, don't you, and you accept my good faith towards year articles? Tony (talk) 14:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

You know you've been partecipating in this discussion too long when...

...you take more than fifteen seconds to realize that the three letters in the middle of the registration plate of the moped in front of you are DWY, and not actually DMY. (It really happened to me. Ya think I need a break?) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — This, however, is thought to be a mere strain upon the text; for the words are these: 'that all true believers start their datesbreak their eggs at the convenient end.'. 19:02, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

  • It’s like going on a three-day-long prairie dog hunt. For a while after that, a lot of stuff at 300 meters looks like a prairie dog. Brain training. Yeah… “moped”. There are a lot of those in Italy. Like overweight Americans at Wal-Mart: don’t have to wait long for one to go by. I guess weight loss is on my mind a lot. That’s the medical technology I’ve worked on the last four years. Greg L (talk) 21:45, 12 April 2009 (UTC)


Statistics needed. Cui bono ("Who benefits?")

Statistics needed relating to cui bono (translated as "who benefits?"). Please see: Village pump (technical): How to count number of editors that actually set date preferences? I am amazed that we don't have the information already. Lightmouse (talk) 12:19, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I'd be very interested to know this too. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 15:32, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

From statistics provided at the Village Pump (link above), it looks like for registered editors only:

  • 7,242,868 have it set to the 'No preference' option
  • 84,787 have it set to the mdy option
  • 72,480 have it set to the dmy option
  • 4,702 have it set to the ymd option
  • 17,876 have it set to the ISO8601 option

Autoformatting is therefore only set for about 2 registered editors out of every 100. The article Wikipedia:About says Wikipedia has 684 million visitors per year. That implies another factor of 100 i.e. autoformatting set for 2 users out of 10,000. Lightmouse (talk) 12:09, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

All 47,335,332 registered users benefit from it, plus all the unregistered readers, since autoformatting would ensure consistent date formatting in an article. --Amalthea 14:09, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
How many of those 7 million editors are actually active? I'd guess only a percentage, possibly less than 10%, are actually active (if you want an actual definition of active; made edits in the past three months and made over 150 edits to article space). If we go with my 10% guesstimate, that's 724,287 active editors; editors who have a preference set consist of 42%. Go find out how many editors are actually active and aren't simply accounts that were created and subsequently abandoned, used for spamming, or blocked trolls abusing anonymous proxies. —Locke Cole • t • c 16:42, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
I don't know how many are active. Nor do I know how activity relates to reading. Nor do I know how setting a preference relates to activity. If you have better evidence, it will be useful to inform the debate. Lightmouse (talk) 17:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Because reader accounts are indistinguishable from sleeper vandal accounts. Active editors and the percentage that use the feature are a better metric for determining how many use the feature. As an aside, I note Cui bono (read the lead of the article) seems to be an assumption of bad faith on your part; it's not like I'm SELLING the Foundation super sekrit code to enable date autoformatting for some lucrative sum of money (or for some other reason besides improving the experience of those who read this encyclopedia). —Locke Cole • t • c 03:52, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
FWIW, according to Special:Statistics there are 160,436 "active users", defined as "users who have performed an action in the last 30 days". So your guesstimate is off by at least one order of magnitude. (I can't understand why it matters, anyway: we're talking about readers, so why would you exclude users who don't edit?) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 19:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
There's no reliable way to determine how many are readers. Many accounts are created by vandals/trolls and kept as sleeper accounts to be used/discarded at some later date, and there's likely no way to tell the difference between a genuine reader and an account being held for other purposes.. hence my focus on active editors/contributors. This is not to say we shouldn't resolve this for readers (even unregistered readers), but trying to determine what percentage use the feature (again, amongst readers) would be fraught with problems. —Locke Cole • t • c 03:52, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
PS: Wikipedia:Editing frequency has more detailed data about that, but they date back to last September. --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 19:45, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand. Autoformatting doesn't work unless it has been set. Lightmouse (talk) 14:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Not yet, but adding a magic word {{DEFAULTDATEFORMAT}} similar to {{DEFAULTSORT}} would be easy. See also Anomie's support #1 and the comments at rev:48249. --Amalthea 14:28, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Ah. You are talking about 'Son Of Autoformatting' which doesn't exist. This section is only about how many people use autoformatting today. Lightmouse (talk) 14:36, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

This shows the laughably small proportion of registered editors who use the DA. The default is "No preference", and many people wouldn't know about the function or bother to change it. It took me almost a year to realise its existence. It is good that registered editors don't usually choose a preference, since they then see exactly what their readers do. This WYSIWIG situation is the best one for the project and should not be jeapordised by messing around with templates and tags and patches. Tony (talk) 17:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment Lightmouse, no disrespect, but this data is utterly and completely useless without some form of proper analysis. In order for it to have any value at all, you would have to go through and filter out everyone who has registered and then abandoned their account (i.e. vandals with "final warnings"), SPAs who were blocked, dedicated vandals who created dozens, hundreds, or thousands of accounts (Grawp, Serafin, EverybodyHatesChris, and others come to mind, and that's just my experience). Beyond that, the "684 million" figure appears to represent all Wikipedia sites, not just the English Wikipedia; while EnWiki is by far the largest, you would certainly have to adjust for that. Of that number, can you also identify how many are distinct users? The "2 out of 10 000" is nonsense. --Ckatzchatspy 20:11, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

A way to find out the information Lightmouse want would be setting up an array of six counters (one for each of the five possibilities in "Special:Preferences#Date and time", plus one for "not logged in"), and have the rendering engine update the n-th counter each time a HTML page is generated with the n-th preference in effect. Let it run for two weeks or so. As a bonus, numbers will also be weighed according to how many pages each person reads. (Dunno if it's feasible to implement that, though.) --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 20:31, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

We are going through all this to satisfy the whims of 180 thousand editors with preferences out of 7 million editors and 684 million readers. Arbcom take notice!
According to Alexa [5] 54% of Wikipedia traffic is to the English site. For all sites, the United States is the largest source of readers, 22.6% from the US verses 4% from the United Kingdom. (And we allow those Brits to use "colour"!) Here is something to think about. What if the largest source of en.wikipedia.org readers is from the United States, should the default dates follow US customs? -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 23:04, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
According to Nielson Online, Wikipedia had 56 million unique visitors in April 2008. Thats 56 million readers without preferences set verses 180 thousand with preferences. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 23:32, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
According to Nielson Online[6], en.wikipedia.org had 56 million unique visitors in April 2008. It appears that around 275 thousand users in the history of Wikipedia have set a date preference. It is unknown how many of these people are still active and log in when reading Wikipedia. (If you are not logged in, date autoformatting doesn't work.) The best case with these numbers is that 1 out of 200 readers benefits from date autoformatting. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 17:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but by Locke's estimate, 90% of registered accounts are inactive, therefore there would clearly be only around 18 thousand active with preferences set :D --RexxS (talk) 23:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, whatever way people try to spin it, all roads lead to one inescapable conclusion: a vanishingly small proportion of users. Tony (talk) 03:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Yes, whatever way people try to spin it, all roads lead to one inescapable conclusion: this is irrelevant, and yet another ploy by those on the other side to minimize the value of something they fiercely oppose. As per usual, all logic and reason have flown out the window for this. —Locke Cole • t • c 04:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
I've never known a vandal or SPA to bother setting their preference, but obviously your experience differs... —Locke Cole • t • c 04:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
So, Locke, how many vandals or SPAs do you know and how did you tell what preferences they set? Personally, I would have guessed that most inactive users simply stopped editing WP, but who knows? Is there any evidence that inactive users are any more likely or not to have set preferences? Of course not. You brought up the 90/10 inactive/active and I know you are able to accept rational arguments, so why not accept that is the best statistical estimate we can make, absent any other evidence? --RexxS (talk) 14:34, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Locke, if you or anybody else can get statistics on active registered users, please let us know. I started this thread because I wanted data on actual choices made by users rather than opinions. The truth will set us all free. Lightmouse (talk) 10:27, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Oh hell, to have had these statistics when there was the great big hooha when Greg posted that 99.9% of WP users did not/would not benefit... Stats solely on 'registered users' are meaningless because they are but a fraction of all users. These are figures which are clearly inconvenient to certain parties' push for 'son of DA', so I'm hardly surprised at attempts to rubbish it. Most of thes real users don't vote in WP polls about date formatting... Ohconfucius (talk) 16:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Greg was wrong about 99.9%, the number might be as low as 99.5% do not benefit. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 17:36, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Greg was indeed wrong. Only 160,436 out of 9,418,752 registered users are "active" (1.7%) and only 179,845 out of 7,422,713 registered users have set preferences (2.5%). Without further evidence that demonstrates any correlation between activity and setting preferences, the statistically "best" estimate is made by assuming independence. That yields a likeliest estimate of 3,887 active users with preferences set (0.04%) or 99.96% not benefiting. --RexxS (talk) 18:48, 13 April 2009 (UTC) I had a proof that 4,000 benefiting out of 56,000,000 readers gave 99.993% not benefiting but this margin was too small to hold it.
  • So basically, the stats say that approximately 180,000 accounts actually care enough about autoformatting to have turned it on. (We don't know what percentage of this is "active" accounts nor whether this amounts to double-counting of editors due to sock-puppetry/SPA/etc.) That leaves a large, large number of editors who may not mind that other people like autoformatting but who don't consider it important enough to turn the autoformatting on themselves. I wish we'd had those stats at the beginning of the poll. In my opinion, that is such a small percentage of editors and potential editors that it would be difficult to justify adding/keeping any complexity to the editing process. Karanacs (talk) 17:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • These stats are flawed and incorrect. Further, the question is irrelevant because auto formatting could be made to work for all editors. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I completely understand that it could be made to work for all editors. The key point of these statistics is that only a relatively small proportion of readers cares enough about autofomatting to want to turn it on. Why make editing more difficult when most readers don't care enough to use it now? Karanacs (talk) 18:10, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Recent talk page posts regarding this RfC - is it canvassing?

This question is for Tony1 and Lightmouse, in light of the objections to Sapphic's recent posts that were described as "canvassing"... recently, I noticed a post of Tony's encouraging another editor - who had previously opposed DA in an earlier poll - to vote in the RfC. As it turns out, that was part of a series of similar messages, samples of which include:

"To get to the point of my message, I notice that you participated in an RFC late last year on date autoformatting, and wrote of clutter in edit-mode. I'm afraid this issue is the subject of another RFC, with a new proposal to add long template strings to edit-mode dates."

"People are overwhelmingly against the blue-link date autoformatting, but now there's a push to add a template string to each date to re-introduce autoformatting for WPian editors who want to select a different dispaly for themselves."

"However, I'm afraid this issue is the subject of another RFC which proposes among other things the addition of long template strings to dates."

"I notice that you participated in an RFC late last year on these matters, and expressed opposition to the concept of date autoformatting and to overlinking... You may wish to make your views known again on this same issue, whatever your opinion now. It's open until Monday, I think"

Further to this, it also appears that Lightmouse has been contacting dozens of editors who have used his date-delinking script (ostensibly people who would already oppose autoformatting) to encourage them to vote. Now, this may or may not be legit - that's up to Ryan to decide - but given the concerns expressed about Sapphic contacting people who had already voted, I'd just like to know why they think this is acceptable. --Ckatzchatspy 09:59, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

  • (edit conflict) Pardon me, that is a ridiculous accusation. The injunction was put in place because dispute resolution is in progress. I was asked to tell people about the injunction; I contacted only a few. It would be bizarre to tell someone about the date linking injunction but not to mention the date linking RFC that is intended to resolve the injunction. This is a particularly strange complaint given the demands by your people that Lightmouse place a warning at the top of the script (which he did). FAC and FLC nominators and others need to remove DA on an occasional basis; it is not reasonable to complain when likely users and manual delinkers are warned to be cautious in the light of the injunction. I note that there have been blockings for minor instances of delinking (quite outside the scope of the injunction, but nevertheless in its name). Tony (talk) 17:25, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I think it is also more-than OK to contact Wikipedians who voted in previous RfCs and tell them about this RfC, Ckatz. The only prerequisite is that Wikipedians be contacted equally off a given list, using the same criteria, regardless of how they voted. Scores, if not hundreds, of people voted in the previous RfCs and naively thought that the issue was settled. In fact, they are now all disenfranchised voters.

    It’s hard to know the precise extent to which the arbitrators are considering the previous RfCs, but it is clear that this RfC carries a lot of weight. In fact, according to people like Locke, two out of three of the previous RfCs were fatally flawed and should be completely disregarded. So it is crucial that we get the widest possible participation in this one. It would be manifestly unfair if all those who had participated in the previous RfCs—regardless of whether or not their vote as “for” or “against” on the various issues—were not advised that a strong case was being made here that their previous votes no longer mattered. They need to be told that they must now come here and vote (again) to have any say in the matter. If these editors chose to ignore the invitation, that’s fine. But at least they are making a fully informed decision to turn their backs on this issue.

    Now… I’ve advised both Tony and Lightmouse of precisely this point and they both understand the message. Moreover, they have been contacting Wikipedians out in the open on their talk pages to ensure there is complete transparency. I can’t prove what Sapphic et al. might or might not be up to. But there has been a suspicious pattern to the last handful of “support” votes on autoformatting as evidenced by a curious similarity to the vote comments. Now, over this suspicion, I’m not going to allow myself to get dragged down into a link-fest with you, where you try to seize the moral high ground by citing “failure to assume good faith” and I counter with WP:Snowball. I think you and I both know what’s probably going on here, Ckatz. Greg L (talk) 17:22, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

To Tony: No, it most certainly is not a "ridiculous accusation". You've done something that I felt was questionable, so I'm asking a question about it. Your response does little to ease those concerns, especially given that you were sending essentially the same DA-is-bad-vote-against-it message under such unrelated headings such as "Admiralty Islands, etc.", "Your detailed maintenance work", "Pictures, for once!" and "MilHist article for the Signpost".
To Greg: Greg, your veiled comments aside, it is pretty obvious what is going on here. --Ckatzchatspy 19:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Quoting you, Ckatz: …it is pretty obvious what is going on here. Sure: a bit of what happens in every RfC on Wikipedia. All you can do is try to keep the playing field as level as possible and reign in conduct that is beyond the line. And if you take away the effect of the borderline canvassing and Sapphic’s arm-twisting of people who have already voted, the overall effect on the outcome of the RfC is negligible to none. The ratios haven’t changed more than ±2 percentage points since day-one. It’s clear that the community has not requested that Sapphic, UC Bill, et al. come back with a smorgasbord of autoformatting ideas to chose from; far from it, they’ve said “don’t like it—come back two years from now.”

    As I mentioned above, if they want to keep pushing their cool‑beans ideas after this is over, they can do so in a less disruptive fashion; they can just submit their ideas to Wikipedia’s Chief Technology Officer. If someone comes up with an idea on how to make it so I.P. users have a preference setting too, or some other improvement that addresses a key community objection, and if our CTO thinks someone has finally come up with something worthy, I’m sure he would be more than pleased to advance it to the community for consideration.

    As for date linking, the RfC results are a cream. I ask that the arbitrators rescind their injunction on bot delinking activity ASAP so we can get the whole of en.Wikipedia delinked. The community couldn’t be clearer that links should always be germane and topical to the subject matter. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

It most definitely meets the definition of canvassing, and was one of the reasons why I suggested to Ryan that he block all involved for the duration of the RFC. It's unfortunate he didn't heed the suggestion as now these results are tainted by the misbehavior of editors on the other side (editors who already overstate things in their "statements", but now resort to calling out the troops to try and skew discussion further). —Locke Cole • t • c 03:56, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • You are soooo predictable, Locke. Tainted: That’s a metric ton of weapons-grade bullonium. Where were you when Sapphic was arm-twisting voters to change their votes? You were conspicuously silent. She even bragged about how her arm-twisting worked. This RfC's results have been 59/41 ±1 against delimiting all along. Deal with it. Greg L (talk) 04:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Continuing discussion is not "arm twisting", and what Sapphic was doing doesn't meet the definition of canvassing (unlike what's been done here). Tony and company, on the other hand, are trying to vote stack this by soliciting !votes from people they know will vote their way (people who haven't voted at all yet, unlike Sapphic, who merely contacted editors after the fact to discuss things further with them). No sir, you have only your compatriots to blame for tainting this RFC, and I sincerely hope ArbCom sees this disruption for what it is and acts accordingly (since none of you seem willing to back down from disruptive behavior or personal attacks). —Locke Cole • t • c 04:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Locke, you can claim "tainted" all you want, but the public opinion will drown you out. It is very simple: The community has clearly rejected date linking and there is at the least no consensus on autoformatting. Go ahead, cry wolf. Try to start another RfC, and see what happens. "Tony and company" won't have to do anything but watch the community angrily put down another attempt to stall the inevitable. Dabomb87 (talk) 15:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Dabomb87, the results have been tainted by this canvassing. It's unfortunate that when a supposed landslide victory on those two points was taking place, Tony and company decided to canvass for additional support. The problem is, the issue of auto formatting is still, at best, no consensus. My personal read is this: there was consensus for auto formatting years ago when the feature was developed and turned on, and that consensus has not been overturned (RFC2 and this RFC (RFC3)) are both showing no consensus; so we remain at the status quo). What that means for those insistent on delinking dates is that you can't do it. You don't have consensus, because delinking dates also removes the auto formatting. Where we need to go from here is to decide if we want to turn off the linking (but leave the formatting) and allow the devs to address the bugs in the auto formatter, or if we want Tony and company to try for another bite at the apple with yet another RFC to try and force their way. Personally I hope ArbCom sees reason here and gives us the former, not the latter... —Locke Cole • t • c 18:30, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
    Locke, there is no consensus either for or against the general concept of autoformatting, but there appears to be a somewhat strong consensus against its current implementation (Dynamic Dates). So I'd propose that for now we just turn Dynamic Dates off (i.e., $wgDynamicDates = false). If and when someone implements a new form of autoformatting, and there is consensus for using it, we'll turn that one on (although, with about 59% opposing the "general concept", it seems quite unlikely to me). --A. di M. (formerly Army1987) — Deeds, not words. 18:54, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Just as much was on my mind Dabomb, thanks. Thunderbird2 endlessly made exactly the same arguments about how the community’s abandoning our proprietary use of “mebibyte” (in preference for the “megabyte” everyone else on this pale blue dot uses) was horribly, horribly flawed because personal attacks prevented a rational discussion of the issue and the consensus was invalid. Same shit, different sandwich. I saw his post several hours ago but was going to ignore him. I suggest we all ignore him because he’s just taking us in circles. Greg L (talk) 18:16, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
  • If I'd had any sense I'd have ignored the trolls at MOSNUM months ago, but here I am, still taking the abuse... —Locke Cole • t • c 18:30, 12 April 2009 (UTC)
Trolls using bully tactics dont just restrict themselves to MOSNUM, FAC has a reputation due to the inability of those same trolls to communicate in a reasonable and calm fashion. Sometimes you just have to either walk away or stay and fight. Seddσn talk 02:42, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
I should disclose that I came here after I was emailed to contribute. I'll let the emailer own up. Peter Ballard (talk) 11:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Lest I be accused of unfair practice, it's clear that I need to provide an explanation. First, I have email contact with many WPians on a regular basis. Naturally, I have discussed the issues of DA and date-fragment linking for some time with wiki-associates. Although Peter and I had not previously emailed, his explicit opinions on his talk page, headed "Date links suck, but at least WP is onto it" and "Don't overlink" had come to my attention some time ago. I believe he has put his vote in perspective in his vote: "I was contacted privately to contribute after expressing an opinion last year, and would not have seen this discussion otherwise". I see that he had indeed voted on this matter already (as many voters have pointed out with a degree of irritation). In this case, there was every reason for us to communicate as WPians, since we are fellow countrymen and share strong beliefs on a number of issues, some of them pertaining here.
In the interests of openness, I have mentioned the poll as part of larger communication with seven users who have now voted; these are all people I would have communicated with about other matters; in particular, the FAC Delegate, User:SandyGeorgia, asked me last week to hunt for copy-editors to assist with the FAC process (I have regular contact with FAC and FLC nominators, on- and off-wiki). Two of the seven have responded on my talk page, here and here. In all seven cases, I warned of the need to exercise caution in unlinking, per the injunction. FA nominators often unlink, and are largely unaware of the injunction. It is bizarre that even a mention of an open poll on the same issue should be an offence.
I think this is far more reasonable than Sapphic's aggressive canvassing on wiki and no doubt off wiki, in which one user even responded by asking whether there is a "do not spam" template. By contrast, my communications were small in number, polite (extremely so), involved other matters, and were non-partisan. I do not believe my actions constitute unfair practice, unlike the attempts of Sapphic (and possibly other users) to change editors' votes. Tony (talk) 16:28, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Tony, be realistic about what was going on. The posts clearly show that you were making a direct appeal to people who held the same view as you did with respect to the poll, in an attempt to pull in more votes for your position. Why is it that you expect Sapphic to follow one standard, yet you hold yourself to a different one? --Ckatzchatspy 17:35, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Well, Ckatz, what started this was Sapphic’s stunt of going straight to people who voted “oppose” on autoformatting and trying to get them to change their vote. I will stipulate that what she did isn’t “canvassing” as defined by Wikipedia, but it was clearly intended to influence the results of the RfC in one particular direction. There shouldn’t have to be an explicit rule covering everything.

    But I agree with you that we don’t need to have any conduct that could undermine the legitimacy of this RfC. The RfC results have held steady at about 59% “oppose” and 41% “for”, ±1.5% for the entire duration of the RfC.

    It’s now 4:30 AM Sydney time (Tony’s time) and he’s gone to bed. I strongly encouraged him that if he wakes up before the RfC ends six hours from now, to stay out of anything related to this RfC until it’s over—completely off Wikipedia if he can. He agreed to abide by that restriction.

    I hope we can have some squeaky clean behavior from all parties for the last six hours? Greg L (talk) 18:31, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

  • Unfortunately at this point it's irrelevant. The entire thing has been called in to question, after all, how do we know the canvassing is just a recent thing? That it's happened at all makes me wonder if canvassing wasn't happening earlier in the RFC, or perhaps before it even began. And it's frustrating that these good faith efforts to try and resolve this continue to be disrupted by the same group of people. As for Sapphic, well I've said it enough places, but why not one more: what she did was, in my view, entirely appropriate. Discussion is good, obviously it's best if the discussion is performed on the actual RFC, but Ryan seemed to want to avoid threaded discussions, so direct contact was the next best thing. But all of her communications, as far as I am aware, were on-wiki; totally transparent, and not an attempt to undermine the process (just continue it through discussion). What Lightmouse and Tony have done is not in the spirit of good faith discussion and instead seem intent on skewing the results their way. This is disruptive, pure and simple. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Yeah, we know what you want: To call the whole RfC into question and claim we need a whole ’nother RfC. Ain’t gonna happen. You sound exactly like Thunderbird2 and his arguments about how incivility invalidated previous RfCs so there needed to be continued discussion of the matter. No there doesn’t. Not in the case of our going back to “mebibyte”, and not with regard to date linking. In case you haven’t been keeping score, the community has consistently been tossing date linking and autformatting on its ear. It’s the end. All the double-bracketed date links have got to go. The community has clearly spoken enough times already. Greg L (talk) 18:41, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Perhaps we need to reduce the scope here. As I pointed out somewhere else, it's clear that the canvassing has been focused on autoformatting, as evidenced by the 2:1 ratio of votes on date autoformatting to date linking. Perhaps, if we must have another RfC (or a "Phase 2"), we should concentrate on autoformatting, and make the questions more detailed. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:48, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I will not participate in another RFC until the conclusion of the arbitration case. The editors who consistently disrupt these discussions must be dealt with before anything resembling reasonable discussion can occur. And another RFC will just be another opportunity for Tony/Lightmouse to engage in stealth canvassing to try and stack the vote again. No, the ArbCom case needs to go to voting and hopefully remedies there will make it possible to discuss this again some time in the future without the disruption. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:54, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Then we have found a common complaint. I, just as much as you (although for different reasons), want to see the case closed and finished. For whatever reason, ARBCOM seems to be taking unusually long on this one. Dabomb87 (talk) 18:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • You don't understand Greg. I'm not trying to call it in to question, it is called in to question. What's been done cannot be undone, and the results of this RFC are irrevocably tainted. I'm not even interested in another RFC, because I expect the parties will simply engage in this stealth canvassing more carefully next time. I think the arbitration committee needs to start voting on sanctions on these disruptive editors, and only then we might be able to move forward with reasonable discussion. As for the rest of your comment... more garbage. —Locke Cole • t • c 18:50, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I see. Greg L (talk) 19:06, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Like Dabomb87 wrote, the RfC results regarding deprecating date linking was an utter slaughter. The past RfCs made that clear. This one did too. No amount of canvassing could possibly have influenced this RfC’s outcome on linking. And, more importantly, no canvassing has even been alleged with regard to date delinking, much less proven. Just because you can write a metric ton of weapons-grade bullonium about how the Arbitration Committee should disregard the RfC results with regard to date delinking, your arguments have to pass the ol’ *grin test*, which they don’t. Greg L (talk) 19:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Since Locke decided to repeat the same bollocks here as he wrote on Lightmouse's talk page, I repost this for everyone's benefit: "Campaigning is an attempt to sway the person reading the message, through the use of non-neutral tone, wording, or intent." (bold type my emphasis) Notwithstanding the voters' awareness of the poll, all the people contacted by her were on the 'oppose' side, and although some of the posts started off being neutral, others were not - some of the follow-ups were not neutral and could be considered 'badgering' those contacted to change their vote. As to there being "absolutely nothing wrong with what Sapphic was doing": nothing at all wrong my foot. Ohconfucius (talk) 19:20, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • We have had 4 RFC on date linking and formatting; all have shown the community does not want a sea of blue links. The results are not what Locke desired so every RFC was disruptive, confusing, tainted, stacked, and so on. We need to have a continuous stream of RFCs until one reaches Locke's desired results. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 21:19, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • COLLEFMODTH! (Chuckle out loud, loud enough for my old dog to hear!) So true, too. Greg L (talk) 01:12, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I forget, could it be considered "forum-shopping"? Ohconfucius (talk) 05:11, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Just my perspective: yes, Tony emailed me. I would have preferred it if he had instead used my Talk page (which is open for anyone to see). If he had used my Talk page I would certainly have seen it. Although my User page says I'm on a break for Wikipedia, a look at my contributions will show that I've been unable to stay away :), with edits to 12 different articles over 6 different days during the time of the RfC. Despite this level of WP usage, I was unaware that the RfC was happening - if there was a banner at the top of the WP main page, I missed it. So while I think canvassing is a bad thing, I am nevertheless glad I was notified. As probably would be most contributors to earlier discussions, both for and against. I think the solution is, for future date-formatting-related RfCs, for a bot to automatically notify (via their Talk pages) all contributors to previous related discussions. Peter Ballard (talk) 00:58, 14 April 2009 (UTC) (Fixed 2nd sentence Peter Ballard (talk) 01:23, 14 April 2009 (UTC))
  • Don't worry Peter, there will be another RFC. Perhaps someone can set up a bot that will cast our desired vote. Then we can have a monthly RFC. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 04:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • ROTFL. Thanks, Swtpc - I haven't been so tickled in quite a while. I'm sure plenty of people will support that automated voting scheme so we can be done with this nonsense perpetuated by arbs and clerks lacking cojones. Haha! We will need a naming convention just for the date-linking RfCs alone. Ohconfucius (talk) 05:11, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Closing time?

The heading reads:

"The poll runs from 00:00, 30 March 2009 (UTC) and concludes 23:59, 13 April 2009 (UTC)".

It may now be 13 April 2009 UTC (GMT), but is it 23:59 yet?

My date stamp below reads 06:56 (UTC).

(By the way, best wishes for Easter, Passover and whatever other spring holidays editors may be celebrating.)

—— Shakescene (talk) 06:56, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Hey! Poll has closed early! Why can't I vote? Peter Ballard (talk) 07:29, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
It was supposed to run for 2 weeks, so the cut off should have been 23:59, 12 April. Given I made a mistake with the dates, we'll leave it open for another day. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 09:49, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Canvassing

If anyone's been contacted off wiki about this poll, please contact me either by email or on my talk. Please don't post any emails on-wiki. Ryan PostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter 16:37, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposed Resolution

Since there isn’t a snowball’s chance of radical turn in the RfC results, here are my observations:

Date linking

There is a clear consensus on date linking in this RfC. The wording the community prefers (both “Option #1”s) should now go into MOSNUM. The injunction against bot activity should be lifted because the bot’’s activity is clearly in compliance with MOSNUM.

While Lightbot does good work in general, I think the task descriptions need improvement. I'm surprised that the existing language made it through the approval process. All of those "may add, remove, or modify" items are essentially blank checks, unless conditions are specified to define when these actions take place. The same goes for the "will make other edits" with the "these will usually be..." qualifications. This language effectively authorizes the bot to sometimes do the unusual, without any constraints other than the operator's good judgment. If anyone objects to questionable or controversial results, it's too easy to defend the activities as "approved behavior". I'd rather see something along the lines of "Dates will be unlinked under the following conditions: (1) ... (2) ... (3)..." and "Dates will not be unlinked if any of the following are true: (1) ... (2) ... (3)..." and provide examples. I wouldn't rush to turn the bots back on until these activities are better defined. -- Tcncv (talk) 00:57, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Lightbot had a 100% success ratio in forty, randomly selected articles. See here for the results on twenty of those, where it demonstrated 0% false positives on ten articles that should left untouched, and 0% false negatives on ten articles that should have been delinked. Since there are millions of links, a bot is the only way to tackle something of this magnitude. The few false positives that Lightbot does goof on are easy enough to correct and pale in comparison to manually going in and delinking all those dates. Greg L (talk) 01:21, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Autoformatting

The old autoformatting method was deprecated in December. The RfC results on autoformatting has held steady with 57–60% saying they aren’t interested in new autoformatting ideas. Far from being consensus for autoformatting, it is a rejection of it. If Cole, UC Bill, Sapphic, or someone else wants to push some new kind of autoformatting (curly brackets with template names, magic words, whatever) they should first come up with something new that addresses the concerns of the community. Central to those concerns are that date linking isn’’t perceived as a problem worth the fuss. That sentiment is repeated over and over again in the RfC.

So, if they want to push some fussy ideas for autoformatting, it had better at least be something really good, like giving I.P. users the same benefits. Further, the current parties to the ArbCom should be enjoined from proposing autoformatting solutions to the community and starting RfCs on the subject for one full year. If the enjoined party is a developer, prohibited activities would include simply flat making behind-the-scenes changes to the way Wikipedia works for a year. I believe one year is the limit of the scope of decisions for ArbComs. Thereafter, the pro-formatting crowd can have their ideas vetted by Wikipedia’s Chief Technology Officer, Brion Vibber, to get permission to pitch or post their latest autoformatting ideas to the community. Greg L (talk) 19:22, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

There is a clear consensus that dates should only be linked when relevant. The clear majority is opposed to autoformatting. One important fact surfaced in this RFC, only about 200 thousand editors have ever set a date preference compared to more than 50 million readers that visit en.wikipidia.org each month. Since the consensus is to remove excessive date links, there is no need to maintain the autoformatting scheme that is used by less the 0.5% of Wikipedia readers. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 21:08, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
FYI, any supposed ratio is not a "fact" until someone produces a proper analysis of all relevant data. What has been repeatedly presented is just a meaningless series of numbers based on some data and a lot of speculation. --Ckatzchatspy 21:27, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • That’s simple, Ckatz. I’m busy. We can have Locke do the analysis and tell us what the true summary facts are regarding community consensus. Alternatively, maybe we might leave that up to the ArbCom members. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be appropriate to define what the "relevant" data is. Then we can ask the developers to run the queries for us. Considering that the numbers on the autoformatting side are not quite as lopsided as had been hoped, having the extra data might be very useful. Would editors, especially those on the "pro-autoformatting" camp, be willing to list the types of statistics they'd like to see on autoformatting? Karanacs (talk) 21:51, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
The Nielson Company has measured audiences for decades and they report that English Wikipedia had 55.8 million unique viewers in April 2008.[7] There have been 47,335,332 named accounts the history of Wikipedia. That sets the upper limit of readers with date preferences at less than 17%. The number of registered users that have ever set a date preference is about 275,000.[8] That has an upper limit of 0.49%. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 22:09, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
Wikimedia has some more measurements based on data from comScore. [9] English Wikipedia had 140.7 million unique viewers in September 2008 and 41 thousand editors made 5+ edits that month. Lots of readers, small number of editors. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 23:01, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
That would set the upper limit at 0.03%. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:07, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • There’s the numbers I was looking for. Thanks SWTPC6800. I’ve long said that there was no point using autoformatting to benefit registered editors when it is of no use to 99.9% of our readership. In fact, autoformatting does no good for 99.97% of our readership. Absurd. Greg L (talk) 01:28, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Dates should be linked if key to the article. Therefore bot delinking should not continue and it should be accepted that the process requires human editors to make a concious choice about relavence to the article not a turbo charged bot without an ounce of clue. 86.132.128.230 (talk) 23:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • To I.P. user from London: We already had that discussion. Scientifically. The error rate of Lightbot in complying with these new guidelines was zero false positives. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)
  • To 86.132.128.230: The point is that bots allow for a "clean slate" approach to date linking. After the dates have been unlinked, human editors can make conscious choices in order to link the relevant dates. It is too much work to manually unlink the enormous number of dates that currently have been linked purely because it seemed like a good idea at the time. By the way, can you give some examples of "relevant" dates? (this RfC demonstrated that it isn't even clear cut as to whether the community wants dates of birth and death to be linked).  HWV258  00:51, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
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