Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)/vote

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Vote at "summary and votes" (approval voting - vote for as many options as you like). For discussion of how these votes should be taken in the future, see wikipedia:vote. The seven options are:

  1. Make [[Day Month]] [[Year]] MoS policy
  2. Keep [[Month Day]], [[Year]] as MoS policy (status quo)
  3. [[Day Month]] for date titles, allow both [[Month Day]], [[Year]] and [[Day Month]] [[Year]]
  4. Allow both [[Month Day]], [[Year]] and [[Day Month]] [[Year]]
  5. Use yyyy-MM-dd RFC 3339 format internally and allow logged in users to have it reprocessed to their preferred format
  6. [[Month Day]] for date titles, allow both [[Month Day]], [[Year]] and [[Day Month]] [[Year]]
  7. Make [[Year]] [[month day]] [[UTC]] MoS policy
  8. Put a moratorium on the subject for at least 6 months.

Usage of different formats

This is just a summary of what publications/countries use which format, to save repetition in the summary below

  • Year Month Day
    • Standard in Portugal, Sweden, Japan, Korea, China.
  • Year Day Month
    • not used anywhere

Summary and votes

(approval voting)

  • Make [[Day Month]] [[Year]] MoS policy
+ NB: the Manual of Style is not mandatory. However, copyeditors will change entries to match the manual of style.
+ having two numbers seperated by a word is marginally easier to mentally parse (according to The Elements of Style)
+ Datebot should make changeover easy.
- Requires change to thousands of articles (are any of the above benefits worth the trouble?)
- requires US editors (majority) to work in form not natural to them
- some regard this position as "micro-management"
Votes for:
20: Tarquin, Martin, sannse, Bagpuss, Oliver P., JTD, Arwel, Matthew Mayer (though proper date markup would be better), Catherine, DanKeshet, Patrick, cferrero, Dramatic, Chris Q, mkrohn, Egil, Tom Peters, Seanos (it's not the USopedia), Infrogmation, James F.
  • Keep [[Month Day]], [[Year]] as MoS policy (status quo)
+ appears to be most common, at least in web publications around the world
+ NB: the Manual of Style is not mandatory. However, copyeditors will change entries to match the manual of style
+ Doesn't require any changes of current articles
- requires non-US editors to work in form not natural to them
- could make wikipedia appear US-focused, rather than international
- some regard this position as "micro-management"


Votes for:
17: Taku, Ortolan88, Stephen C. Carlson (date markup may be best long term), DanKeshet, The Cunctator, Zoe, Jazz77, Eloquence, Arthur, Lorenzarius, PMelvilleAustin (Month Day is used in Chinese), John Owens (even though I'm a 2003.05.23 kind of guy when it's just me), Lou I, Nanobug Pizza Puzzle (Why say 7th of March when its quicker to say March 7th?), Notheruser, Fred Bauder
  • Encourage [[Day Month]] [[Year]] (change date articles to [[Day Month]] but make no policy for article text)
+ Less troublesome than using datebots
+ Allows editors to work in form natural to them
+ consistent with spelling policy
- links to redirects will remain common
- Could lack of consistency appear unprofessional or hinder reading?
Votes for:
11: Stan Shebs, sannse, Zundark, Enchanter, Tannin, Chris Q, Taku, Toby, Tom Peters, Martin, the Epopt
  • Allow both [[Month Day]], [[Year]] and [[Day Month]] [[Year]], express no preference
+ Doesn't require any changes of current articles
+ Allows editors to work in form natural to them
+ Consistent with policy on tolerating U.S./British spelling differences
+ Respectful of world-wide indigenous cultural usages.
+ Less Eurocentric (a good point, perhaps, on this New Years Day, March 4, 2003, according to the Tibetan Lunar calendar).
+ Less US-centric
- not clear what date articles will be titled
- Many links to redirects
- Could one form end up being "official" even though no preference claimed? (since can't redirect to both dateforms)
- Could lack of consistency appear unprofessional or hinder reading?
- Could it lead to edit wars in different segments of Wikipedia where users will try to enforce one style over the other? (see PageHistory:10 Rillington Place for an example)
Votes for:
12: Bagpuss, Tannin, Enchanter, Arthur, Derek Ross, The Cunctator, Toby Bartels, AxelBoldt, mav FearÉIREANN, Arwel, the Epopt
  • Use yyyy-MM-dd RFC 3339 format internally and allow logged in users to have it reprocessed to their preferred format
+ Worldwide standard.
+ Natural for readers.
+ Ability to link to articles like December 2002 where appropriate.
+ Date articles can be titled according to preferences.
+ Easy for all RFC 3339 using language wikipedias, to link to date pages without having to understand other languages.
+ Allows support for people who don't know what the Gregorian calendar is.
± Editors have to think.
- Requires extra processing on server.
- Requires changes to current articles.
- Unclear what default settings would be and what preferred formats won't apply to the average researcher who comes here through a search engine -- what do they see? (Majority readers' format: MM/dd/yyyy, or unambiguous format: yyyy-MM-dd?)
- extra load on the database and parser, which would slow down wikipedia still further
Votes for:
12: Dramatic, Jeandré, SCCarlson (as long as it is reprocessed to preferred format), mkrohn, Kaihsu, John Owens (well, we can dream), Tom Peters, Angela, cprompt (Browser language settings could determine default for anon. users), James F., the Epopt, كسيپ Cyp 19:11 209 Karka 02 (Darian)
  • Keep [[Month Day]] standard, allow both [[Month Day]], [[Year]] and [[Day Month]] [[Year]] in entries, preferring format appropriate to majority editor/readership
+ Doesn't require any changes of current articles
+ Allows editors to work in form natural to them
+ consistent with spelling policy
+ Natural for readers, depending on how well majority of editors match the preferences of majority of readers
± Majority wins on popular entries
- Many links to redirects (~50%)
- U.S form may end up being "official" even though no preference claimed
- Could lack of consistency appear unprofessional or hinder reading?
Votes for:
2: The Cunctator, AxelBoldt
  • Make year-month-day UTC MoS policy (ie, no-one is forced to use it, but copyeditors will be changing other formats to it). This is the ISO 8601 and Internet standard RFC 3339 format. One could add a static UTC clock too.
+ External standard
- not clear what date articles will be titled
- Unusual and numeric
- ambiguous when referring to dates between 10 and 99 (unless leading zeros are prefaced)
- confusing and unintuitive when referring to BC dates
- what do we use where only day+month is given? (eg "Christmas is celebrated on 25 December")
- ISO standard is purely for numerical dates, not for spelt out months
Votes for:
3: Mac, WMC, Tom Peters
  • Put a moratorium on the subject for at least 6 months. Use whatever people want in the meantime.
+ people get back to the real task of writing an encyclopedia
± people stop talking about the subject for a while
- only postpones the discussion
Votes for: Danny, mav
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