User:Bowdenford

Stupid cite serial date protocol
Remember when entering the dates in an article serial citation used to be oh-so-simple? It really was a piece of piss. You just added a 'began' date and an 'ended' date, formatted as yyyy-mm-dd with nice, handy, standard keyboard hyphens as separators, and you were pretty much away with the smoothing iron. It looked a bit like this:

cite serial | title = The Edge of Destruction | series = Doctor Who | credits = David Whitaker (writer), Richard Martin, Frank Cox (directors), Verity Lambert, Mervyn Pinfield (producers) | network = BBC | began = 1964-02-08 | ended = 1964-02-15

Well, apparently that was all bollocks, because one day the people-who-know-best decided to change the format. The simple 'began' and 'ended' tags were packed off to some virtual Gulag, and replaced by the seemingly innocuous but tricky to implement 'date'. The result was that, overnight, any serial citation formatted as above in any Wikipedia article suddenly grew an error message like this:

Check date values in: |date= ( help )

Since then many editors have been running around, spending their valuable time trying to 'correct' serial citations by putting them in the spiffy, revised format. To do that, you need to use the protocol set out below. You might think I'm making this up. I'm bloody not; try it for yourself and you will soon see what I mean.

Hoop-jumping with the stupid cite serial date protocol
(See Hoop-jumping at Cambridge Dictionary.org)
 * Do not use a leading 0 for single digit days. Thus 5 September 2015 . Not 05 September 2015, because that will produce a Check date values in: |date= ( help ) error.
 * Express months using text, not numbers. Thus 25 September 2015 . Not 25-09-2015 or 2015-09-25, because either one of those will produce a Check date values in: |date= (  help ) error.
 * Dates in a range must be separated using the en dash –  (type Alt+0150) . Not an em dash or the standard keyboard hyphen character, because either one of those will produce a Check date values in: |date= (  help ) error.
 * Where the date range falls within a single month, the month and year must only be entered for the date range end. Thus 5–26 October 1988 . Not 5 October–26 October 1988 or 5 October 1988–26 October 1988, or with a space on either side of the en dash, because any of that will produce a Check date values in: |date= ( help ) error.
 * Where the date range spans more than one month within a single calendar year, the year must only be entered for the date range end. Thus 21 November – 26 December 1964 . Not 21 November 1964 – 26 December 1964, or with no space on either side of the en dash, because any of that will produce a Check date values in: |date= ( help ) error.
 * Where the date range spans more than one calendar year, the day, month and year must be entered for both the date range start and end. Thus 21 December 1963 – 1 February 1964 . If there is no space on either side of the en dash, that will produce a Check date values in: |date= ( help ) error.

Just so you know.

Some examples of correctly formatted serial citations using the stupid cite serial date protocol
Example of a serial citation with the date range falling within a single month

Example of a serial citation with the date range spanning more than one month within a single calendar year

Example of a serial citation with the date range spanning more than one calendar year

Bowdenford (talk) 21:53, 14 September 2015 (UTC)