User:J JMesserly/Plain text date issues

What do date templates do?
What they don't do:
 * The templates emit a microformat date corresponding to the event. This allows browsers to enable inter operation with internet applications that understand dates.  Currently Yahoo, and google calendar use microformats dates, and Google earth and timeline are using dates with Wikipedia content.
 * Some calculate the age of the person.
 * link dates
 * add categories based on date
 * seldom if ever used more than once or twice in any article, and then only in the context of an infobox.

What are the plain text date templates and what do they look like in an article?
Equivalent numeric date templates omit the hyphen. In the following table click the N for documentation on the corresponding numeric date template.

Why is it believed an RFC is necessary?

 * If plain text dates are allowed, a large number of articles will potentially be affected, and there is a lack of consensus whether the new templates help or hinder progress at WP. After thorough examination of the issues, there was agreement that the decision should not be made by a small minority of editors who have been following the discussion but should follow the general consensus of the wider wikipedia community.  Preliminary thoughts on an rfc here

Birth and Death date and age templates
In October 12, 2007, "advice about dates in infoboxes" was added to MOSNUM suggesting the use of and. At the time, the templates performed 4 operations:
 * 1) date linking
 * 2) microformats (bday) support
 * 3) calculation of age
 * 4) format control- only d-m-y or m-d-y allowed

After date linking was deleted from the templates in June 2008, it was no longer clear whether the microformats and age calculation had widespread support for retain the advice. (1. Discussion with Tony1 in March whether age calculation was all that difficult, 2. RFC on date formatting questioned the value of metadata at Wikipedia).

There is some question whether what the initial contributor called "advice" had the status of a mandatory quality control style rule. Did the guidance mean that any infobox not using the template should be changed to add the template wherever possible? What about infoboxes that used OldSytledate template?

Related Threads

 * Mar 2009 Village pump thread
 * Mar-Apr 2009 MOSNUM discussion
 * Feb 2009 MOSNUM discussion
 * Jan-Feb 2009 Microformats project