User talk:Gerry Ashton/History of ISO 8601 and date autoformatting in Wikipedia

Changes to summary
The summary, as phrased, could be read to say that ISO was an original part of the design as Starling conceived it. This is not the case, as his note confirms. I also read the Gregorian discussion as having been about double-formatted dates; one implementer asked "do you want autoformatting to convert dates?" and got a negative reply. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:55, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The wording about the initial implementation of ISO 8601 was awkward; is it better now? Your reading of the Gregorian discussion is reasonable, I was focusing on the initial comment, which was very general. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 15:15, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I've tweaked some. If you disagree, do retweak.Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Julian calendar question
I posted similar in the MOS discussion, but this seems like a good place to ask:

Why does the YYYY-MM-DD date format bring up Julian vs. Gregorian questions any more than any other date format? This should not be an argument against using the YMD date format. --JWB (talk) 20:41, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * There are two answers, a Wikipedia answer, and a general answer. The Wikipedia answer is that, to some degree, Wikipedia says it follows ISO 8601, therfore dates in that format are either Gregorian or wrong. Wikipedia says it follows ISO 8601 because of the discussion described in this essay, because the instructions for the date format function in Mediawiki said they are ISO 8601 dates (until a few days ago), because the date and time preferences page that user choose an autoformatting format with has a date/time that is unmistakably ISO 8601, and because the instructions for many Cite templates describes the format as ISO 8601.


 * In general, it might not occur to a reader that there are any standards associated with the format. But if a reader does consult the Chicago Manual of Style (14th ed., pp 305–6), the format is described as "recommended" by the ISO, and later "the ISO dating system". So depending on which reference work is consulted, the reader may come away with the impression that dates in that format are always ISO 8601 dates. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 20:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Where do you stand on the visible date format question then? Do you oppose use of yyyy-mm-dd for visible dates? Or do you support them for Gregorian dates but not old Julian dates? Or is there another notation indicating Julian dates? --JWB (talk) 21:08, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I would consider using YYYY-MM-DD formatted dates in a table, or a similar place where many characters would make the table awkward to work with (perhaps because two bits of data that readers want to look at simultaneously won't fit on the screen at the same time). I would only do this if the dates were after 14 September 1752. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 21:14, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Wouldn't it make sense for pre-Gregorian dates to be displayed via a conversion template that would provide the Gregorian equivalent to a given Julian date or vice versa? --JWB (talk) 22:52, 10 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I would think that would be too cumbersome. Most people are content to go along with whichever calendar the date is stated in. But people who want to compare the date to a date stated in a different calendar in a (possibly) different article would want to know what the calendar is, so they know if a conversion is necessary. A person who wanted to compute the day of the week, or an astronomical event, would need to know what the calendar was. Once you know what the calendar is, it isn't hard to convert to the other one. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 23:24, 10 September 2008 (UTC)