User talk:John/date linking

Ground rules
Beyond obvious things like WP:AGF (and I'd like that to be extended to me as well!), I think it would be helpful to focus on utility rather than precedent or policy. The policy is muddy, and the precedent is unclear. When debating, try to focus exclusively on how the page can best assist the end-user. I know that may be difficult, but I explicitly don't want to go for any sort of straw poll approach here unless we have to. Maybe that way we can turn the unclear policy to our advantage in resolving the dispute, although ultimately it would be nice to end up with a clearer and better policy.

Proposed framework
If we could generate a list of examples where one should:


 * 1) Always link
 * 2) Usually link
 * 3) Seldom link
 * 4) Never link

I think that might be helpful. --Guinnog 04:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

All right, I'm going to enact this. --Guinnog 14:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Done! I made a table. See if you can add to it. --Guinnog 14:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Summary of progress so far
Hmains and Rebecca have been good enough to do their bit with the table. I accept wholeheartedly their reservations about the rather artificial premise of my criteria. It was truly interesting for me to examine my own assumptions about the relative value of linking different dates. The next step I propose is to see how their differing perspectives shape up in editing a test page. I suggest that detailed discussion of the various changes should take place here on this talk page after they have completed the test exercise, and that we leave the main page for any resolutions we may arrive at. --Guinnog 12:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmains and Rebecca have now completed this exercise, in the latter case by accepting an edit I did on her behalf according to the principles she laid out in her previous input. The next step will be to analyse the different edits the two users made to see if we can refine the table towards a consensus we can all accept. I will get on with that and will complete within 24 hours. In the meantime, any comments are welcome in the space I made for them below. --Guinnog 02:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Principles (table)
I suggest that Hmains begin by explaining what his principles are with regard to date delinking. Provision of diffs and examples would obviously facilitate discussion. (Guinnog)

I am afraid my 'principles' are not much more than what you yourself have just written. I too know what guidelines say. While I am doing my copyedit work, I see the linked dates, I look or have looked before at the 'year' articles and do not see that they add any context. I see context in timelines that relate to the subject of the article, but not just links to 'year' articles. These links provide no no discernable benefit to WP readers that I can see so I do my editing just as I do with anything alse that has no beneift. Hmains 05:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Can you see any merit in retaining any linked dates at all? The ones that come to mind are in articles about history. For example, I retained a link to the 19th century when I copyedited Flashman a while ago. I also often leave dates where they arguably might provide a context. An interesting effect of that is that I almost never let 2006 stand as a linked fragment, but I would often let 1066 stand. In other words, more recent dates seem less useful to me, as the reader (I would assume) is more likely to know enough to place the year in context. --Guinnog 05:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I've added the table above to see if we can end up with some rules of thumb here. Obviously if you are adding to it, it would help if you could give specific examples.


 * I don't know what to make of all this. I am not sure that my ideas on year linking are all that important.  I am just trying to follow the WP Guidelines as I understand them. I do not want to be implementing something that is my own personal taste or that of some other few editors--that would be a wasted effort. In the Guidelines and prior discussions, I don't see anything special about 'century' linking/delinking or about '1900' or '1800' or whatever as cut off points. Hmains 16:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I appreciate your comment. It is important to realise that Wikipedia is driven by the needs of its users, not its editors or admins, and that policy and guidelines are useful only inasmuch as they aid this. In a case like this, it is the looseness of the policy we have which seems to have caused so much trouble, and I would hope that any productive conclusions we can come to here may play a part in clarifying policy in the future. --Guinnog 17:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I did also stress that these were only my guidelines when copyediting. What are yours? --Guinnog 17:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Guinnog, what you put in the table looks fairly reasonable to me. At least, I would not mind if it were followed. Really, I think the whole date-linking issue could be settled by adopting the principle used for links in general: Link only the first occurrence or, for longer articles, perhaps also link a few further occurrences, but no more than are needed to keep one link to the given item in the reader's view. (For whatever difference in makes, there is an actual guideline, somewhere, saying something like that -- for links in general, though not for years in particular.) I suspect that if that principle were followed for bare years then the number of links to them should fall low enough that the links would cease to be an issue for all but a zealous few editors.

I don't quite agree with you about dates in tables, though. Part of the point of tabulating is that a user can find the line (or column, depending) holding the item of interest, and then simply scan across (or down), without needing to refer to rest of the table. If not every occurrence of a year is linked, a user wishing to use a year-link most often must go back to the table at large to find one, partially defeating the point of having the table. Also, links in a table can scarcely be accused of breaking textual flow, given that tables by their very nature break information into separate bits. Lonewolf BC 19:15, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Very good points. I'll amend my entry to reflect that. --Guinnog 19:33, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Links removed by both

 * Repeated links, especially close together in article. NB that medieval is a redirect to Middle Ages, and that eg 1400s is often misused in place of 15th century. Whether linked or unlinked, this is a serious error and should be checked and corrected wherever seen. Note also that forms like "twelfth-century" and 1980's (for the decade) are considered wrong and should be corrected, and that 1990s is not a link to the decade but to the single year.
 * Recent links are seen as low-value by all three of us. I thought roughly the last 100 years, Rebecca is more conservative and says the last 20 years. Obviously both of us would use an element of discretion here when delinking.
 * Easter-egg links of the type 1980 are deprecated.

Links removed by Hmains but retained by Rebecca
(in order of appearance in the article) *1st century (second instance, but well down a long article from the first) *408 (second instance) *12th century (second instance, in image caption) *9th century (second instance) *13th century (second instance) *13th century (third instance)
 * 15th century; some good background about the historical era.
 * 6th century BC; much less useful
 * 1st century; another fairly poor article. Peripheral interest only.
 * 3rd; thin article but contained one interesting fact slightly relevant to article
 * 7th; peripheral interest only.
 * 240 BC; one interesting fact; but this article is tiny. Little benefit.
 * 1st century BC; thin article but contained one interesting fact slightly relevant to article
 * 12th century; a slightly better article. One or two interesting facts. Some interest.
 * second century; another thin article. One slightly relevant fact.
 * 4th century; nothing here of any relevance to the article at all.
 * 5th century; peripheral interest only.
 * 354; article hardly exists. Nothing whatsoever here.
 * 430; Small article. Couple of peripherally relevant facts.
 * 245; Small article. One peripherally relevant fact.
 * 325; article hardly exists. Nothing whatsoever here.
 * 315 Little more than a stub. No interest here.
 * 386; peripheral interest only.
 * 344 Little more than a stub. No interest here.
 * 408; peripheral interest only.
 * 394; peripheral interest only.
 * 547; stub (unmarked). No utility at all.
 * 329; stub (unmarked). No utility at all.
 * 379 Better article. Still peripheral interest only.
 * 9th century Decent article. Good historical context.
 * 560; peripheral interest only.
 * 636 Stub-class. Nothing, or very little that was pertinent
 * 480 Slightly better. One interesting (though still peripheral) link, to Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
 * 524 Stub. Another mention of Boethius.
 * 672 Little here. We did get the birth of Bede, slightly relevant.
 * 735 Sub-stub article. Bede's death.
 * 700; peripheral interest only.
 * 784 Sub-stub article. Nothing here at all
 * thirteenth century Decent article. Some good context.
 * eighth century Less good, but some peripheral interest.
 * 1550 Some minimal peripheral interest
 * 11th century Decent article. Good historical context.
 * 1070 Stub. Little or nothing of relevance here.
 * 12th century Decent article. Good historical context.
 * 1013 Barely above a stub. No interest.
 * 1054 Mention of SN 1054 supernova slightly interesting and of peripheral relevance.
 * 1225 Birth of Thomas Aquinas. Very peripheral relevance.
 * 1274 Less poor article. Little of relevance though.
 * 1400 Little here of interest. Less poor than some of the earlier year articles. Peripheral interest only.
 * 1120 Stub article. One very interesting and relevant fact. Unfortunately Welcher of Malvern is a redlink. Could be improved though.
 * 15th century Good historical context.
 * 1828 Nothing much here. Peripheral interest for those who like random facts.
 * 19th century Very respectable article. Good historical context.
 * 16th century Reasonable article. One very relevant reference.
 * 1888 Nothing much here. Peripheral interest for those who like random facts.
 * 1898 Nothing much here. Peripheral interest for those who like random facts.
 * 1830 Nothing of relevance.
 * 1896 Some minimal historical context.
 * 1816 One interesting fact.
 * 1885 Some minimal historical context.

Analysis (preliminary)
I will have more to say on this. For now, let me explain what I have just done. I tried to put myself into the role of a reasonably intelligent but non-expert person reading the article on Flat Earth (the subject of the test piece). If we can take as read that the repeated, easter egg and very recent year links are regarded by both editors (and by me) as low-value links, it is interesting to click on each of the links that Hmains would have deleted and Rebecca would not, with a view to finding what information if any related to, or even gave meaningful context to, the events described in the article.

Some rather surprising (at least to me) things came up. The century articles seem more valuable for providing historical context than the individual year links for the earlier periods. Many of these early individual year links are so poor in my opinion as not to be worth linking to at all at present. It is also rather hard for me to see how they could ever plausibly be significantly improved. Look at 735 for example.

If you review the links in question, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that many of the year links added nothing at all in terms of direct relevance to the article. I do recognise there are some Wikipedia users who will value the semirandom possibility in, say, clicking on 1885 and thus navigating from Flat Earth to LaMarcus Adna Thompson, the roller-coaster pioneer. I had not been aware though that many of the early year articles are so poor as not to give any real possibility for this activity. I'll think about it some more and try to take this onward this evening. For now, anybody else want to comment? --Guinnog 13:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, I've made a table with the links that Hmains would have deleted and Rebecca would have kept (notionally) in chronological order. For my next trick, I'm going to grade each of the articles (which I've linked from the data table; you were right, Lonewolf BC, thank you). I've chosen to grade each article separately for article quality and relevance, from which I'll make up a utility score by multiplying the two. Like everything else here it might seem arbitrary, but I think it is fair. In the wiki spirit, I'll only do them one or two at a time, and will be happy if anyone else wants to join in. We should, especially if Rebecca and Hmains (and potentially other people) will take part, end up with a very interesting dataset, showing what links are better than others, for this randomly chosen article. I'd still like anyone taking part not to edit the original article though. I'll start by grading a couple tonight, and then leave it to see if anyone else will have a go. Enjoy, and remember we are evaluating the links not on principle, but from the point of view of being valuable to a hypothetical person doing research for a project, say. --Guinnog 23:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Desired outcome
I thought this might be a good place to consider what we want from this, beyond a resolution of the immediate dispute between these two respected editors. It has become obvious that the existing policy is flawed by its well-meaning ambiguity. I'd like to propose that we aim to come up with a list of examples along the model of the table I made up; something like Always link, Usually link, Seldom link and Never link. I would stress that the criteria I used myself, which largely depended on the period of the date being linked to, were only my own ones, and need not be seen as a model for whatever we will end up with. I hope that the exercise I have asked Hmains and Rebecca to do may allow us to discuss towards establishing such principles. Any comments would be most welcome. --Guinnog 13:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * A resolution of the immediate conflict would be good. An improvement of the guidelines to prevent recurrence and improve clarity would be even better. Support your efforts. ++Lar: t/c 22:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

President Lethe's view
I see three aspects to the question of how to write dates at Wikipedia: personal/national custom, logical writing style (specifically, punctuation), and cross-referencing.

Encoding a date so that it is a link results in three things:

1. The date appears in different ways to different readers; which form of the date appears is the result of user preference (or default).

2. The date is punctuated logically or illogically (and thus, according to my prescriptivism, properly or improperly); this depends on the combination of the original writing and the displayed writing.

3. The date appears in a different color, with underlining, and acts as a cross-reference to another article.

My personal opinion about (1) is that user date preferences should be removed from Wikipedia's programming, and that the Manual of Style should require exactly one style for dates that aren't part of direct, verbatim quotations.

If Wikipedia were to become as I recommend, then points 2 and 3 would be simplified drastically.

If there were only one way of writing a proper date link, and only one way of displaying a date link, this problem would be gone.

(3) would become only a matter of relevant cross-referencing, instead of also a matter of (im)proper punctuation and personal/national custom, if my suggestion were implemented.

My personal preference about when a date should act as a cross-reference (which I see as the worthy point of encoding a date as a link (I think this matter of personal/national custom is unworthy)) is that, if a date appears on the screen, I be able to click on that date to see what else happened on that date in history, regardless of which century it's in. The flow of my reading is not significantly distracted by the different appearance (color, underlining) that cross-references have. If the same date appears five times in a window without any scrolling, not all five occurrences should be cross-references. Also, any cross-reference that seems to lead to an article about a year or date in general (rather than, say, an article about pop music in that year) better lead to what it seems to lead to.

I understand that people will still argue about how relevant a cross-reference is in a certain space. But the argument about links should be only about cross-referencing—not about this waste of time, effort, emotion, and computer resources, not to mention this imperfector of punctuation, that is encoding dates for personal/national preference. My main concern is the combination of (1) not having an imperfect date-rendering program botch the punctuation, (2) not having people fight over personal/national style when all we have to do is say "There is only one preferred style (in terms of punctuation and ordering) of writing dates at Wikipedia (except in verbatim quotes from other sources), and all editors have the right to make dates conform to that style, and no editor should cause a date to stop conforming to that style", and (3) having the link-encoding argument be reduced to the sole question of cross-referencing.

I think this covers my view, in terms of the changes that I advocate, my reasons, and what aspects I see as most worthy of the passion and effort.

President Lethe 03:22, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Moving this on
Hi. I'm sorry I haven't put much time into this recently. I'm going to try and tidy it up in the next day or so. My plan is to finish grading the links (any help would be welcome), make a comment or two, invite others to comment, then post the whole thing at the MoS talk page. --Guinnog 17:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not not know what you are talking about. When have I failed to participate in everything you asked me to? I have not seen your proposal to comment on. Thanks Hmains 20:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * What do you think of the grades I have given the dates in the table above? --Guinnog 20:18, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with the grades. But I do not understand what difference your grades and my agreement can make.  Someone else/anyone else in WP can disagree.  And I do not expect many editors will want to/be able to do the grading you are doing and there are hundreds of years to grade.  Next, what does one do with the grades?  Assert that only high grade articles should be linked to?  I would not necessarily disagree, but this would certainly be different from all the other lihking that is done, where articles of any qualify whatsoever are linked to if they have the same name as the word in the text.  Who would go along with such a change, both in theory and in practice?  Thanks  Hmains 22:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Hmains that this seems like a lot of work for relatively little gain. I still don't see why we can't come to some sort of agreement as to just using our own discretion - it seems to be suitable for everyone else, whether they prefer dates linked or not, except Hmains, who doesn't seem to be able to. Rebecca 02:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I was asked to comment as well, is it input on the grades that is all you need or ? ++Lar: t/c 23:07, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, some input on the grades I have assigned would be great. What would be even better would be if any of you could grade some of the date links yourselves, or even regrade some I've done if you disagree with my evaluations. See, I know I have been coming at this from the start with a modest date delinker's POV. I would be interested to see the evaluations of someone with a different take on the issue.


 * Hmains and Rebecca, I think that taking these dates as samples of the date links whose value you are arguing about, and arguing specifically about the merits of individual ones, will allow us to see trends of which types of dates are worth linking, and which not. I am already seeing such trends emerging from my own analysis, and they do not necessarily match my preconceptions. But unless there is some sort of shared consensus, these are just my grades, and my impressions, which is of very little value to ending this dispute and maybe moving the policy forwards.


 * If the alternative is for us to go back to where we were a month ago, I definitely think this is worth continuing with. I hope you'll agree. --Guinnog 07:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I know you mean well, but this is trying to set out objective criteria for something that is inherently subjective, and simply doesn't work. I really don't see what the problem is if Hmains stops killing them all and moves on to something else, leaving the issue to those who can exercise discretion. I'm not in the business of going around linking articles that aren't linked, so if that happens, as far as I can see, this whole issue would basically die. Rebecca 02:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I fear that the issue may not resolve itself as neatly as that; achieving some sort of consensus for the different values of different date links might help achieve a lasting peace here, rather than a localised truce, which is what we've had so far. --Guinnog 07:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm probably not the person to grade date links because my POV is hugely anti date linking. I almost never see the links to dates as of any value... but will take a look at various aspects... ++Lar: t/c 17:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Guinnog: Please keep trying. Thanks Hmains 05:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you, I will. I will try and get this bit finished tomorrow. Sorry it's taken me so long. --Guinnog 07:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

further note
I am not surprised that most of the year articles provided little value, for context or anything else. That is what I have found in looking around them in the past. I do not know what criteria you used to evaluate them; my criteria might differ. I don't know what should be in the year articles. Sometimes there is narrative; sometimes it is just a list of dates and happenings. Does a year article provide 'better context' if it has lots of happenings? It may be that not one of them provides any 'context' whatsoever to the article in question. I do not see any great use in 'rules of thumb': 100 years back link everything, but nothing older or vise versa or whatever. This does not add any intelligent thought to WP. Neither does linking everything or not linking anything. Thoughtless for context. So are we back to 'judgement' on a link by link basis. In other words, everyone gets to link, not link, relink or delink every year in every article every day, every hour. The judgement of the original or prior editor of every article has no priority over the judgment of the current editor of the moment, right. Is there any beneficial value here at all? I still think if any reader wants to know about a particular year to find 'context', that reader can get it easily: they can type the year in the Search box and push Enter. Hmains 06:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)


 * That's interesting. You're right that we should evaluate each and every date link on its merits, but in practice who has time to do that? That's why it has been so interesting to go through and actually look at some of these date links and see what they contain. My idea that the older ones provided better context has been blown away by the work I've done so far. As to criteria, I'm purely making a subjective judgement in each case how much useful context to the sample article, the date article contains. That's why it would be useful to have some other input. Maybe I am being totally unfair, although I don't think so. --Guinnog 05:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Preliminary conclusions
1. I came at this as a modest date delinker ("I find that the majority, even a vast majority of year links are adding little or nothing") but with the idea that "dates prior to 1800" should be linked or left linked, while more modern ones were superfluous.

a) I could see some merit in what Hmains was doing; systematically removing all partial date links in articles he edited, per his understanding of what the MoS allowed. I could also see the annoyance of Rebecca at what she saw as mechanistic edits, against her understanding of what the MoS allowed.

b} It seems obvious that a lot of the problem lies with the ambiguity of the present MoS; I know that has been controversial but the compromise we have ended up with is a fudge that leaves us open to the kind of misunderstanding that happened here.

2a) Overall, I think the results favour the idea that I came into this with, that most year links are pretty worthless. However, I will now look differently on which year and century articles are and aren't worth linking. The 19th century one is rather good for instance. I know that many of the 20th century year articles (that we ruled out in this study) are fairly informative.

b) I know now that many of the year articles from early years are so poor as not to be worth linking to, ever. Furthermore I see no realistic way they can ever be improved. I saw no article for a year before 1000 that was more than stub-quality. I will certainly be much less inclined to leave links to articles like 735 in place than I was before doing this. Even many of the more recent ones are poor in terms of adding understanding. You have to get into the 19th century before the articles get quite informative and well-written. Even then, few of them added real core meaning; it was more of a serendipitous sort of "what else happened that year" ability that became more real as the articles got (modestly) better through the years. (This is the opposite of what I believed before this exercise).

c) The century articles are better than the years. Even so, some quite late ones are remarkably poor (15th century for example). This could be an opportunity to improve these articles; a much more realistic aspiration than fixing up the early year articles, in my view. Meantime, I would still only link to century articles in exceptional cases where it would provide a useful perspective. I would change my view somewhat if the century articles were improved.

3. While there might seem to be nothing wrong with Hmains' edits in removing these (very often worthless) links, I understand the annoyance of editors like Rebecca at what they see as an unauthorised bot-like bulk edit.

a) Although I have no more authority than anyone else to tell Hmains and Rebecca how to act, having thought about it a great deal, I suggest the following compromise might offer a way forward:

b) Hmains should refrain from using automated or semiautomated methods for unlinking dates (pending the clarification to the MoS I propose below). All linking or delinking done should be justifiable; for each and every link added or removed a rationale should be possible and be provided on demand, and the rationale should take into account the value of the date article linked or delinked to the main article being edited.

c) Rebecca should refrain from mass-reverting Hmains' edits; if she perceives a problem with an individual edit, she should merely ask Hmains nicely and he should provide his rationale, as noted above.

d) Neither party should revert-war or be anything but civil with each other. Any problems should be referred to me in the first instance.

4. Finally, if there is no objection, an edited version of this should be copied to the relevant MoS talk page, in case it can help progress formulation of a better policy. --Guinnog 08:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Comments
I do not object to what you have written nor to your using this material in any useful way. Since the other parties at hand customarily attack me for removing any year link and do not accept--nor want to even hear--any statement that the links provide no value, I suspect nothing much will change. I really do not want to be a continual target for these people who feel free to treat other's editing efforts so badly (see my talk page for examples)--if not me, will you be targeted next? Thanks Hmains 03:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * For the umpteeth time, the problem is not that you are removing date links (many people do this without incident), but that you insist on removing all date links. Rebecca 05:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks both. So are you both broadly in agreement, on


 * a} the evaluation of the value of date linking, and on


 * b) the direction your own interactions should take? I'd be very happy if I thought we could move in this direction.


 * As I said, I was shocked at the poorness of many of the year articles; yet I was relatively impressed with one or two of the later ones, and with some of the later century articles. Would you agree with my impressions? If so, has it changed or strengthened any of your beliefs about date linking? It certainly changed some of my ideas. --Guinnog 08:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have never removed 'date links', only year and century links. Leaving one or two random/first/whatever year/century links to satisfy an objective of not removing 'all' such links serves no valid WP purpose that I can imagine. Given what I have seen before and again see by the Guinnog analysis of the value of the year/century articles, I do not see what criteria an average editor could use to know what years/centuries to link or keep linked.  All the words about 'context' simply mean personal judgement and one person's judgements can be disputed by everyone else with their own judgements.  What is the best solution offering the best help for the reader of WP?  I do not know. Hmains 19:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I have used 'date linking' as a shorthand for 'linking years and centuries'; this is quite separate to the debate over how full dates should best be displayed.


 * Yes, it's a tricky one, isn't it? I suppose what I'm suggesting is that we should keep in mind the relevance of some high quality year and century articles to some readers in some articles. Such judgements are of course bound to be subjective; but I think my proposal above, that we don't just remove all date links en masse, but at least consider leaving certain ones in place, and be prepared to give a delinking rationale for any links removed, ought to answer Rebecca's criticisms of you, as I understand them. --Guinnog 19:42, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem is that, as Hmains states above, he's not willing to do that. Thus we're back where we started. Rebecca 23:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure that's a fair summary of his position. Hmains, would you be willing to go along with my suggestion? --Guinnog 02:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Certainly, I can go along and defend it. Links should be made/kept when they can help the WP reader.  The point in any case is to improve WP for the reader.  Thanks Hmains 04:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Will this, in practice, actually mean that you keep any links, since you've repeatedly stated, as recently as yesterday, that no such links help the reader? Rebecca 04:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd be inclined to assume good faith on Hmains' part here and accept he has read and agreed to my proposal. He won't remove date links in an automated fashion, and he'll supply a delinking rationale for any links he removes that you query. Hmains, correct me if I have got it wrong here. --Guinnog 05:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Please excuse my cynicism - this is not the first time that Hmains has stated that he "only removes links that are unhelpful to Wikipedia" and then, as he believes they all are, proceeds to remove them all. In the absence of a promise to the contrary, I think it's only fair to assume he'll do what he has done before. Rebecca 06:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

(deindent) Yes, but I think removing them all, or almost them all might be ok in quite a few cases. I myself would reserve the right to sometimes remove all date links in an article. I think I could justify that in terms of our linking policy, and am always happy to discuss changes with other editors, and justify my linking or delinking of dates or other overlinked items. I thought it was Hmains' semiautomated edits you were against? I had hoped that getting him to agree to consider each link on its merits and justify changes if challenged, would adequately answer your criticism of him. --Guinnog 07:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I think you could too, and I don't have much of a problem with this - you're quite capable of using your discretion. I'm against Hmains semiautomated removals, but I'm also against manual removals that do exactly the same thing - kill all, or virtually all, date links indiscriminately, with no rationale except "I only remove date links that are unhelpful" = "I think all date links are unhelpful" - "I remove all date links". Rebecca 01:36, 14 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Would you be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for the sake of harmony here? Do you have any other suggestions to take this forwards? It would seems a shame to walk away from this without some sort of resolution taking place. --Guinnog 08:16, 16 December 2006 (UTC)


 * We can, as long as Hmains makes his agreement to the above explicit. Why do you think he has chosen not to respond? Rebecca 11:50, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

My answer

 * "I undertake to refrain from using automated or semiautomated methods solely to unlink dates in large numbers of articles. I will use my discretion, and give proper consideration to leaving some date links in place, where they could be argued to add value to the main article being edited; for each and every link added or removed a rationale will be provided on demand. I undertake not to revert-war or be anything but civil with Rebecca or other editors. Any problems will be referred to Guinnog or another admin in the first instance." Hmains 03:58, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposed conclusion
As Hmains has now agreed to the form of words I proposed, as amended by Rebecca, I'm going to make the following proposal:
 * 1) Rebecca should refrain from mass-reverting Hmains' edits; if she perceives a problem with an individual edit, she should merely ask Hmains nicely and he should provide his rationale, as noted above.
 * 2) Neither party should revert-war or be anything but civil with each other. Any problems should be referred to me in the first instance.
 * 3) I undertake to monitor Hmains and Rebecca's edits, and to respond timeously in good faith to any breach of the spirit or the letter of what we have agreed here.

Hmains has already agreed to this; unless Rebecca has any serious misgivings, I'm going to close this in 24 hours or so, and take the matter forward to the policy talk page. Season's greetings to you both. Guinnog 10:00, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

See also User_talk:Guinnog

Rebecca's objection

 * Yes, I do. The onus should not fall on me to police Hmains' edits; this "compromise" allows him to go on behaving exactly has he has if "perhaps, maybe" he decides to use some discretion and "consider" letting some stay. In light of his past interpretations that "links not useful" = "all date links", and his refusal to state otherwise in the light of this, I refuse to waste the sheer amount of time again having to question Hmains edits en masse, and I absolutely refuse to have to question them individually, since this provides absolutely no protection as to his behaviour improving on a broader scale. Rebecca 20:38, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * No onus falls on you to police Hmains' edits. See point 3 above; I am offering to take on the role of monitoring his edits. I think what he has agreed to constitutes real progress. I certainly think it is at least worth trying; I think I understand your cynicism, but I wonder if you could actually help here by having more trust in Hmains, who has agreed to the form of words I asked him to after consulting with you. I urge you to reconsider and accept this compromise. Failing that, I would ask you what you would expect him (or me) to do that you would regard as acceptable. Best wishes, Guinnog 20:55, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Of course he agreed - that statement required virtually no change from his past behaviour, and allowed him to keep on going as he had been - it just requires him to consider, and then decide not to keep any, on every single article. And it would require me to police his edits, I would have to "merely ask Hmains nicely" for what could well run into hundreds of individual edits or give up and let him enforce his preferences on the rest of the project as if this discussion had never happened. Rebecca 22:39, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * A third possibility would be to assume good faith on his part and take him at his word, and me at mine. I do not think he will make hundreds of edits that need scrutinised; that would fall foul of the "automated or semiautomated methods" clause he agreed to. In any case, when a user makes many edits it is usually easy enough to get the drift of what they are doing without examining every single one; one takes samples. I've said I will police this from now on, if you are agreeable to it. You would merely have to indicate your agreement. From your point of view, checking how I am enforcing this would surely be less onerous than enforcing it yourself. If you agree, you can be sure I will be rigorous in enforcing the letter and the spirit of this agreement I have worked so hard for. Guinnog 22:57, 25 December 2006 (UTC)


 * What tools he uses to make the edits are irrelevant: the edits themselves are the problem, and this gives him carte blanche to go on as before - he's made it well clear in the past that even if he can't use automated tools, he'll do exactly the same thing manually, and as he dedicates his entire time on Wikipedia to delinking when he thinks he'll get away with it, that's still a lot of edits. We have had peace on this front for months now, and I am not going to volunteer for another round, and on top of that, one which can only be stopped via proxy. I will not give any guarantee that I will not revert Hmains; if he behaves himself, there will be absolutely no need to. Rebecca 23:05, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Lonewolf BC
(De-indenting) Hi, folks. I hope you won't mind if I join in, here. (I've been meaning to get back to this, but "one thing drives out another".) Although it pains me to say such a thing about anyone, I must agree with Rebecca that, given the past words and deeds of Mr. Mains, the present proposal seems like a recipe for further trouble of the same old kind. I don't say that out of any mistrust of Guinnog's good-will or judgement (quite the contrary), but I read the same sub-text in Hmains' "agreement" that Rebecca does. I have a suggestion that I hope will help, though, which is twofold: Firstly, Hmains must further agree not to make more than some reasonable number of date-link deletions per day. We can work out a number if this idea seems good to you others. Secondly, he must agree not to delete date-links in the course of the various (other) widespread editing campaigns he tends to take on (copy-editing for this and that, catagorisation work, etc.), across many articles; he must agree to delete date-links only within articles upon which he works in some more substantial way, by which I mean contributing content, ensuring the accuracy of what's already included, bettering the writing where it might be unclear, biased or otherwise wanting in its substance, and other such work that entails taking some time and care with an individual article. I don't mean to denigrate the potential worth of the dispersed sort of editing Hmains favours. It can be quite valuable to the project, provided there's a consensus that the changes being made are for the better. But a large part of the problem in the matter at hand, wherein consenus for the edits is so plainly lacking, is this aspect of running through a high volume of articles. Sitting down with an article and doing the often time-consuming and painstaking work of hammering it well into shape throughout, or in a considerable portion, gives a certain moral right to be freer with edits that are liable not to be universally approved (although never to make them recklessly, of course), such as is not conferred by blowing through at high speed without really examining the piece. Further, working on individual articles more intensively acts as a governor on contentious or potentially contentious editorial "campaigns" within WP. I think that agreement by Hmains to these two things (and his abiding by them) is necessary to any stable resolution of this issue. Whether it is sufficient, I'm less sure. However, I wish you all a Cool Yule -- Lonewolf BC 02:07, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I see your points, both of you. I think I have done what I can in mediating in terms of examining the actual value of the date links you were arguing over to Wikipedia articles. If your experience with Hmains leads you not to be able to assume good faith in his future behaviour, then I supppose that is another matter. I have always found him to be approachable and civil and I do think you ought to extend more credit for what I see as real compromise on his part. I have to uphold his right to edit here, so long as he follows policy and keeps the agreement he has made with me. If he is able to justify any particular link removal in terms of policy and/or usability, then I obviously don't see his edits as problematic. I will be surprised and disappointed if Hmains starts to use automated methods to delink years when he has agreed not to.


 * I've learned a lot in studying this matter; a large part of the learning has come from examining my own assumptions about the relative importance of certain stylistic issues in the overall scheme of things. I recommend a similar standing back from the problem to anybody on either side who is inclined to feel passionate about date linking. There are more important things out there. Really.


 * It would have been nice to have had your agreement, Rebecca. My hope is that even without your agreement, this matter will continue not to be a problem for many months to come. Obviously I would strongly hope you would not block or mass-revert Hmains without alerting me first, after the amount of work and thought I have put into trying to solve the problem.


 * Lonewolf, you made some interesting points. I hope you are able to continue to bring your forthright and sensible opinions to this matter in the future as it will need more work still. I return your festive greeting. --Guinnog 07:14, 26 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Ok, I think it's time to wrap this thing up, as far as Hmains and Rebecca are concerned. First of all, let me formally thank both for taking part; it's been interesting, and it's helped me to think more about this topic. I couldn't have done it without you both.


 * On the stylistic and functional issue of date linking, I think my views are critically changed. On the one hand I now even more clearly see how overlinked many articles are, and to what a generally low standard of articles.


 * On the other I can see the annoyance of someone who sees articles on their watchlist being mechanistically "tweaked" in ways they don't approve of. Here is an example of a recent administrative action of mine against someone for making a point about dates. See also, here is me, as recently as July, making a misguided semi-automated change that was reverted by an admin, much to my annoyance at the time. We all make mistakes, and I think the key here is being open to dialogue. I always have been, even when I know I'm right. In fact, on reflection, those are probably the most dangerous times. This has been an example of that for me; I've been quite impressed with some date articles, and can now see how the links can, in certain cases, add value to an article.


 * Personally, I don't think you two have hit it off, and I find it sad that you are unable to forgive one another. I find it especially sad as I know you are both good people and excellent contributors to the project. You've let this disagreement over a fairly minor matter of stylistic preference become a major issue. As an absolute sticler for spelling, I can totally empathise with that. Small matters of detail are important.


 * It is clear to me that the matter needs to go to a policy forum, and as I have said all along, I propose to post an edited version of this, linked to this original, at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) as a next step to try to prevent such misunderstandings arising in the future.


 * I would never exercise administrative privilege in this matter now, as I am too closely involved. However, it should almost go without saying that I have a lot invested in this welcome truce continuing indefinitely. If I see Hmains mass-delinking dates in a mechanistic way (I realised eventually that it annoys editors as it means checking an edit in case it was vandalism or something, for no major gain in value), or if I see Rebecca mass-reverting Hmains' edits without having engaged in proper dialogue first (ideally with Hmains but failing that with me), or being less than civil with good-faith contributors, I will be very disappointed indeed.


 * Thanks once again, and festive greetings all round, --Guinnog 08:37, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * One final clarification: though I've said this a few times, you're still missing the point about Hmains' edits. The issue is not so much how he's making the edits, as the edits themselves. Whether he uses mechanistic tools to mass-delink edits or makes the exact same edits manually, because he dedicates his efforts near-entirely to this enterprise, he can cover a hell of a lot of ground in one day. The problem thus lies, above all, in the mass arbitrary and complete delinkings themselves. It is this, rather than his use of any particular method for doing so, which may get him mass-reverted. Rebecca 09:29, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't think I'm missing the point, and I don't agree that "he dedicates his efforts near-entirely to this enterprise". In fact I think he has been working with categories for the last while; I haven't seen him doing any work on dates recently. --Guinnog 16:53, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * That's because of the controversy surrounding his edits. When he does do date delinking work, it is about all he does, which means he gets through a lot of edits in one day. This is why I refused to give you the green-light to let him go at it again. Rebecca 22:13, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It is you who are missing the point now. I never asked you to give me the green light to let him go at it again. I asked him not to mechanistically delink dates, which he accepted. I asked you not to mechanistically mass-revert him (which actually causes just as much disruption) and you declined. Hmains has every right to edit here, as long as he follows the guidelines and policies we are all bound by. I trust that he shall. --Guinnog 02:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * His occasional use of mechanistic methods was never the problem here - rather, it was the edits themselves. They are not supported by any guideline, go against the general precedent that you should not make controversial style edits en masse, and are now not being made by anyone else. (There was one other, but he was roundly asked to stop, even by users who were pro-delinking, and quit the project.) He does not have the right to make these edits simply because he has a personal preference. Why on earth would I care if someone mass-made edits manually or did so using automated means? How could you misunderstand this dispute so badly from the beginning? Rebecca 11:12, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

(deindent) You seem confused Rebecca. If it was the edits themselves, why is it not a problem when I (and many other users) reduce overlinking to date articles when copyediting? I do it all the time, and I started this exercise off by showing you an example of one I had done. Is it or isn't it the "en masse" nature of Hmains' edits that offends you? Make up your mind! --Guinnog 18:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Arbitrary section break

 * I believe I'm seeing some mis-communication in both directions. Please let try to sort it out (lest it spin out of control, as I fear it is in the first stages of doing). I believe that Rebecca's objection to the date-delinking of Mr. Mains is the same as my own, which is foremostly to its en masse character, most fundamentally to its indiscriminate character, and finally and most strongly to the coupling of those two characteristics.  That objection is not to the use of automated or semi-automated means, as such, but to what they are being used for.  Further, although their use worstens this campaign of Mr. Mains, by making its volume greater, the essential objection is to the campaign itself, which remains objectionable even if pursued through purely manual edits -- less serious practically, perhaps, but just as troublesome in principle. It seems to me that your two views on all that might not be so very far apart, and that the appearance that you differ is caused by a mere miscommunication hanging upon differing interpretations of "mechanistic".  Rebecca, it seems, is interpreting "mechanistic" as meaning the actual use of automatic or semi-automatic tools to accomplish the edits concerned, while Quinnog is using "mechanistic" to mean merely "in the manner of a machine" -- in other words, indiscriminately, without having a particular justification for each given de-linking.  Quinnog's meaning (if I rightly understand him) would include indiscriminate date de-linking done through purely manual editing.  If I have that right, then you two actually agree, up to that point! From my research into this whole issue and its roots and history, I am quite sure that Rebecca is right in saying that Hmains is editing in a forbidden way, when he engages in indiscriminate date-delinking, especially if he does so en masse.  The other editor whom Rebecca mentions (of whom, incidentally, Mr. Mains is a disciple, having been "converted to the dark side" by him around the beginning of this year, if I rightly recall) truly was blocked repeatedly for doing exactly what Hmains has carried on with.  Each time, he came back after he was unblocked, waited a while, then stealthily re-began his de-linking campaign -- until he was caught, and blocked yet again.  Around and around this went, until that editor finally gave up.  Hmains has been acting no differently, except that he's been laying off for a while each time the controversy gets too "hot", without actually getting blocked. Honestly, I think folk have been lenient with him -- of which he seems to have not the slightest appreciation, instead feeling extremely hard-done-by for the resistance he has gotten to his illicit de-linking campaign. Therefore, this is not an issue of Mr. Mains' general right to edit, nor of his right to edit as he pleases, in general.  It is an issue of his editing in a way that he knows, or ought know, is forbidden to him, just as it was forbidden to that other editor, and just as it and various alike sorts of "stylistic-war" editing are forbidden to all editors. As said before, I share Rebecca's doubts about how Mr. Mains will react if he feels these current proposals have been agreed to all 'round.  Although I'm sure that Guinnog does not intend them as a "green light" for Mr. Mains to resume his date delinking as before, I think that experience suggests that Mr. Mains will take it in that way, and will complain just as bitterly and unreasonably as he has in the past if anyone tries to tell him otherwise or (as I'm sure would become needful) acts against his resumed campaign.  And so, with all respect to Quinnog and his admirable efforts, if I were in Rebecca's place I would not make any promises. What really needs to happen is for Hmains to acknowledge, and begin to respect the "don't-stir-up-the-shit" provisional consensus that has been reached about this, pending a more permanent consensus (for which I am not holding my breath) about the linking of (partial) dates. -- Lonewolf BC 22:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your thoughts. You're absolutely right that when I said "mechanistically" I meant mechanistically rather than mechanically or automatically. Can you point me to the provisional consensus you mentioned above? --Guinnog 00:02, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I would point out that I first became aware of this issue as a result of conflict between Rebecca and User:Bobblewik in which Rebecca's civility was an issue, on 17 September. I note too that this user has not edited since early October. I noticed at the time that Hmains messaged him on 3 November concerning the current issue, but that he did not reply. Beyond that I can only repeat the obvious, that for a compromise to work both sides have to make, and to be seen to make, compromises. It may be that you and Rebecca are justified in your pessimism about Hmains' future conduct, were my proposal to be accepted, although it saddens me that you are unable to assume good faith or acknowledge that someone can change their behaviour. I still firmly believe that this compromise can work if given a chance. --Guinnog 00:51, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I might be able to find it. I don't recall that it was a formal declaration, though, but more like an evident consensus, coming out of how the discussion wound up on the talk-page for Manual of Style (dates and numbers).  That was some time this summer, I think.  There had been some funny business involved in the whole issue, or at best some "guideline drift", which was eventually brought to light (by SlimVirgin?), and that helped to settle the issue by taking the wind out of the sails of the de-linking party -- except that one guy who stubbornly forged on with de-linking, alone, with no support from the guidelines or from anyone but Hmains, who more-or-less took over the same role after the other person finally quit.  Anyway, I should be looking for that discussion, instead of typing this.  Back soon. -- Lonewolf BC 00:50, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * ''The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate policy discussion page, Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) or User talk:Guinnog. No further edits should be made to this page.