Wikipedia:Date debate

Currently, the only way to get date preference formatting to work is to link the date. While this works, it has the side effect of cluttering up a page with otherwise unnecessary links. Make only links relevant to the context is a good guide in this regard. Unfortunately, because of the desire to get date formatting preferences to work, you end up seeing lots of unnecessary links.

It has been suggested that some new Wiki syntax be created which would allow date preferences to function, but would not act as a link. This would be an alternative to, not a replacement for, the current link-based syntax. This has been proposed at Bugzilla bug #4582, but that feature request has not yet been accepted by the developers.

Pros

 * It allows links added only for formatting reasons, such as multiple links to the same year in the same section, to be removed without losing the formatting function.
 * It reduces the pressure to over-link date elements by not making such links as standard as they have been.
 * Overloading of the link syntax is confusing, and this encourgages similar overloading for other purposes.
 * This will help reduce the utterly inane number of useless date links that some articles seem to be saturated with hundreds of.

Cons

 * Date links sometimes add context and the exclusive use of the linking syntax encourages making them.
 * There are already a huge number of links of this form in place.
 * Some, perhaps many, of those links have value, so determining which ones to convert cannot be done by a bot.

Discussion
Please discuss the merits of the proposal on the talk page.

New push
People here may be interested in putting their name to, or at least commenting on this new push to get the developers to create a parallel syntax that separates autoformatting and linking functions. IMV, it would go a long way towards fixing the untidy blueing of trivial chronological items, and would probably calm the nastiness between the anti- and pro-linking factions in the project. The proposal is to retain the existing function, to reduce the risk of objection from pro-linkers. Tony 00:56, 10 December 2006 (UTC)