Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers/Archive 100

2 by 4 inches (50 mm × 100 mm)
The guideline recommends "1.2 in × 1.8 in" over "1.2 × 1.8 in", fair engough, but what if the "×" is spelt out as "by" and/or the "in" (or whatever unit) is spelt out as "inch(es)"? "1.2 by 1.8 inches" would seem quite normal to me, "1.2 inches by 1.8 inches" being perhaps a little over the top but not wrong. How about "1.2 × 1.8 inches" verses "1.2 inches × 1.8 inches"? How about "1.2 by 1.8 in" verses "1.2 in by 1.8 in"? I sort of feel it's a question of "×" vs "by" more than "in" vs "inch(es)". Thoughts anyone ... J IM ptalk·cont 07:08, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Expunge the passage as MOScruft. Omitting the in may be unclear, but including it may be heavy; both depend strongly on context. Either mention the problems or leave the entire matter to editorial judgment. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:30, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I would advise against writing like that when you write it in words. No one writes "a 2 by 24 millimeter section", so I don't see why one should write "a 2 by 4 inches wood plank". One speaks of 2 by 4's, or 2x4's but that's because grammar-wise it's the name of the thing. When giving specifications, it should be "1.2 in x 1.8 in" or "1.2 inches by 1.8 inches", the x being used when units are in unit form and the by when units are fully spelled out. IMO.Headbomb (talk · contribs) 14:02, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Idiom is "two by four" or "2 by 4 inch plank". No inches need apply. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:19, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Also, a 2 by 4's actual dimensions are 38×89mm, see Dimensional lumber - which should probably be linked from instances of "two by four". --Random832 (contribs) 20:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

What on earth is wrong with "1.2 × 1.8 in" and "50 × 100 mm"? Shorter, easier to pick up, and absolutely unambiguous. TONY  (talk)  14:15, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

There's a missing unit in the first number, so it could be anything. 1.2 ft x 1.8 in; 1.2 in x 1.8 in, 1.2 yards x 1.2 inches etc. Headbomb (&tau;&alpha;&lambda;&kappa; · &kappa;&omicron;&nu;&tau;&rho;&iota;&beta;&sigmaf;) 19:02, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, it could mean anything; but in the absence of any evidence or indication to the contrary, it doesn't. See ellipsis; thus, for example, the phrase in my last sentence is equivalent to in the absence of any evidence to the contrary or indication to the contrary,. Again, never using ellipsis is bad, because clumsy, writing. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:20, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that 50 × 100 mm has only one possible meaning: five metres. Thunderbird2 (talk) 06:02, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I think I'm returning to my original gut feeling. Anderson is right to bring up ellipsis.  I'd say that "1.2 by 1.8 inches" could mean nothing but "1.2 inches by 1.8 inches" and would be the usual way of expressing it in English.  Ellipsis is aptly applied when we're dealing with words, the longer form clumsy.  It doesn't occur in mathematics though.  As Thunderbird points out, "50 × 100 mm has only one possible meaning: five metres", mathematically speaking.  Since we're using a mathematical symbol (the times sign) it might be looked at as a mathematical expression.  If we're using symbols/abbreviations for the units, we probably won't have to be concerned so much with wordiness.  I agree Headbomb that "×" should be used when using symbols/abbreviations and that "by" should be used when spelling the units out. J IM ptalk·cont 01:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

What about adding phone numbers?
I am almost 100% sure that phone numbers should NOT be added to Wikipedia, though the creator of this page seems to disagree. I want to delete them (stop me if I'm wrong) but each time I am stopped. I would appreciate it if someone could point our anything at all relevant to my point that I can share with said user as I can find none myself --Maurice45 (talk) 19:52, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * If it’s not even an English-language TV broadcast in India, the first question that pops to my mind is “does this subject have sufficient notability to even merit inclusion in en.Wikipedia?” I wrote “if” because the article doesn’t even explain what language the broadcast uses. Does that even matter for notability (?), I don’t know; but then, I’m not an expert on Wikipedia policies. Greg L (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


 * P.S.: The second thing that pops to mind is MOSNUM isn’t the proper forum for this. I’m not sure what forum is suitable and I hope someone else can direct this editor to the correct one. Greg L (talk) 20:33, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Explain that Wikipedia is not a phone book, and that is all the backup you need. ArcAngel (talk) 14:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Fnagaton should resign as sysop
I see that Fnagaton has flagrantly abused his role as a sysop by closing the AN/I on Omegatron with this POV summary: "This discussion has been archived after Tony's attempt to misrepresent and to make edits after the section has been archived. Tony's attempted bad faith misrepresentation and the subsquent refutation is now archived."

I was not aware that the page had been closed when I made whatever edit he's referring to. But there is a serious accusation of "misrepresentation", and again "bad faith misrepresentatio" that I dispute; in its focus on me alone, it is POV.

Can anyone advise me where I can make an official complaint about this? It seems a denial of natural justice that he thinks he can close a page with such a POV summary to which I have no right of reply, the content of which I think a lot of people would dispute. I think this is sysop-resignation material. TONY  (talk)  14:14, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You attempted addition of bad faith misrepresentation to a section three months after it has been archived, the whole page is an archive as shown by the word "Archive" in the page title. You gave no right of reply by editing an archived page in the first place and what you did was a breach of etiquette by editing an archived section with your own personal attack and not telling anyone about it. Hiding an edit in an archived section that nobody is watching is also a breach of etiquette. That is why it has been marked with a "following discussion is archived" box to make sure you realise the section has been archived in the first place and should not have been edited by you. The justice is that your attempted misrepresentation has been archived for everyone to see. If you really want to make a complaint you may of course, but it will only draw attention to how you edited an archived section and your attempted bad faith misrepresention. I did actually consider reporting you for adding bad faith misrepresentation long after a section has been archived because what you did was wrong, but then I decided to mark the section as archived to make it clear to you that you should not be editing old archived sections and to give you a chance because I don't want to see you punished for making one mistake. Fnagaton 14:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * PS. If, as you claim, you were not aware the page had been archived when you made your edits then you can demonstrate this by requesting that all of your edits added after the section was archived and your edits to this talk page are completely removed. I would then consider the matter closed and I will not make a formal complaint against you for your attempted misrepresentation added to an archived section. Fnagaton 14:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Tony, see Administrators. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 14:52, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I certainly will report this abuse. Fnagaton, I request that you remove the edits I made to that page in error. I certainly won't be removing my edits on this page pointing out your abuse and your personal attack. TONY   (talk)  15:56, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * You made a personal attack with your first edit. You were then corrected by another editor and you then proceeded to make an uncivil comment which then demonstrated your are using bad faith misrepresentation. Your personal attacks and bad faith misrepresentation are archived on the page for the complaint to see. Fnagaton 16:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Let me get this right: you ask that I ask that edits I made in error be removed; then when I do so, you attack me again, but refuse to remove them. I give up. Further attack is the best form of defence, is it? My issue now is your abuse of admin privileges. TONY   (talk)  16:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I said "requesting that all of your edits added after the section was archived and your edits to this talk page are completely removed". You have not made this request because you have not asked an uninvolved administrator to completely remove your edits here and on the ANI page, this involves removing all history entries for your edits. I cannot remove the history of your edits here and on the ANI page. I specifically mention this talk page because your accusations are completely false and you have made untrue claims in your edit comments themselves so it would do no good to only request the ANI changes to be removed since it would leave your untrue accusations on this page. I'll say it again, if you request that all of your edits added after the section was archived and your edits to this talk page are completely removed I would then consider the matter closed and I will not make a formal complaint against you for your attempted misrepresentation added to an archived section. Fnagaton 16:26, 7 May 2008 (UTC)


 * And now an anonymous Tor user has just made an edit to remove the section Tony1 objected to. And another Tor user. Fnagaton 18:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * The Tor edits have been completely removed by User:Swatjester. Fnagaton 19:42, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Monthly update of style and policy pages: April 2008
It was a complicated month, so I hope I've captured, as simply as possible, the substantive changes. Please notify any issues on the talk page. TONY  (talk)  15:59, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I am assuming so, and I do have one minor comment, which is that in SI-speak, kgs does not mean kilogram-second (that would be kg·s or kg s). Thunderbird2 (talk) 16:09, 7 May 2008 (UTC) Comment moved to the correct talk page Thunderbird2 (talk) 10:27, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Sorry, Thunderbird; I goofed, and have now provided a section link to the talk page of the monthly updates—see above in this subsection. I'll deal with your point tomorrow, if you don't mind; off to bed. TONY   (talk)  16:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Omegatron's proposal on a kind of no-break space at bugzilla
User:Omegatron has given the bugzilla (MediaWiki) developers a proposal to automatically avoid wrapping lines between numbers and certain abbreviations, such as cm or m. The link is https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13619. He's not proposing that they insert a no-break space character, simply that the html rendering not wrap the line in those places. Does anyone have anything to add or subtract from the list of scientific symbols at User:Bobblewik/monobook.js/unitformatter.js? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:24, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Centralized discussion: Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style — Omegatron (talk) 17:08, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree the discussion should be in one place at a time ... nothing was going on there when I posted this :) Let's keep it there for now, but input would be appreciated, we don't get to take our concerns to bugzilla every day, and this one is important (to me). - Dan Dank55 (talk) 19:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I reviewed the link provided by Dan which supposedly is a list of scientific symbols, and it struck me as gibberish. --Gerry Ashton (talk) 13:32, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * So many responses come to mind, but just one seems relevant. In wandering around Wikipedia, I've noticed that some discussions are more useful than others.  A useful rule of thumb is to talk about things on the right page, and never on two different pages at once, otherwise things get a lot harder than they need to be.  Note that, now that Stanton is back, he has moved several discussions that were in WP:MoS over here; good for him.  We should be more careful to do that.  In this particular case, the discussion has relevance to a bunch of different issues at the same time, so, as I pointed out above, we're arguing this one over in WP:MoS, where you will find that I gave additional links to official lists of SI symbols.  The discussion needs more eyeballs, and there's some urgency, because there's an open request at bugzilla. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:13, 14 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Like Gerry Ashton, I was curious enough to click on the monobook.js link. Also like him, I did not understand the programming language used in the script, but something caught my eye nevertheless.  Just after the comment "// decibel" is the command
 * txt.value = txt.value.replace(/(\d)\s?(dB)\b/g, '$1 $2');
 * Now I am curious about what this does. Can someone explain? Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:23, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The reason I am curious is that the decibel is no ordinary unit. It is a (logarithmic) unit of ratio, and often meaningless unless accompanied by more information about both numerator and denominator of that ratio. It seems unlikely to me that such subtle (but important) considerations are taken into account by a single command. Hence the request for clarification. Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:31, 23 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It simply replaces any sequence of the form {  "dB" } with { < what I assume is actually a non-breaking space no, it's just a space> "dB" }. I don't think any special considerations are applicable here, though I'll note that this statement will not do the same for, e.g. dBA dBV and so on. --Random832 (contribs) 19:51, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

This line txt.value = txt.value.replace(/º/g, '°'); is indiscriminate. It will replace instances even where the Ordinal indicator character is actually intended.

txt.value = txt.value.replace(/centigrade/gi, 'Celsius');

replaces all instances of the word "centigrade" in any context. "The Celsius temperature scale was previously known as the centigrade scale." would become "The Celsius temperature scale was previously known as the Celsius scale."

I'm also concerned in general about the indiscriminate behavior of this script, as applies to quotations, URLs, etc.. --Random832 (contribs) 19:58, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

User:SkyLined is working on a template that'll fix this. Right now it's buggy (problem with 0s and the max number of digits mostly) though, so it's hard to recommend as if, but having wikipedia automattically replace anything indiscriminately is a BAD, BAD, BAD idea.

Examples: $123,123.123 MeV/c2$, $1.22 s$ Headbomb (&tau;&alpha;&lambda;&kappa; · &kappa;&omicron;&nu;&tau;&rho;&iota;&beta;&sigmaf;) 13:09, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

No no no. The Mediawiki feature changes regular spaces into non-breaking spaces for display only. Currently, if you type « something in guillemets », the spaces between the guillemets and the words are converted into nonbreaking spaces when the page is rendered (see the wiki source and HTML source for the example I just typed). We are proposing that this be extended to units and dashes.

This will not add spaces where none previously existed. It will not affect the article's source code. All it will do is prevent numbers and units from breaking lines. False positives can be fixed by changing the regexp and nothing will be harmed by it. The worst thing that could possibly happen is two words not wrapping when they should. The link to Bobblewik's script is just an example of the kinds of units it could recognize, since my simple proposal to just change any instance of  was rejected. — Omegatron (talk) 16:23, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Fourth draft
{Quick link to version on MOSNUM}

The following green-div section is a “live” version for making proposals on. Please don’t do edit warring here. Discuss your proposals and edits in Discussion of “Fourth draft”, below.

Let’s not treat the fourth draft as so sacrosanct; that’s what this is here for: a sandbox. If someone has what they think is a good idea, toss it out there for others to look at. And don’t be defensive if someone replaces it with something else; we always have the red-div for reference. If someone is considering trying an edit they really know would be unhelpful and they know full well that the edit would be strongly opposed, don’t bother. Give & take. If someone has what they think is a truly bright idea that will gain consensus, add it to the below green-div ASAP. If everyone embraces the philosophy that they will only make edits intended to be one-and-a-half steps forward and only a half step backward (greater consensus with each move), this may go smoother. That’s my 2¢. Greg L (talk) 01:07, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Figure of merit
Clearly, it is unrealistic to expect that wording for Fourth draft, above, can be found that will make all parties to this discussion happy; some editors’ views are polar opposites of another. The best we can do here is track how editors feel about this and endeavor to maximize the total score of support. Any edits that yields more points of support than it takes away should be considered as progress. Greg L (talk) 21:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I would just like to point out the possible meaninglessness of voting on a document that can change at any time. If Jim, Bob, and Olga vote on this today. Tomorrow johnny edits, then Johnny votes, as well as Onésiphore, Paul and Abdul Nassim. Vote is not accurate, because people voted on different things. My vote goes for the fourth draft version that was displayed when I voted. See signature time. I'll try to keep my vote up to date. Headbomb (talk · contribs) 04:40, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that rapid and radical editing could make it quite challenging to keep one’s vote current. Hopefully, chaos won’t reign supreme and we can adapt to the minor challenges. Greg L (talk) 04:43, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Maybe make the proposal text a sub-page to make it easier to put a watch on it? Then somehow include the sub-page inline with this page? I seem to remember it being done on one of the admin pages but can't for the life of me remember where exactly. Fnagaton 23:39, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I’ve never seen it done before but recognized the need for that capability and was wondering if the tools were available to pull it off. Why not? Greg L (talk) 03:42, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. All you do is copy to a subpage (here Wikipedia talk:MOSNUM/draft) and transclude as though it were a template. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:05, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Neat. I’ll make a note of how you did this. Thanks. Greg L (talk) 21:15, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

'''At 8:3 in favor and no new “oppose” votes in over two days, there is clearly a general consensus in support of this guideline. Further, the arguments of the “oppose” votes simply are either in the minority, or are fallacious and can’t realistically be considered as a legitimate basis for maintaining a {dispute} tag, which has been removed.''' Greg L (talk) 21:33, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, I think SOME of the arguments of the "support" votes are fallacious and have been refuted soundly. So there. Why does your opinion rule? Jeh (talk) 02:14, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Jeh, this policy was extensively debated, crafted, and tweaked for a very long time. Yes, as you surmised per your vote comment, your vote doesn’t really matter now because voting ended. After the first three “oppose” votes came in, no new ones were posted in over two days whereas “support” votes were still coming in. Circumstances have changed radically; potential “support” voters now have no reason whatsoever to post their vote since Follow current literature is now posted to MOSNUM. Not surprisingly, some “oppose” voters—like yourself—will continue to register their opposition to Follow current literature. While this affects the tally, it can’t and mustn’t change the outcome because the tally only becomes increasingly skewed due to the entirely different expectations and motivations for editors to continue voting or not. Nevertheless, your vote is still welcome since it was accompanied by your views on the matter. Greg L (talk) 03:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, extensively debated - with you declaring that all views opposing yours were invalid or had been refuted, and even telling objectors not to bother trying to change the proposal because any such changes would be quickly reverted. That's not a debate and it is not inviting of the proper process. No wonder so many objectors have gone away. For myself, I've been travelling a lot for work, and prepping for more travel, and I simply haven't had time to notify other past participants in the binary prefix discussion -- the way you did some of them. I may have time before the weekend... I think two days of relative inactivity is hardly sufficient to declare "end of debate" on a discussion that's gone on for months. Further, I am aghast at your claim that further discussion or votes "mustn't change the outcome." It seems to me that by your rules (and why are we operating by your rules, anyway?), consensus can change (see WP:CON, but only until GregL declares the discussion is over? You know, I would accept such a conclusion from an impartial moderator, but you are hardly an impartial participant in this matter. Jeh (talk) 07:21, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * What is not proper debate is posting up another "hate it" vote without providing substantive argument. We've already had impartial editors come along and say there exists good enough consensus i.e. there are no substantive reasons preventing the guideline text from being used. See and . Fnagaton 07:27, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Jeh: “…and even telling objectors not to bother trying to change the proposal because any such changes would be quickly reverted.” Pasture pancakes. Extensive discussion occurred and countless edits—by me and others—were made. They were all good-faith edits. Only disruptive “edits” (wholesale deletions of entire portions) that weren’t seriously intended to ever be accepted by the majority were rejected out of hand and reverted. You seem to have missed out on a lot of the goings on here while you were away. You really should have familiarized yourself with the facts before wasting 0.0001¢ of Wikipedia’s hard drive storage space. When you begin an argument with totally fallacious charges, I tune out the rest of your arguments; they aren’t worthy of the time to refute them. Goodbye. Greg L (talk) 16:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC)


 * 4 = Complete support
 * 3 = Could be improved, but I support this
 * 2 = Ambivalence
 * 1 = Could be much better
 * 0 = Complete opposition

Vote comments

format (and never in the other). The geeky reason is that the entire web has been evolving for over a decade now toward the complete separation of content and presentation markup, and this violates that principle. The more practical and immediate WP reason is that, as most of you know, Tony1 and others have been working hard to raise awareness of the absolute suckitude of the current date formatting system, with the eventual badly-desired result of removing the ... markup that causes the dates to be wikilinked for no reader-useful reason, to be replaced by something as yet undetermined. It is very likely in my opinion that the developers will eventually fix this with an "intelligent" solution that auto-parses correctly formatted dates on-the-fly, in precisely the same way that it auto-parses correctly formatted cases of  followed by an ISBN number, rather than introduce some wacky new markup that no one understands (  or whatever). I'd bet real-world money on it. If I'm right, potentially millions of dates will not be auto-formatted because MOSNUM will have told editors they can be lazy and omit the commas, resulting in malformed dates when the square-brackets are removed for implementation of the new date coding system. For this reason, I correct cases of  on sight. PS: The idea of "oh, well, the smart autoparser can just recognize that format too" does not fly, because WP is open content, meaning that it can be reused in any way that people want, including selectively downloading the wiki, not HTML source and stripping out what they don't like and reworking it; we have no guarantee at all that the MediaWiki parser will be used in any particular case of legitimate re-use of WP content. We cannot permit invalid content just because we're lazy and we assume (in some cases falsely) that tricky aspects of the MediaWiki code transmogrification process will compensate for our errors. By way of analogy, it would be trivial for the MW developers to install code that corrected on-the-fly all instances of "hte" and "corect" so that they were spelled correctly by the time the code was rendered in the browser window, without actually correcting these errors in the source code. No way, José. We have bots (and humans) correcting the source for a reason. This is why you will probably notice plenty of people going around and correcting cases of  to. It simply doesn't matter that MW is smart enough to send the latter to the browser on-the-fly without correcting the source. The source has to be clean. A very probable (maybe already common!) use case for repurposing WP content is to get the WP database, load it into a customized instance of MW, remove all unwanted templates, subst all the rest of them with a bot, and replace all wikimarkup with its XHTML equivalents, then export the resulting lovely, validating XHTML code to a completely different kind of server. Not correcting  and not fixing   in the wiki code itself is going to really screw up that kind of WP content re-use. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 01:07, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree with SMcCandlish that dates formatted like February 29, 2008 should have a comma, because to drop the comma is incorrect, and dates should appear correct to those who do not set any date format preference. I do not agree that dates which totally lack markup will ever be formatted automatically. One obstacle is dates within direct quotations; these should not be reformatted. Another obstacle is cases where the number following the month and day is not a year, but some other quantity. To make up an example, "The number of prisoners taken on February 28 was 2000, and on February 29, 2500." --Gerry Ashton (talk) 01:31, 5 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Trivial. Unusual cases like that would be handled in exactly the same way as us not wanting to autowikilink in a quotation that read "...I thought it was ISBN 978-1-59874-011-0 but it wasn't...". Just do this:, which renders as "...I thought it was ISBN 978-1-59874-011-0 but it wasn't...", as it should. We do this stuff all the time, like when you need to italicize something that begins with an apostrophe, etc., etc., etc. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93;  ‹(-¿-)› 05:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

SMcCandlish is right on the mark: we should not count on questionable MW software to correct our sloppiness. I have added green check marks to the table to show what is approved by this manual. Chris the speller (talk) 18:05, 7 April 2008 (UTC)


 * My clarification of the table has been reverted twice, on aesthetic grounds. Apparently, not offending one editor's tastes is more important than having a guideline that avoids confusing many editors. I am walking away from this one. In fact, I will now unwatch this discussion page, which has had the benefit of a few very thoughtful and eloquent editors, but has also seen them nearly drowned out by hordes of people intent only on pushing their own personal tastes. This has taken far too much of my time, and I will be happier improving Wikipedia articles than trying to wade through all the bickering. Those who stay and continue trying to make this guideline useful have my best wishes. Chris the speller (talk) 04:12, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Chris the speller: I’m sorry to see you go. I haven’t been involved in this discussion thread. I only became interested because of the post at the very bottom of this page (∆ here) talking of “awful kindergarten graphics”. That of course, made me curious. Which page? This discussion page? I had to search to find out that the “kindergarten graphics” being referred to was check marks: [[Image:Yes check.svg|11px]] …which you used in a table. They didn’t seem bad to me and you certainly didn’t deserve the smack down you received. I encourage you, Chris, to come on back and get back into the saddle soon after the sting wears off. I really think MOSNUM needs an infusion of new blood. I’m not suggesting that there is anything wrong with the current “regulars”—not at all; we need old-timers to help keep us on track and explain history to us so we aren’t doomed to repeat past mistakes. On the other hand, I think it was wrong for a new arrival to get so soundly stomped on over such a trivial issue as the relative aesthetics of a checkmark. One of the editors posted this for their edit comment when he/she deleted your check marks: “removing yet more ugly check marks; approved by who?” Someone please correct me if I’m wrong here, but anyone can make minor edits on MOSNUM. Yes, like anything else on Wikipedia, those changes can always be reverted when another editor disagrees. But I don’t think Chris needed “approval” from one of the regulars around here to add them. May I suggest we try to be a bit more accommodating to outsiders here? I think Chris the speller is feeling a bit like the first female firefighter to try to join the NY City Fire Department: more than a bit unwelcome. Only, what is at stake here isn’t as important as the physical ability of a firefighter to “carry a 200-lb mayor out of a burning building”. Talk:MOSNUM is a market for the exchange of thought. I hate to sound like a University poster-boy for politically correct slogans, but some extra diversity of opinion can be very helpful on MOSNUM and we need to help newcomers to feel welcome. If there was more “history” to this spat than is apparent and this issue was just a “straw that broke the camel’s back” so to speak, I apologize for interceding without having researched this better. But at this point, I’m just not seeing a good justification for what lead up to Chris calling it quits on MOSNUM. Greg L (my talk) 05:04, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

We already had this discussion in  early February after I pointed out the table showed the wrong rendered formats for the comma cases. Chris the speller then placed red checkmarks with the comma cases, which I removed since they do render to one of the standard date formats, and we came to an agreement to have the double-asterisk ** note. Or so I thought. Sorry for being a bit abrupt, but I was surprised when the same edit appeared a couple days ago claiming some forms were now "approved".

I think it's a bad idea to list "approved forms" for wikitext. If it doesn't concern appearance, it shouldn't concern the Manual of Style, which is a guide for the style and formatting of articles as they are read. The MoS discusses wikitext occasionally to note alternatives producing the same rendered page, such as either one or two spaces after a period. As far as I know, we don't have MoS pages telling people to only use one space, or to write , or to format cite templates with one field per line, or to use cite templates rather than hand-written references. Or do we now? Gimmetrow 07:26, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * No, you didn’t come across as abrupt at all Gimmetrow; thanks for taking the time to fully explain this. As I feared, this was a “tip of the iceberg” issue. It seemed a lot more trivial than that due to SandyGeorgia’s post, which read “I just tried to remove some awful kindergarten graphics from this page, but edit conflicted with Gimmetrow, who beat me to it. Please, this isn't a picture book, and we don't need these illustrative gimmicks.”. As you can imagine, given that post, and your recent edit summary statement, the conflict seemed much more superficial—and unwaranted—than it really was. Greg L (my talk) 16:07, 9 April 2008 (UTC)


 * I really wish I hadn't dewatched listed this now. Can't this be made clearer in the guideline, some how. The issue of comma stripping is again coming up, now on Ballad of a Shinigami in which an editor decided he needed to "clean up" the article by stripping out all of the commas from the dates. It isn't superficial and it is increasingly becoming a problem as editors claim they are unnecessary due to auto-formatting while others point to the MOS and say they should be included, but the MOS is so ambiguous they argue it isn't said explicitly and just keep doing it. AnmaFinotera (talk) 01:44, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Looking at Ballad of a Shinigami, I want to know why American format dates are used for a non-American subject. International format would appear far more appropriate. --Pete (talk) 02:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Per the MOS, Japan uses both, so its up to the editor. "Articles on topics with strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should generally use the more common date format for that nation; articles related to Canada may use either format consistently. Articles related to other countries that commonly use one of the two acceptable guidelines above should use that format." The consensus in the project (and this MOS) is to use whichever format was first used, either American or International. In almost all cases, American is first used for articles on anime and manga, so that is what almost all use. AnmaFinotera (talk) 02:22, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Not to mention that the primary material (light novels) and anime are released internationally, the novels in North America, the anime via online (though only available to Australia/New Zealand I believe).--  十  八  02:26, 11 April 2008 (UTC)


 * It's silly to edit just to change the wikitext when it has no effect on display. It might have been best if the MediaWiki software had never started adding/removing commas and spaces automatically. Gimmetrow 18:38, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Next try
It's been a while so perhaps things have settled, and I've asked Chris the speller back. I think our goals are not incompatible. I mainly want these edits (switching commas around in wikilinked dates) to stop, and I think the solution is to redesign the table more substantially.

We should just list the basic forms which produce autolinking. When discussing the redlink forms there is no need to show how they look under different format prefs since they don't change. Finally, observe that some variations in commas and spacing in the wikitext produce the same rendered forms, and there is no need to add or remove commas. I would even go so far as to say if there is any dispute about the wikitext, it should match the displayed form. I'm seeimg some editors even removing *spaces*: 1 January2001 and January 12001 render as 1 January2001 and January 12001. This needs to stop. Gimmetrow 04:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Can you make the suggested changes to the table and put it in a subpage, maybe one of yours, so we can take a look? Chris the speller (talk) 04:53, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Adding below. The table currently live on the page is mistaken in how 15 May is rendered under different preferences. Gimmetrow 05:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The table looks fine. The note that it will "display May 15 2005 as May 15, 2005 even for users not logged in" seems one-sided, as it does not point out that it will also "display 15 May, 2005 as 15 May 2005 even for users not logged in." The extra comma on one side of the Atlantic is equal and opposite to the missing comma across the pond. And saying that the "comma is optional in this case" gives too much encouragement to editors who would like to depart from the formats that have been approved. As pointed out above by SMcCandlish, "we have no guarantee at all that the MediaWiki parser will be used in any particular case of legitimate re-use of WP content". Chris the speller (talk) 15:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * That's because it's just one example. If you don't like it, suggest a different way to phrase it.  Gimmetrow 23:00, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, see my proposed wording below. Chris the speller (talk) 00:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Chris, you seemed to argue that the comma was needed because there's no guarantee that any re-use will use the MediaWiki parser; are you saying you now don't like Stanton's argument at ? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:05, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * (moved Dank55 comment from draft section to consolidate the discussion) - I don't see any comment by Stanton in that section. Chris the speller (talk) 14:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry; Stanton is SMcCandlish. P.S. Glad to see you back, I always enjoyed your comments. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 21:36, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I totally agree with SMcCandlish on the matter of commas in dates, unless I'm missing something. My wording in the draft below does not conflict with his comments, as far as I can see. Chris the speller (talk) 20:32, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
 * It runs against my views to make suggestion about wikitext which has no affect on displayed form, and it was about as far as I could go to say the comma in May 15, 2005 "should not be removed over objections", which is now gone. That statement was quite enough to stop silly edit fights, no? That treats the issue as a courtesy to fellow editors, so if there are any objections the default is wikitext matching the displayed form (ie, comma in May 15, 2005, no comma in 15 May 2005). But since it has no effect on displayed form it's not a style issue per se, and the MoS shouldn't be saying what's proper and improper. Gimmetrow 19:29, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This is dragging on. I'm going to assume no objection to the draft below if there is no further response for a few days. Gimmetrow 00:54, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
 * There is never a case where WP is improved by removing the comma from May 15, 2005, so I disapprove of adding "if there is any objection"; I object in all cases. Yes, it would stop most edit fights after they start, but why start? Chris the speller (talk) 00:17, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
 * So you're saying under no circumstances whatsoever could the editors of an article agree to use a wikitext that renders correctly according to the MoS, even if no editor objects? If you really don't like this, then lobby the developers to change the rendering algorithm; then it will be a moot point. Gimmetrow 05:55, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Draft

 * The year should be wikilinked separate from the date except for dates in ISO 8601 format. Other full date formats will not autoformat when wikilinked, and are likely to produce a redlink: 2005 May 15 produces 2005 May 15.
 * MediaWiki allows some variation in spacing and comma. For example, May 15 2005 will display as May 15, 2005 even for users not logged in. Although the comma is supplied by the MediaWiki software in this case, the comma need not and should not be removed from the wikitext if there is any objection. Wikitext which differs from the displayed form can be confusing to editors. Likewise do not write 15 May, 2005 or 15 May2005.