On 23/08/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
Ultimately we need some sort of wiki-meta-data system which is seperate from the articles...
Such a system would have far more applications than just preventing date vandalism. I was toying with an idea like this a little while ago, to help sort out some of the metadata mess in biography articles (specialised infobox + dates in lead + persondata = redundancy!). I have looked at the Semantic Wikipedia's efforts, but they seem to be exactly backwards to what I have in mind: specifying the raw facts somewhere, something like this pseudosyntax and made-up dates:
<metadata-specification> <date-of-birth>[[19 July]] [[1891]]</date-of-birth> <date-of-death>[[6 August]] [[1954]]</date-of-death> <metadata-specification>
and then being put into the article wherever needed (again pseudosyntax):
{{random-specialised-infobox | born = <metadata>date-of-birth</metadata> | died = <metadata>date-of-death</metadata>}}
Mr Smith (<metadata>date-of-birth</metadata> - <metadata>date-of-death</metadata>) ...