Can't someone dig into the MediaWiki code and have
full dates display
according to the preferences no matter what format they're in even without
them being linked? That would solve the whole thing.
I think it would slow things down too much, as the code would have to
read every page looking for dates, rather than just looking at links.
I did read something on this list a couple of weeks ago about a
possible new way of marking dates... I can't remember the details.