2008/10/16 Marc Riddell michaeldavid86@comcast.net:
It just happened again. I went in and edited a biography article, made some corrections as to the Date of Birth, and left the month and day unlinked but linked the year. One minute later someone else came in and de-linked the year with the edit comments, "(unlink yob per WP:MOSNUM)". Is this the present policy? And if so, how came we change it?
Marc Riddell
on 10/16/08 9:16 PM, geni at geniice@gmail.com wrote:
Yes it is present MOS and you change it in the normal manner. However this would what be the third time the debate has happened in a few months so I doubt you would get very far. See for the most part what happened in the year of someone's birth is of little interest unless the event dirrectly impacted them. You might be able to make a case for the years where they did whatever makes the noteable but even then a case could be made that you would do better linking to say 1860s in engineering.
Thanks for your thoughts, geni. Although I see value in linking the years, what, in the end, I am REALLY looking for is some consistency. I still do not understand fully much of the decision-making process that goes into matters such as deciding on a specific format policy. But what I do see throughout the encyclopedia is an arbitrariness in form and structure that greatly detracts from the professionalism of the Project. A reader is coming to the encyclopedia looking for information on a particular subject. That information should be presented in a consistent, reliable, familiar form. This form becomes the "signature" of the encyclopedia. As the Wikipedia Project matures, it is important that the decision-making processes regarding such basic issues as its very form and structure mature as well.
Be healthy,
Marc Riddell