2009/2/8 White Cat wikipedia.kawaii.neko@gmail.com:
Hard coded in the context of my message is when dates are typed out. Like January, 20 1956 rather than soft coded [[1956-01-20]]. Ideally all dates should always be soft coded and be modified by users preferences. In reality the exact opposite of this is done.
So your "hard coded" to use American dates is something that can be got around by, er, the editor not writing American dates? I am not seeing this as quite the catastrophe you are, and you could equally present it as the wiki being "forced" to use non-American date styles...
As for the underlying debate, we have thrashed out the date-linking issue before at great length, and your "ideal" is certainly not one shared by many other users.