What is with these straw man attacks? It is NOT going to go off in 30 minutes. Where in the world did you get that absurd idea? Furthermore, 2/3/03 is a non-sequitur -- no one has ever suggested it. The discussion involves only 2 March 2003 versus March 2, 2003. What, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003? -- Sean Barrett sean(a)epoptic.com [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe who reads the Wikipedia? been written, tested, and is set to go off in 30 minutes! have military training. Try writing 2/3/03 and tell me what the date is. <http://rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailtagline/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/> - forms, calculators, tips, and more

The aliasing pipe was meant to humorously link the phrases "Sun Mar 2 19:44:31 PST 2003" and "this moment"; ie, the moment in which I was writing. (What time zone are you in, that that time was half an hour in your future?) Also, the phrase "it has no automatic article-selection mechanism" might be understood to mean that it has no it has no automatic article-selection mechanism, thus making it unable to "go off" any time soon. I still don't understand what, exactly, is confusing about 2 March 2003. -- Sean Barrett sean(a)epoptic.com [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe who reads the Wikipedia? to be set ravening among the articles. At [[Sun Mar 2 19:44:31 PST 2003|this moment]] it has no automatic article-selection mechanism. 19:44:31. already who <http://rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailtagline/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/> - forms, calculators, tips, and more

On 3/3/03 12:08 AM, "Sean Barrett" &lt;sean(a)epoptic.com&gt; wrote: As I tried to explain, confusing is not perhaps quite the right word. Disconcerting and unnatural is better. To the American ear, "2 March 2003" sounds like something Yoda would say. As if you had written, "Understand what, I still do not, exactly, about 2 March 2003 confusing is." (And then you can add that little Yoda "hmmm?" at the end and lift large objects with your mind to complete the picture.)

Our story up to now: Both the University of Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk and White's Elements of Style state a preference for the 2 March form, but both also accept the March 2 form. Virtually every date in the Wikipedia is expressed in the March 2 form. (The mail headers for this message use the 2 March form.) Nothing that has come up in this mailing list discussion has not already been raised on the talk page (although the University of Chicago press position in favor of 2 March was greatly overstated here.) In general, consistency in style is desirable, and most of the rules in the Manual of Style were based on what already was being done by the more careful (consistent, that is) contributors. Most dates are already in the March 2 style. It will add just that little bit of uncertainty if some are one way and some the other. There's nothing confusing about the March 2, 2003 style either. Tom Parmenter Ortolan88 |From: M Carling &lt;m(a)idiom.com&gt; |Date: Sun, 2 Mar 2003 21:56:56 -0800 (PST) | | | |On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, The Cunctator wrote: | |> To the American ear, "2 March 2003" sounds like something Yoda would say. | |I won't speak for you -- only for myself. I'm an American and "2 March |2003" is fine by me. | |M Carling | |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l |

On 3/2/03 10:39 PM, "Sean Barrett" &lt;sean(a)epoptic.com&gt; wrote: It's simply not correct in American English. It sounds like Yoda-speech to the American ear. The Date-bot needs to be reversible.

"Zoe has well elucidated a major issue with the subject of this thread" -- yet neither she nor anyone els can explain how seeing "2 March 2003" is going to "confuse" anyone whoreads it. -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of The Cunctator Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 20:10 To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American whoreads the Wikipedia? So, at [[[Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style_(dates_and_numbers)]], about 30 people have been engaged in a discussion about changing the [[Month Day]] standard format. At some point someone set up a voting scheme, listing some options, and people tagged their preference. In a shocking development, most of the people who voted for making [[Day Month]] Wikipedia policy are British. Without getting (again) into the how very bad voting is for making a decision, I'll simply say that what is needed is to Construct a consensus document on the merits and problems of each proposal. Not to vote. A 30-person vote != democratic decision. And we should be looking for the best decision for Wikipedia, not necessarily the most popular. I'll leave discussion of the specific merits and problems for the webpages, though Zoe has well elucidated a major issue with the subject of this thread. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On the contrary, the form 2 March 2003 simply IS correct in American English. The Chicago Manual of Style prefers "that in all text, including notes and bibliographies, exact dates be written in the sequence day-month-year, without internal punctuation." Rule 8.36. If this bot ever runs, changes will be reversible in the same way that all changes to the Wikipedia are reversible. -- Sean Barrett sean(a)epoptic.com -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org]On Behalf Of The Cunctator Sent: Sunday, March 02, 2003 19:59 To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Do we really want to confuse every American whoreads the Wikipedia? On 3/2/03 10:39 PM, "Sean Barrett" &lt;sean(a)epoptic.com&gt; wrote: Furthermore, It's simply not correct in American English. It sounds like Yoda-speech to the American ear. The Date-bot needs to be reversible. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

|X-Sender: vr(a)smtp.panix.com |From: Vicki Rosenzweig &lt;vr(a)redbird.org&gt; |Sender: wikien-l-admin(a)wikipedia.org |Reply-To: wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org |Date: Mon, 03 Mar 2003 08:51:35 -0500 | |At 08:11 PM 3/2/03 -0800, Sean wrote: |>On the contrary, the form 2 March 2003 simply IS correct in American |>English. The Chicago Manual of Style prefers "that in all text, |>including notes and bibliographies, exact dates be written in the |>sequence day-month-year, without internal punctuation." Rule 8.36. | |There is no one body entitled to name US usage, and the University |of Chicago Press certainly isn't. CMOS is what they want for the |books they publish, no more and no less. Others often find it useful: but |when I worked for a magazine that followed Chicago on most things, we set |dates in the form March 3, 2003, not 3 March 2003. | That's not what my copy of 12th edition the CMOS says. It states (rule 8.14), "The University of Chicago press prefers that in all text the day, month and year be written without internal punctuation [in the form 5 November] "Other acceptable forms are: On November 22, 1963 . . . The course of events on the twenty-second of November They go on to state that after the first specific reference to a day and month, elliptical references to other days in that month should be spelled out. "On 5 November, the national elections took place. By the morning of the sixth . . . I submit we would not want to follow them in this case. Of course, style guides are not written by Nazis, and not even the CMOS, authoritative as it is, requires any of this in every instance. Tom Parmenter Ortolan88

I agree completely. We should use Zoe's standard. The format used in English-speaking countries must apply. Would those of you from the various components and former components of the United Kingdom please tell us how you prefer your dates? We Americans prefer the standard form. As The Chicago Manual of Style explains, in "all text, including notes and bibliographies, exact dates [are to] be written in the sequence day-month-year, without internal punctuation." Rule 8.36. And since no one finds 2 March 2003 confusing.... -- Sean Barrett sean(a)epoptic.com [mailto:wikien-l-admin@wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Zoe American who reads the Wikipedia? English-speaking countries applies. What's anti-European, anti-African (except for English speaking countries) is of no consequence. It's true that the British, Australian, New Zealand version, etc., may be different. I don't know what Canadians use. English slip anti-American their name Anti-Australasian, <http://rd.yahoo.com/finance/mailtagline/*http://taxes.yahoo.com/> - forms, calculators, tips, and more

On Sun, 2 Mar 2003, Zoe wrote: Except for North Korea, show me a country that is not an English-speaking country. It is, for good or bad, the standard international language and the standard language for reference material on this planet. Even the French and the Chinese have mandatory English classes for all school children. Making the Wikipedia confusing or ambiguous or both to 96% of the readership in order to please the eccentric tastes of 4% doesn't strike me as good judgement. M Carling

On 3/3/03 12:18 AM, "Richard Grevers" &lt;dramatic(a)xtra.co.nz&gt; wrote: This discussion should be held to the proper forum: [[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)]].

I really think the answer to this problem is to simply stop time on today's date (3/3/3). Then there won't be any problems at all.

Richard Grevers wrote: Didn't you mean to say "...asked to consider citizens of the United States..." ha ha. ;-) I asked this question on a talk page, and I'm basically just ignorant on this issue: is '2 March 2003' natural to speech? Americans almost never speak that way. We would say "March the Second, Two Thousand and Three" or "March Second, Two Thousand and Three". We would never say "Two March Two Thousand and Three". --Jimbo

On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote: "*The* second *of* March 2003", in fact. It being the second day of the month of March. Logical, see? :) "March the second" sounds to my ear like a reference to another March, some time after the first one, much like "Elizabeth the second"... ;) Oliver +-------------------------------------------+ | Oliver Pereira | | Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science | | University of Southampton | | omp199(a)ecs.soton.ac.uk | +-------------------------------------------+

Jimmy Wales said: I'm in England and I would say: Second of March, Two Thousand and Three. sannse