Neil Harris wrote:
{{date|2006-09-14}} is surely the wiki-way to go: it can then expand to <date>2006-09-14</date> for the parser/renderer back end to deal with.
From my on-wiki experience (en wikipedia.org), I agree that template call syntax {{..}} is very popular among Wikipedians (a real killer syntax, I would say ;-)
Technically, if we'd be allowed to go for {{date|2006-09-14}} - a template - we would end with yet another high use template just for the sake of syntax (ad-hoc rule: "No syntactic sugar templates"? ;-), which in this case I feel is a suboptimal idea as there aren't any editorial display format decisions to isolate (There is no "moving target" about the question how to display a date from an editorial viewpoint. There are just culture/language dependent display formats to choose from.)
So if this is the preferred syntax, we really should think about sitting onto http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ParserFunctions and implement:
{{#date:2006-09-14}} or {{#date:|2006-09-14}}, and additionally {{#uldate:2006-09-14}} or {{#uldate:|2006-09-14}} (for unlinked date?)
How difficult would it be to extend ParserFunctions to implement {{#date:2006-09-14}}?
--Ligulem