I also think it would cause edit wars between people who would insist that their favorite date format is the only way it should be. Zoe Erik Moeller erik_moeller@gmx.de wrote:> A suggestion was made to allow date strings to be wrapped in -
tags which the Wikipediware will parse and render properly. I have written a Perl routine to not only do this, but also return either the American or the European format, based on a flag set in each user's preferences.
Questions: How would I go about adding this routine to the Wikipediware? Should I even bother adding this routine to the Wikipediware?
I don't want it. With some units (metres vs. feet etc.) I can understand the desire to provide automatic conversion, because many Europeans don't know the American system and vice versa. With dates, the common notations are reaonably unambiguous -- any reader, once familiar with our notation, can get used to it. As a German, I am already used to reading different date styles in English texts (mostly "February 27, 2003", "2/27/2003" and "27th of February, 2003" -- I haven't seen "27 February 2003" much, but maybe I wasn't paying attention). Having a German-style date in an English text (27. February 2003), on the other hand, would look alien to me.
Adding tags also further complicates our syntax at little benefit. And I don't even want to think about converting all the existing dates.
What I do want is a consistent policy on the date style for each language. We should hold a vote on each Wikipedia to determine the preferred style.
Regards,
Erik _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@wikipedia.org http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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