[WikiEN-l] Dates: Your vote is needed

[Erik Moeller]

Our official "Manual of Style" policy until today was that dates are  
written in the form "Month Day", what is referred to by some as the  
"American style" (even though some British newspapers used it since the  
19th century).

Today Mav changed this to the effect that the style "Month Day" should be  
used on pages about US/world topics, and "Day Month" on pages about  
British topics. This is analog to our currently (IMHO silly) rule to have  
British spelling on British pages, US spelling on .. pretty much every  
other page. This further leads to a split into a British Wikipedia and an  
"American" Wikipedia. Of course, no similar rule exists for German style  
-- if I wrote "17. June" in an article about a German subject, I would be  
called a vandal after three reverts.

Interestingly, what Mav did is in contradiction to the current  
distribution of opinion on the talk page

[[Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)]]

where 21 users favor the British style, 16 the American style and 8/10  
respectively voted for two very similar options that amount to "do what  
you want". Mav has now turned a separate option into policy, namely the  
one of separating between UK and US/world topics.

I do not think that we should have a UK-Wikipedia and a US/World- 
Wikipedia. Personally, I would love to have the following compromise:

        * US-style spelling in all articles
        * British style dates in all articles

But the worst solution is one where every article looks different. That  
conveys an unprofessional image: That we only can maintain consistency on  
a single page, but not throughout our encyclopedia.

I would like to ask you to vote on the above page, preferably for one of  
the two options "Month Day" or "Day Month" (I'm trying to use my evil  
manipulative powers here), so that we can get a clear result, change (or  
not change) all our articles accordingly, and move on to more important  
things.

Regards,

Erik