[WikiEN-l] Linking Dates

[Marc Riddell]

on 10/15/08 4:20 PM, Delirium at delirium at hackish.org wrote:

> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 14, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Charlotte Webb
>> <charlottethewebb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 10/13/08, Marc Riddell <michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Example: [[Ursula Oppens]] (born February 2, [[1944]]. The day of birth
>>>> would not be linked, but I agree with those who feel that linking the year
>>>> gives the reader (if they desire) an opportunity to see what else was
>>>> happening in that year. The format, according to taste may be February 2,
>>>> or
>>>> 2 February; I don't see where that would be a problem. Any thoughts on
>>>> this?
>>>> 
>>> What if readers are curious as to with whom Miz Oppens shares a
>>> birthday? Fuck 'em?
>>> 
>> 
>> What if readers are curious which other people have names which, when
>> converted to numbers, sum to the same value?
>> 
>> You have to draw the trivia line some place, the only question is where.
>> 
>> There are many hundreds of thousands of date related articles in
>> Wikipedia.  The number of articles mentioning February 2 is enormous.
>> To answer trivia such as "who else was born on the same day" you're no
>> worse off searching. (The date article can't hope to list all the
>> people born on that day, and whatlinkshere will be no more informative
>> than a search).
>> 
> Also, the year articles, by contrast with the date articles, often have
> non-list background information relevant for the article they're linked
> from. See, for example, the excellent article on [[1345]].
> 
> -Mark
> 
It just happened again. I went in and edited a biography article, made some
corrections as to the Date of Birth, and left the month and day unlinked but
linked the year. One minute later someone else came in and de-linked the
year with the edit comments, "(unlink yob per WP:MOSNUM)". Is this the
present policy? And if so, how came we change it?

Marc Riddell