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Tony1 has been using a script to unlink dates in articles without discussion on the talk pages, in defiance of requests by several other editors that he hold off so that the unlinking can be discussed in the broader context of date autoformatting. Tony1 has accused editors who oppose his unlinking of trying to stall the process, which he feels is justified by recent changes to WP:DATES.
It is desired that Tony1 temporarily stop unlinking articles, until a consensus can be reached on whether to disable date autoformatting in the MediaWiki software for the English Wikipedia. Until such a consensus has been reached, unlinking is premature and is causing disruption.
Tony1 continues to unlink dates en-masse, in defiance of despite requests to temporarily refrain from doing so while discussion is ongoing.
Examples of Tony1 using a script to perform mass unlinking of dates:
Examples of Sapphic and UC_Bill requesting that Tony1 temporarily halt unlinking:
Examples of Tony1 continuing to unlink dates after being asked to temporarily refrain:
...and Tony1 continues to unlink dates using a script, clearly indicating contempt for this process:
...and on, and on. Taking this to AN/I.
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{Those diffs all look fine to me. I was initially concerned to see that I'd changed the fourth one from US to European format, but realised that, yes, this was a reasonable application of the MOS concern to allow international for US military purposes; as well, most of the subjects were non-American. The edits are clearly in line with the new guideline that "deprecates" date autoformatting, which has evolved after a long and extensive debate at MOSNUM and elsewhere, with WPians overwhelmingly in favour of removal.
Although I suspect that Bill is also in favour of the removal of DA; but he wishes to pursue his own strategy for doing so—at another "link" in the chain, involving WikiMedia—and to base this on his collection of data at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Dates. At that page, the discussion of the stats appears to be going around in circles: doubt has been cast on the validity of the stats by several editors, both there and at MOSNUM, and uncertainty as to how exactly the data would inform such strategy. At MOSNUM talk, the reluctance of MediaWiki (which serves hundreds of sites) to make structural and technical changes (such as turning off date autoformatting) has been aired many times after a two-year request to improve the autoformatting mechanism was rejected. This desire is apparently central to Bill's wishlist, against the experience of many at MOSNUM talk.
As for the propriety of using the human-supervised script at this stage, there are at least six compelling reasons to do so:
I believe that these are reasonable grounds for the application of the script by me and others at present, and that the complaint is unjustified. Tony (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC) }[reply]
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I don't think wording like "in defiance of" is helpful in dispute resolution. Tony1's editing is in conformance with WP:MOS on an issue that has been worked on diligently and within process, involving many editors for several years.
UC_Bill mentions refraining from making edits that adhere to MOS "until a consensus can be reached on whether to disable date autoformatting in the MediaWiki software for the English Wikipedia". Tony1 and others have already attempted for several years to get the Wiki developers to pay attention to the problems created by autoformatting of dates. Only after those attempts failed to gain any attention from developers did consensus form at MoS for delinking of dates.
Finally, date delinking has been widely well received, with a minority of editors taking difference with it, but doing so vocally.
In conclusion, I suggest that the editors presenting this RfC find a more effective means of conceptualizing and resolving their differences. Consensus on date delinking was long in forming, involved many editors, and all indications were that developers didn't intend to resolve the problems.
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I'm not sure if I'm technically an outside view, but was not aware of this RFC, nor would have recommended it as a course of action. In any case, I dont think this should be directed at Tony1 individually, though he is certainly championing the aggressive mass removal of all linked dates. I also think that everyone at the MOSNUM page needs to chill out a bit and start doing a lot less badgering and a lot more assuming of good faith and behaving with civility. There is a middle-ground that has yet to be found.
All of the arguments presented above and at MOSNUM about why auto-formatting or date linking are bad are somewhat irrelevant. The MOSNUM changed in August to indicate deprecation. As some people interpreted that as encouragement to implement mass unlinking, more people became aware of this change and started contributing to the discussion (Wikipedia:CCC). Most of the new contributors seem to be arguing against unlinking for whatever reason, again, the reasons are irrelevant to this RFC. What the two people above and I separately have been asking is that the group hold off mass unlinking temporarily while we see if we can address most of the concerns in a different way (patch/template/whatever). My particular concern is that even though this data is arguably structured badly, it is still a lot easier to parse than plain text. Once it's unlinked, it's gone.
I had taken a few days off from the group due to the Sturm und Drang. When I came back, and before I knew about this RFC, I suggested this Proposal to stop mass unlinking for 30 days and no other changes We'll see where it goes. My only question is, if it took 2 years to build to this consensus, what is a temporary hold on mass unlinking really going to cost? Ironically, the more aggressive the unlinking, the more users we'll see respond like this, this, this, this, and this. None of which are mine, UC Bill or Sapphic's.
Finally, I would encourage anyone contributing on this page, regardless of your position, to give a hand in bringing civility and good faith back to MOSNUM, it's sorely missing.
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This should be an RFC, but it should not be on user conduct. For Tony, this is civil; I've seen him when he's not civil. But as long as the substantive discussion takes place, I don't care what it's called.
On the substantive matter: Date linking and autoformatting was an attempt, from 2003, at a technical solution to a behavioural problem; date warring over 8 September 2008 vs September 8, 2008. It did not solve the behavioural problem, and it has has several undesirable side effects. We would, I think, resolve the problem, were it arrise now, by telling editors to live and let live, as we have with color/colour and AD/CE; the technical fix was a failed idea.
But not every bad idea should be torn out by the roots. Tony is not being uncivil, but he may be being imprudent. The "consensus" of a small number of editors at WT:MOS can normally be assumed to be the consensus of Wikipedia, but not in the presence of numerous complaints.
We should suggest, page by page, that the page be delinked, presenting our reasons. I think them formidable, and we will see if others do. In a couple months, we will be in one of two states:
Either would be better than quarrelling over it.
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I see a consensus at WP:MOSDATE that date linking is depreciated, but not one for automated, mass removals. I think WP:CHILL says it all, for the moment. Could we all hold up on making mass edits which affect most Wikipedia articles until a clear consensus of a large number of editors can be performed determined. It should also be pointed out that many Wikipedia:WikiProject Time subprojects, particularly Wikipedia:WikiProject Days of the year, are directly affected by whatever decision is made, the decision is arguably within the project's field, and the project was not informed. (At least, until a few days ago.)
I don't think this is appropriate as a user conduct RfC, but as a Wikipedia content RfC. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 15:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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I see about a 5% grammatical error rate in the sample edit Orderinchaos mentions above. Not bad for a person, but unacceptable for a bot which will make millions of edits. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:02, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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Change is always difficult, there is always a sense of "it's always been done this way so therefore it's somehow right." Sometimes that stops us from actually standing back and considering how things should be done, rather than how they are. Many things on Wikipedia are the way they are because someone back in the days when Wikipedia was small and informal had a bright idea which fixed a problem back then, but now with millions of pages and editors, cracks have appeared. I think Tony and others have handled objectors with good faith; I was initially strongly opposed to delinking because I felt on principle people should be able to see Wikipedia through preferences, but Tony and Greg in particular were good in explaining why it was not only not meeting its specifications, but arguably counterproductive. I can't see the unlinking being a problem if it's being done intelligently and responsibly, and edits like this reassure me to that end. I'd rather a bot handle Australia's 60,000 articles for this issue than have sparse editors taken off content duties at some later stage to make the changes.
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Tony has conducted his affairs on Wikipedia with conservative and well controlled advocacy. He properly read the general consensus on the autoformatting issue and moved at the appropriate time. There will always be editors who come late to a discussion and don’t see all that has transpired in the last few weeks and months. There will always be editors who have followed all the goings-on but passionately disagree with the general consensus. A general consensus on Wikipedia does not require that all editors be in 100% agreement. And it never did. RfCs are often the tool used by editors who vehemently disagree with the consensus view. But, precisely because they are passionate about the issue, makes their views biased and slants their view of the true facts. What Tony is doing is proper. Greg L (talk) 18:33, 11 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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This consensus has been building for years; there was no need to inform every potentially interested party or group of parties individually. Anyone simply not aware of it but having a WikiProject-wide stake in its resolution has simply not been paying attention, and our normal consensus-building processes can't really be expected to compensate for such operator error.
That there are some complaints about the change is inevitable (it would be really, really weird if there weren't any, and a strong sign that a decision was being made in a forum no one pays any attention to, and thus a lack of meaningful consensus). There were the same types and range (and sometimes panicky tenor) of responses to the initial consensus to autoformat dates by overloading the wikilinking function. There were the same kinds of responses to consensus to stop adding spoiler tags to all film and fiction articles about 2 years ago. There were the same kinds of responses to MOS finally settling on logical quotation around that time. There are still the same kinds of responses to some people first discovering WP:ENGVAR and being stymied in their ability to force everyone to use one "correct" form of English. And there are the same kinds of responses going on right now at WT:MOSTEXT#Variable markup to an effort I'm spearheading to get basic XHTML semantic phrase elements used properly. Anything that will require the (eventual) editing of thousands and thousands of articles inevitably produces responses like this from those who do not fully understand the proposal and its rationales, who simply don't like it for reasons that don't have anything to do with its logic and merits, for whom expediency is a higher priority than long-term best practices, or for whom 20,000 articles needing to be changed is a scary number. Evidence to date strongly suggests that this will be the case no matter how long the change has been planned, what process is used to arrive at it, how many editors are involved in that process, and how important and sensible it is that it be done (though not by any particular deadline). It's just a de rigeur "noise" level, as seen in all socio-political systems of human interaction, of all sizes and natures, and is nothing to get worked up over.
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After reading the RfC and all the comments/endorsements, I have come to the following conclusion: Disagreements on non-conduct issues aside, the consensus is quite clear that User:Tony1's edits and conduct are accepted as correct. I feel comfortable closing this fairly quickly based on how obvious consensus is in this particular instance. Wizardman 20:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
As the originator of this RfC and one of the two sponsoring signatories, I'm okay with closing it. I understand Sapphic's point (the comments on this page are mostly off-topic and irrelevant.. it's Tony1's refusal to take a break from using a flawed script that several people legitimately object to that's the problem, not whether delinking dates is a good idea or conforms with policy) but I've lost faith in the RfC process and see no point in continuing with it. People (sadly, including some administrators) seem to view it as a vote or a contest of some sort, rather than a Request for Comments that it truly is. Tony1 has shown bad faith in his discussions by continuing with behavior that others legitimately find objectionable, rather than discussing it. I'm a reasonable person and am open to discussion and being convinced — but not while somebody is rushing (note his many mistakes while using the script) to make changes that undermine the entire discussion. I'll talk to Sapphic about this later and make sure she agrees to closing this. --UC_Bill (talk) 20:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]