User talk:Guinnog/date linking

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[edit] Ground rules

Beyond obvious things like WP:AGF (and I'd like that to be extended to me as well!), I think it would be helpful to focus on utility rather than precedent or policy. The policy is muddy, and the precedent is unclear. When debating, try to focus exclusively on how the page can best assist the end-user. I know that may be difficult, but I explicitly don't want to go for any sort of straw poll approach here unless we have to. Maybe that way we can turn the unclear policy to our advantage in resolving the dispute, although ultimately it would be nice to end up with a clearer and better policy.

[edit] Proposed framework

If we could generate a list of examples where one should:

  1. Always link
  2. Usually link
  3. Seldom link
  4. Never link

I think that might be helpful. --Guinnog 04:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

All right, I'm going to enact this. --Guinnog 14:11, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Done! I made a table. See if you can add to it. --Guinnog 14:37, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Summary of progress so far

Hmains and Rebecca have been good enough to do their bit with the table. I accept wholeheartedly their reservations about the rather artificial premise of my criteria. It was truly interesting for me to examine my own assumptions about the relative value of linking different dates. The next step I propose is to see how their differing perspectives shape up in editing a test page. I suggest that detailed discussion of the various changes should take place here on this talk page after they have completed the test exercise, and that we leave the main page for any resolutions we may arrive at. --Guinnog 12:41, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmains and Rebecca have now completed this exercise, in the latter case by accepting an edit I did on her behalf according to the principles she laid out in her previous input. The next step will be to analyse the different edits the two users made to see if we can refine the table towards a consensus we can all accept. I will get on with that and will complete within 24 hours. In the meantime, any comments are welcome in the space I made for them below. --Guinnog 02:44, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

[edit] Principles (table)

I suggest that Hmains begin by explaining what his principles are with regard to date delinking. Provision of diffs and examples would obviously facilitate discussion. (Guinnog)

I am afraid my 'principles' are not much more than what you yourself have just written. I too know what guidelines say. While I am doing my copyedit work, I see the linked dates, I look or have looked before at the 'year' articles and do not see that they add any context. I see context in timelines that relate to the subject of the article, but not just links to 'year' articles. These links provide no no discernable benefit to WP readers that I can see so I do my editing just as I do with anything alse that has no beneift. Hmains 05:21, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you see any merit in retaining any linked dates at all? The ones that come to mind are in articles about history. For example, I retained a link to the 19th century when I copyedited Flashman a while ago. I also often leave dates where they arguably might provide a context. An interesting effect of that is that I almost never let 2006 stand as a linked fragment, but I would often let 1066 stand. In other words, more recent dates seem less useful to me, as the reader (I would assume) is more likely to know enough to place the year in context. --Guinnog 05:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I've added the table above to see if we can end up with some rules of thumb here. Obviously if you are adding to it, it would help if you could give specific examples.
I don't know what to make of all this. I am not sure that my ideas on year linking are all that important. I am just trying to follow the WP Guidelines as I understand them. I do not want to be implementing something that is my own personal taste or that of some other few editors--that would be a wasted effort. In the Guidelines and prior discussions, I don't see anything special about 'century' linking/delinking or about '1900' or '1800' or whatever as cut off points. Hmains 16:59, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I appreciate your comment. It is important to realise that Wikipedia is driven by the needs of its users, not its editors or admins, and that policy and guidelines are useful only inasmuch as they aid this. In a case like this, it is the looseness of the policy we have which seems to have caused so much trouble, and I would hope that any productive conclusions we can come to here may play a part in clarifying policy in the future. --Guinnog 17:20, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
I did also stress that these were only my guidelines when copyediting. What are yours? --Guinnog 17:22, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Guinnog, what you put in the table looks fairly reasonable to me. At least, I would not mind if it were followed. Really, I think the whole date-linking issue could be settled by adopting the principle used for links in general: Link only the first occurrence or, for longer articles, perhaps also link a few further occurrences, but no more than are needed to keep one link to the given item in the reader's view. (For whatever difference in makes, there is an actual guideline, somewhere, saying something like that -- for links in general, though not for years in particular.) I suspect that if that principle were followed for bare years then the number of links to them should fall low enough that the links would cease to be an issue for all but a zealous few editors.

I don't quite agree with you about dates in tables, though. Part of the point of tabulating is that a user can find the line (or column, depending) holding the item of interest, and then simply scan across (or down), without needing to refer to rest of the table. If not every occurrence of a year is linked, a user wishing to use a year-link most often must go back to the table at large to find one, partially defeating the point of having the table. Also, links in a table can scarcely be accused of breaking textual flow, given that tables by their very nature break information into separate bits. Lonewolf BC 19:15, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Very good points. I'll amend my entry to reflect that. --Guinnog 19:33, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Individual points (from example pages)

[edit] Links removed by both

  • Repeated links, especially close together in article. NB that medieval is a redirect to Middle Ages, and that eg 1400s is often misused in place of 15th century. Whether linked or unlinked, this is a serious error and should be checked and corrected wherever seen. Note also that forms like "twelfth-century" and 1980's (for the decade) are considered wrong and should be corrected, and that 1990s is not a link to the decade but to the single year.
  • Recent links are seen as low-value by all three of us. I thought roughly the last 100 years, Rebecca is more conservative and says the last 20 years. Obviously both of us would use an element of discretion here when delinking.
  • Easter-egg links of the type [[1980 in stamp collecting|1980]] are deprecated.

[edit] Links removed by Hmains but retained by Rebecca

(in order of appearance in the article)

  • 15th century; some good background about the historical era.
  • 6th century BC; much less useful
  • 1st century; another fairly poor article. Peripheral interest only.
  • 3rd; thin article but contained one interesting fact slightly relevant to article
  • 7th; peripheral interest only.
  • 240 BC; one interesting fact; but this article is tiny. Little benefit.
  • 1st century BC; thin article but contained one interesting fact slightly relevant to article
  • 12th century; a slightly better article. One or two interesting facts. Some interest.

*1st century (second instance, but well down a long article from the first)

  • second century; another thin article. One slightly relevant fact.
  • 4th century; nothing here of any relevance to the article at all.
  • 5th century; peripheral interest only.
  • 354; article hardly exists. Nothing whatsoever here.
  • 430; Small article. Couple of peripherally relevant facts.
  • 245; Small article. One peripherally relevant fact.
  • 325; article hardly exists. Nothing whatsoever here.
  • 315 Little more than a stub. No interest here.
  • 386; peripheral interest only.
  • 344 Little more than a stub. No interest here.
  • 408; peripheral interest only.
  • 394; peripheral interest only.

*408 (second instance)

  • 547; stub (unmarked). No utility at all.
  • 329; stub (unmarked). No utility at all.
  • 379 Better article. Still peripheral interest only.
  • 9th century Decent article. Good historical context.
  • 560; peripheral interest only.
  • 636 Stub-class. Nothing, or very little that was pertinent

*12th century (second instance, in image caption)

*9th century (second instance)

  • 672 Little here. We did get the birth of Bede, slightly relevant.
  • 735 Sub-stub article. Bede's death.
  • 700; peripheral interest only.
  • 784 Sub-stub article. Nothing here at all
  • thirteenth century Decent article. Some good context.
  • eighth century Less good, but some peripheral interest.
  • 1550 Some minimal peripheral interest

*13th century (second instance)

  • 11th century Decent article. Good historical context.
  • 1070 Stub. Little or nothing of relevance here.
  • 12th century Decent article. Good historical context.
  • 1013 Barely above a stub. No interest.
  • 1054 Mention of SN 1054 supernova slightly interesting and of peripheral relevance.
  • 1225 Birth of Thomas Aquinas. Very peripheral relevance.
  • 1274 Less poor article. Little of relevance though.

*13th century (third instance)

  • 1400 Little here of interest. Less poor than some of the earlier year articles. Peripheral interest only.
  • 1120 Stub article. One very interesting and relevant fact. Unfortunately Welcher of Malvern is a redlink. Could be improved though.
  • 15th century Good historical context.
  • 1828 Nothing much here. Peripheral interest for those who like random facts.
  • 19th century Very respectable article. Good historical context.
  • 16th century Reasonable article. One very relevant reference.
  • 1888 Nothing much here. Peripheral interest for those who like random facts.
  • 1898 Nothing much here. Peripheral interest for those who like random facts.
  • 1830 Nothing of relevance.
  • 1896 Some minimal historical context.
  • 1816 One interesting fact.
  • 1885 Some minimal historical context.

[edit] In chronological order, by type

Century or year Grade for article quality
(1=high, 5= low)
(=x)		 Grade for relevance to Flat Earth
(=y)		 Grade for utility
(=x*y)		 Comment
6th century BC 3 2 6 Decent article, provides some historical context to when Pythagoras lived
1st century BC 4 4 16 Little here
1st century 4 4 16 Little here
2nd century 4 4 16 Little here
3rd century 4 4 16 Little here
4th century 4 4 16 Little here
5th century 4 4 16 Very thin indeed. Nice map.
7th century 4 4 16 Minimal article, minimal interest
8th century 4 4 16
9th century 3 3 9 Better article
11th century 3 3 9
12th century 4 4 16 Back to an article which is a formless list; hard to see any relevance
13th century 4 4 16
15th century 4 4 16
16th century 3 4 12 Longer article but still a sequence of lists.
19th century 2 3 6 Very interesting article; lots of peripheral historical articles to browse to, if you were finished reading the original article.
240 BC 5 3 15 Stub article
245 5 4 20 Even less, and less of interest
315 5 3 15
325 5 4 20
329 5 4 20
344 5 5 25 Nothing here
354 5 4 20
379 5 5 25
386 5 4 20
394 5 3 15
408 5 4 20
430 5 4 20
480 5 5 25
524 5 5 25
547 5 5 25
560 4 5 20
636 5 5 25
672 5 4 20
700 4 4 16
735 5 4 20 Year identifies the death of Bede, but article is so poor it provides only two other links, plus the turgid List of state leaders in 735 as context.
784 5 5 25
1013 4 4 16
1054 4 4 16
1070 4 4 16
1120 4 4 16
1225 4 5 20
1274 3 3 9
1400 4 4 16
1550 3 3 9
1816 2 2 4
1828 3 3 9
1830 2 3 6
1885 2 3 6
1888 2 3 6
1896 2 3 6
1898 2 2 4

[edit] Analysis (preliminary)

I will have more to say on this. For now, let me explain what I have just done. I tried to put myself into the role of a reasonably intelligent but non-expert person reading the article on Flat Earth (the subject of the test piece). If we can take as read that the repeated, easter egg and very recent year links are regarded by both editors (and by me) as low-value links, it is interesting to click on each of the links that Hmains would have deleted and Rebecca would not, with a view to finding what information if any related to, or even gave meaningful context to, the events described in the article.

Some rather surprising (at least to me) things came up. The century articles seem more valuable for providing historical context than the individual year links for the earlier periods. Many of these early individual year links are so poor in my opinion as not to be worth linking to at all at present. It is also rather hard for me to see how they could ever plausibly be significantly improved. Look at 735 for example.

If you review the links in question, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that many of the year links added nothing at all in terms of direct relevance to the article. I do recognise there are some Wikipedia users who will value the semirandom possibility in, say, clicking on 1885 and thus navigating from Flat Earth to LaMarcus Adna Thompson, the roller-coaster pioneer. I had not been aware though that many of the early year articles are so poor as not to give any real possibility for this activity. I'll think about it some more and try to take this onward this evening. For now, anybody else want to comment? --Guinnog 13:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've made a table with the links that Hmains would have deleted and Rebecca would have kept (notionally) in chronological order. For my next trick, I'm going to grade each of the articles (which I've linked from the data table; you were right, Lonewolf BC, thank you). I've chosen to grade each article separately for article quality and relevance, from which I'll make up a utility score by multiplying the two. Like everything else here it might seem arbitrary, but I think it is fair. In the wiki spirit, I'll only do them one or two at a time, and will be happy if anyone else wants to join in. We should, especially if Rebecca and Hmains (and potentially other people) will take part, end up with a very interesting dataset, showing what links are better than others, for this randomly chosen article. I'd still like anyone taking part not to edit the original article though. I'll start by grading a couple tonight, and then leave it to see if anyone else will have a go. Enjoy, and remember we are evaluating the links not on principle, but from the point of view of being valuable to a hypothetical person doing research for a project, say. --Guinnog 23:24, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Desired outcome

I thought this might be a good place to consider what we want from this, beyond a resolution of the immediate dispute between these two respected editors. It has become obvious that the existing policy is flawed by its well-meaning ambiguity. I'd like to propose that we aim to come up with a list of examples along the model of the table I made up; something like Always link, Usually link, Seldom link and Never link. I would stress that the criteria I used myself, which largely depended on the period of the date being linked to, were only my own ones, and need not be seen as a model for whatever we will end up with. I hope that the exercise I have asked Hmains and Rebecca to do may allow us to discuss towards establishing such principles. Any comments would be most welcome. --Guinnog 13:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

A resolution of the immediate conflict would be good. An improvement of the guidelines to prevent recurrence and improve clarity would be even better. Support your efforts. ++Lar: t/c 22:38, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] President Lethe's view

I see three aspects to the question of how to write dates at Wikipedia: personal/national custom, logical writing style (specifically, punctuation), and cross-referencing.

Encoding a date so that it is a link results in three things:

1. The date appears in different ways to different readers; which form of the date appears is the result of user preference (or default).

2. The date is punctuated logically or illogically (and thus, according to my prescriptivism, properly or improperly); this depends on the combination of the original writing and the displayed writing.

3. The date appears in a different color, with underlining, and acts as a cross-reference to another article.

My personal opinion about (1) is that user date preferences should be removed from Wikipedia's programming, and that the Manual of Style should require exactly one style for dates that aren't part of direct, verbatim quotations.

If Wikipedia were to become as I recommend, then points 2 and 3 would be simplified drastically.

If there were only one way of writing a proper date link, and only one way of displaying a date link, this problem would be gone.

(3) would become only a matter of relevant cross-referencing, instead of also a matter of (im)proper punctuation and personal/national custom, if my suggestion were implemented.

My personal preference about when a date should act as a cross-reference (which I see as the worthy point of encoding a date as a link (I think this matter of personal/national custom is unworthy)) is that, if a date appears on the screen, I be able to click on that date to see what else happened on that date in history, regardless of which century it's in. The flow of my reading is not significantly distracted by the different appearance (color, underlining) that cross-references have. If the same date appears five times in a window without any scrolling, not all five occurrences should be cross-references. Also, any cross-reference that seems to lead to an article about a year or date in general (rather than, say, an article about pop music in that year) better lead to what it seems to lead to.

I understand that people will still argue about how relevant a cross-reference is in a certain space. But the argument about links should be only about cross-referencing—not about this waste of time, effort, emotion, and computer resources, not to mention this imperfector of punctuation, that is encoding dates for personal/national preference. My main concern is the combination of (1) not having an imperfect date-rendering program botch the punctuation, (2) not having people fight over personal/national style when all we have to do is say "There is only one preferred style (in terms of punctuation and ordering) of writing dates at Wikipedia (except in verbatim quotes from other sources), and all editors have the right to make dates conform to that style, and no editor should cause a date to stop conforming to that style", and (3) having the link-encoding argument be reduced to the sole question of cross-referencing.

I think this covers my view, in terms of the changes that I advocate, my reasons, and what aspects I see as most worthy of the passion and effort.

President Lethe 03:22, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Moving this on

Hi. I'm sorry I haven't put much time into this recently. I'm going to try and tidy it up in the next day or so. My plan is to finish grading the links (any help would be welcome), make a comment or two, invite others to comment, then post the whole thing at the MoS talk page. --Guinnog 17:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not not know what you are talking about. When have I failed to participate in everything you asked me to? I have not seen your proposal to comment on. Thanks Hmains 20:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

What do you think of the grades I have given the dates in the table above? --Guinnog 20:18, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the grades. But I do not understand what difference your grades and my agreement can make. Someone else/anyone else in WP can disagree. And I do not expect many editors will want to/be able to do the grading you are doing and there are hundreds of years to grade. Next, what does one do with the grades? Assert that only high grade articles should be linked to? I would not necessarily disagree, but this would certainly be different from all the other lihking that is done, where articles of any qualify whatsoever are linked to if they have the same name as the word in the text. Who would go along with such a change, both in theory and in practice? Thanks Hmains 22:19, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Hmains that this seems like a lot of work for relatively little gain. I still don't see why we can't come to some sort of agreement as to just using our own discretion - it seems to be suitable for everyone else, whether they prefer dates linked or not, except Hmains, who doesn't seem to be able to. Rebecca 02:19, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

I was asked to comment as well, is it input on the grades that is all you need or ? ++Lar: t/c 23:07, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, some input on the grades I have assigned would be great. What would be even better would be if any of you could grade some of the date links yourselves, or even regrade some I've done if you disagree with my evaluations. See, I know I have been coming at this from the start with a modest date delinker's POV. I would be interested to see the evaluations of someone with a different take on the issue.
Hmains and Rebecca, I think that taking these dates as samples of the date links whose value you are arguing about, and arguing specifically about the merits of individual ones, will allow us to see trends of which types of dates are worth linking, and which not. I am already seeing such trends emerging from my own analysis, and they do not necessarily match my preconceptions. But unless there is some sort of shared consensus, these are just my grades, and my impressions, which is of very little value to ending this dispute and maybe moving the policy forwards.
If the alternative is for us to go back to where we were a month ago, I definitely think this is worth continuing with. I hope you'll agree. --Guinnog 07:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I know you mean well, but this is trying to set out objective criteria for something that is inherently subjective, and simply doesn't work. I really don't see what the problem is if Hmains stops killing them all and moves on to something else, leaving the issue to those who can exercise discretion. I'm not in the business of going around linking articles that aren't linked, so if that happens, as far as I can see, this whole issue would basically die. Rebecca 02:31, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I fear that the issue may not resolve itself as neatly as that; achieving some sort of consensus for the different values of different date links might help achieve a lasting peace here, rather than a localised truce, which is what we've had so far. --Guinnog 07:22, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm probably not the person to grade date links because my POV is hugely anti date linking. I almost never see the links to dates as of any value... but will take a look at various aspects... ++Lar: t/c 17:44, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Guinnog: Please keep trying. Thanks Hmains 05:55, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, I will. I will try and get this bit finished tomorrow. Sorry it's taken me so long. --Guinnog 07:11, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] further note

I am not surprised that most of the year articles provided little value, for context or anything else. That is what I have found in looking around them in the past. I do not know what criteria you used to evaluate them; my criteria might differ. I don't know what should be in the year articles. Sometimes there is narrative; sometimes it is just a list of dates and happenings. Does a year article provide 'better context' if it has lots of happenings? It may be that not one of them provides any 'context' whatsoever to the article in question. I do not see any great use in 'rules of thumb': 100 years back link everything, but nothing older or vise versa or whatever. This does not add any intelligent thought to WP. Neither does linking everything or not linking anything. Thoughtless for context. So are we back to 'judgement' on a link by link basis. In other words, everyone gets to link, not link, relink or delink every year in every article every day, every hour. The judgement of the original or prior editor of every article has no priority over the judgment of the current editor of the moment, right. Is there any beneficial value here at all? I still think if any reader wants to know about a particular year to find 'context', that reader can get it easily: they can type the year in the Search box and push Enter. Hmains 06:51, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

That's interesting. You're right that we should evaluate each and every date link on its merits, but in practice who has time to do that? That's why it has been so interesting to go through and actually look at some of these date links and see what they contain. My idea that the older ones provided better context has been blown away by the work I've done so far. As to criteria, I'm purely making a subjective judgement in each case how much useful context to the sample article, the date article contains. That's why it would be useful to have some other input. Maybe I am being totally unfair, although I don't think so. --Guinnog 05:52, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Preliminary conclusions

1. I came at this as a modest date delinker ("I find that the majority, even a vast majority of year links are adding little or nothing") but with the idea that "dates prior to 1800" should be linked or left linked, while more modern ones were superfluous.

a) I could see some merit in what Hmains was doing; systematically removing all partial date links in articles he edited, per his understanding of what the MoS allowed. I could also see the annoyance of Rebecca at what she saw as mechanistic edits, against her understanding of what the MoS allowed.

b} It seems obvious that a lot of the problem lies with the ambiguity of the present MoS; I know that has been controversial but the compromise we have ended up with is a fudge that leaves us open to the kind of misunderstanding that happened here.

2a) Overall, I think the results favour the idea that I came into this with, that most year links are pretty worthless. However, I will now look differently on which year and century articles are and aren't worth linking. The 19th century one is rather good for instance. I know that many of the 20th century year articles (that we ruled out in this study) are fairly informative.

b) I know now that many of the year articles from early years are so poor as not to be worth linking to, ever. Furthermore I see no realistic way they can ever be improved. I saw no article for a year before 1000 that was more than stub-quality. I will certainly be much less inclined to leave links to articles like 735 in place than I was before doing this. Even many of the more recent ones are poor in terms of adding understanding. You have to get into the 19th century before the articles get quite informative and well-written. Even then, few of them added real core meaning; it was more of a serendipitous sort of "what else happened that year" ability that became more real as the articles got (modestly) better through the years. (This is the opposite of what I believed before this exercise).

c) The century articles are better than the years. Even so, some quite late ones are remarkably poor (15th century for example). This could be an opportunity to improve these articles; a much more realistic aspiration than fixing up the early year articles, in my view. Meantime, I would still only link to century articles in exceptional cases where it would provide a useful perspective. I would change my view somewhat if the century articles were improved.

3. While there might seem to be nothing wrong with Hmains' edits in removing these (very often worthless) links, I understand the annoyance of editors like Rebecca at what they see as an unauthorised bot-like bulk edit.

a) Although I have no more authority than anyone else to tell Hmains and Rebecca how to act, having thought about it a great deal, I suggest the following compromise might offer a way forward:

b) Hmains should refrain from using automated or semiautomated methods for unlinking dates (pending the clarification to the MoS I propose below). All linking or delinking done should be justifiable; for each and every link added or removed a rationale should be possible and be provided on demand, and the rationale should take into account the value of the date article linked or delinked to the main article being edited.

c) Rebecca should refrain from mass-reverting Hmains' edits; if she perceives a problem with an individual edit, she should merely ask Hmains nicely and he should provide his rationale, as noted above.

d) Neither party should revert-war or be anything but civil with each other. Any problems should be referred to me in the first instance.

4. Finally, if there is no objection, an edited version of this should be copied to the relevant MoS talk page, in case it can help progress formulation of a better policy. --Guinnog 08:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments

I do not object to what you have written nor to your using this material in any useful way. Since the other parties at hand customarily attack me for removing any year link and do not accept--nor want to even hear--any statement that the links provide no value, I suspect nothing much will change. I really do not want to be a continual target for these people who feel free to treat other's editing efforts so badly (see my talk page for examples)--if not me, will you be targeted next? Thanks Hmains 03:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

For the umpteeth time, the problem is not that you are removing date links (many people do this without incident), but that you insist on removing all date links. Rebecca 05:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks both. So are you both broadly in agreement, on
a} the evaluation of the value of date linking, and on
b) the direction your own interactions should take? I'd be very happy if I thought we could move in this direction.
As I said, I was shocked at the poorness of many of the year articles; yet I was relatively impressed with one or two of the later ones, and with some of the later century articles. Would you agree with my impressions? If so, has it changed or strengthened any of your beliefs about date linking? It certainly changed some of my ideas. --Guinnog 08:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I have never removed 'date links', only year and century links. Leaving one or two random/first/whatever year/century links to satisfy an objective of not removing 'all' such links serves no valid WP purpose that I can imagine. Given what I have seen before and again see by the Guinnog analysis of the value of the year/century articles, I do not see what criteria an average editor could use to know what years/centuries to link or keep linked. All the words about 'context' simply mean personal judgement and one person's judgements can be disputed by everyone else with their own judgements. What is the best solution offering the best help for the reader of WP? I do not know. Hmains 19:05, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I have used 'date linking' as a shorthand for 'linking years and centuries'; this is quite separate to the debate over how full dates should best be displayed.
Yes, it's a tricky one, isn't it? I suppose what I'm suggesting is that we should keep in mind the relevance of some high quality year and century articles to some readers in some articles. Such judgements are of course bound to be subjective; but I think my proposal above, that we don't just remove all date links en masse, but at least consider leaving certain ones in place, and be prepared to give a delinking rationale for any links removed, ought to answer Rebecca's criticisms of you, as I understand them. --Guinnog 19:42, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that, as Hmains states above, he's not willing to do that. Thus we're back where we started. Rebecca 23:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure that's a fair summary of his position. Hmains, would you be willing to go along with my suggestion? --Guinnog 02:04, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Certainly, I can go along and defend it. Links should be made/kept when they can help the WP reader. The point in any case is to improve WP for the reader. Thanks Hmains 04:04, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Will this, in practice, actually mean that you keep any links, since you've repeatedly stated, as recently as yesterday, that no such links help the reader? Rebecca 04:18, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd be inclined to assume good faith on Hmains' part here and accept he has read and agreed to my proposal. He won't remove date links in an automated fashion, and he'll supply a delinking rationale for any links he removes that you query. Hmains, correct me if I have got it wrong here. --Guinnog 05:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Please excuse my cynicism - this is not the first time that Hmains has stated that he "only removes links that are unhelpful to Wikipedia" and then, as he believes they all are, proceeds to remove them all. In the absence of a promise to the contrary, I think it's only fair to assume he'll do what he has done before. Rebecca 06:31, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

(deindent) Yes, but I think removing them all, or almost them all might be ok in quite a few cases. I myself would reserve the right to sometimes remove all date links in an article. I think I could justify that in terms of our linking policy, and am always happy to discuss changes with other editors, and justify my linking or delinking of dates or other overlinked items. I thought it was Hmains' semiautomated edits you were against? I had hoped that getting him to agree to consider each link on its merits and justify changes if challenged, would adequately answer your criticism of him. --Guinnog 07:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

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