Template talk:Birth date and age

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Template:Birth date and age has been protected indefinitely. Use {{editprotected}} on this page to request an edit.

y m d => December 25, 1984 (age 22)

{{Birth date and age|1984|12|25}}
{{Birth date and age|||}}

d= m= y= => March 12, 1990 (age 17)

{{Birth date and age|day=12|month=3|year=1990}}
{{Birth date and age|day=|month=|year=}}

Contents 1 Request 2 Problem 3 Fall through 4 Use in infoboxes 5 British or U.S. order 6 Error? 7 Code question 8 selfref 9 Suggestion 10 {{subst:noprint}} 11 Current, IncludeOnly 12 Small? 13 Add category: [year] births 14 Rename template 15 born aged 42 - ouch! 15.1 Why can't I edit this template? 15.2 born aged 42 - ouch! 16 use in hCard microformat

[edit] Request

This is a very nice & useful template, but it displays as "Month day, year". Perhaps those in the know could program a "day month year" alternative version for those articles that use that format? Bolivian Unicyclist 12:11, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

It displays the date however you have it set in your preferences. If you prefer the day-month-year order, just set your preferences to that. —Angr 11:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that most Wikipedia readers don't have accounts, and therefore do not have date preferences set. While it is nice to have the age displayed in a template, for anything but U.S.-centric articles it displays the date in an incorrect format. I've been going through and removing it for articles on Australian, European and other leaders. --Pete 20:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Kind of a mess because birth dates are usually in parentheses, so this template pretty much guarantees nested parentheses. Also, I'm not too comfortable with the notion that some people's articles should be tagged with their age; how does one decide which? - Jmabel | Talk 18:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

If you don't want the extra formatting, just use Template:Age. I created the original "age calculation" template so that those people who should be tagged with their age, can be. Which people those are, I haven't got a clue. Good luck deciding! --Uncle Ed 21:58, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problem

Adding the template to Owen Wilson, I put in { { birth date and age|1968|18|11 } }, for the 18th November, but it came up June 11th. I don't think this is a problem with my preferences, because I've not chosen one. CelebHeights 16:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, it goes year|month|day in order from larger unit to smaller unit. Try { { birth date and age|1968|11|18 } } to get November 18, 1968 (age 38).

Template "arguments" don't follow your preferences. --Uncle Ed 17:54, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, not to sound brash, but is that not a serious problem? Not everybody uses the American way of writing dates.CelebHeights 13:16, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

You could do it like: {{Birth date and age|date=12|month=3|year=1990}} now, that Okay? Matthew Fenton (talk · contribs · count · email) 13:44, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, YYYY-MM-DD is an ISO standard way of displaying dates, not the "American way" (which is MM-DD-YYYY). And Matthew, I hope you updated all the pages using the template after you changed it, otherwise it's going to be broken on a whole lot of pages. —Angr 14:17, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Why would it be broke? Both ways work. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 14:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Fall through

To make it international acceptable I've added fall through parameters (month=, day=, year=) - these can be called in any order during transclusion. Matthew Fenton (talk · contribs · count · email) 13:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use in infoboxes

This template has been approved for use in {{Infobox actor}}. See Template talk:Infobox actor for discussion. Dismas|^(talk) 22:55, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I've a problem with using this in Template:Korean Go player in that it does not list the line (e.g. Cho Chikun) in the infobox. CanbekEsen 00:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I've figured it out. CanbekEsen 21:12, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] British or U.S. order

I have no preference between British d/m or U.S. m/d order. In fact, the default order of paramaters follows the East Asian (or "computer" order) or y/m/d. The idea is that the largest unit comes first. This matches the hour/minute/second order used elsewhere.

We could easily create a variant like {brit bda} or {british birth date and age} that uses year/day/month, but how many people actually would use it?

It's only when the year comes last (4/5/1980) or is omitted (4/5) that there's any ambiguity. But this template requires the year. And if the year goes first, I don't know of anyone who'd want to put the day next. Anyway, Matthew's fall through parameters should suffice. --Uncle Ed 12:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

In England we actually do <day>/<month>/<year>.. I thought it was U.S. that did <month>/<date>/<year>? thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 13:13, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes, Ed had it backwards. For some reason people in this country (the U.S.) put it in month/date/year order. I've never understood it and I've lived here all my life. Dismas|^(talk) 13:16, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I was typing in a hurry and didn't proofread what I typed. Sorry for adding to the confusion. --Uncle Ed 14:18, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the origin of the order (on my side of the pond) is usage like "August 10th". Then you might add the year as "August 10th, 1845". Note that the U.S. military chose to use d mmm yyyy order: 10 Aug 1845. I guess they felt the extra second or two it takes to write out the month abbrev. was worthwhile, to prevent confusion over whether 10/8 means 10th day of August or October 8th.

By the way, I learned a lot about dates and how they get entered into computers, stored and interpreted during in the two years leading up to the great "Y2K problem". --Uncle Ed 14:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm from Australia and we (except Newspapers) use the same date format (<day>/<month>/<year>) as that used in the UK. I believe only North America uses the <month>/<day>/<year> format, so a lot of people would actually use the British/International variant template, ranging from the British Isles and Europe to Africa, the Subcontinent and Oceania. But I would either call the template "International bda" or "Intl birth date and age". Another few suggestions is to either call the international variant "Birth date and age" and rename the North American variant as "NA birth date and age", or call the international variant "Intl birth date and age" and rename the North American variant "NA birth date and age". Marco 12:54, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

I hope that no one will be too offended, but I think that using anything other than the current format, which is the REAL international standard (ISO 8601), is foolish. It is both unambiguous (probably even to CelebHeights, upon reflection), and logical (larger to smaller, just like our numbering system, and, for other applications, a time can follow). Creating an alternate template will give more stuff for Wikipedians to support (including de-vandalizing), encourage people to use their provincial formats instead of the official standard, encourage variations between templates, and force editors to do research to find out what a particular template does... after which they'll replace with with the standard template. Like Uncle Ed, I too have gone through Y2k; much of Y2K occurred because people could not be bothered to PLAN AHEAd, often even as late as 1998. Also, the statement about the US military is obsolete; forms are being converted to request YYYY MM DD or YYYY MMM DD. --Scott McNay 04:43, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

The ISO standard is for "data elements and interchange formats" it is not for narrative text, like an encyclopedia article. Most people in the English-speaking world write a date as "February 25, 1990" (North America) or "25 February 1990" (most of the rest of the English-speaking world). For those users who are signed on and have stated a date preference, they will see all dates in their preferred format, but those who are not signed in (which is a majority of those who are reading the articles and not editing), and those who haven't set their date preference, will see the date from this template in the North American format. I think we should have an alternative, perhaps having an optional 4th parm that has the format MDY, DMY or even YMD. This way we can have a default depending on what part of the world the subject of a bio is from. This 4th parm would have no effect on users who are signed in and have stated a preference. If this is not possible, then we should have a second template named "Intl birth date and age" as per above. --rogerd 04:02, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Adding a parameter to specify US usage is entirely possible, I should think. Of course, seeing as the majority of English-speakers use DMY, the template would default to that, and one'd have the specify {{bda|1982|6|21|NA}}. What do we think?

{{bda|1982|6|21}} would produce 21 June 1982 (age 24)

and {{bda|1982|6|21|NA}} June 21, 1982 (age 24)

Of course, all of us will see these exactly the same, per our preferences, but still... ^† DBD

^† DBD 12:27, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest that the template be changed to use the ISO order of Year Month Day, which would be unambiguous to all English speakers, and follow the international standard, thus avoiding regional issues. This would of course still also follow user preferences for those that have them. —MJBurrage • TALK • 14:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. That would mean that any user who isn't signed in (which is probably most readers of wikipedia) or hasn't stated a date preference would see the rather ungainly 1982-06-21 for instance, that is not meant for narrative text, but for "data elements and interchange formats". Just as most UK or international subjects have dates in the 21 June 1982 format and most US and Canada subjects have it in the June 21, 1982 format. So this template needs to be changed to allow editors to make the default formatting consistent with the customary date formatting of the subject's country. --rogerd 01:59, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I should have been clearer. I was not sugesting the exact ISO standard, just the ISO order, so today for example would read 2007 March 03 for anybody without a set preference. —MJBurrage • TALK • 13:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Error?

the template page is reading:

“

[[ {{{3}}}]] [[{{{1}}}]] (age Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "{")

”

...is this correct? --emerson7 | Talk 18:06, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

That's just the rogue output from the template, in reality when called it won't spit out that error message to you :-) thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 18:18, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Code question

The template has a few items that look like: {{{1|{{{year|{{{1}}}}}}}}} Is the repeated {{{1}}} necessary, or could it be {{{1|{{{year|}}}}}} ? Gimmetrow 20:16, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The extra {{{1}}} is for style reasons. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 20:27, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Could you explain further? What style reasons does this code advance? Gimmetrow 00:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Look at the actual template and you will notice the numbers are outputted rather then day, year or month. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 00:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm just asking how it works and why it's there. The code seems to say: use the value of {{{1}}}, but if that isn't defined, then use the value of <nowki>{{{year}}}</nowiki>, but if that is also not defined, then use the value of {{{1}}}. But that won't be defined if the code ever gets there. Please explain? Gimmetrow 01:27, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

{{{1|{{{year|}}}}}} expands to "" (the empty string) if neither parameter number 1 nor parameter "year" are defined. {{{1|{{{year|{{{1}}}}}}}}} expands to "{{{1}}}" and reminds the callers that they must specify either parameter number 1 or year but not leave out both. You can test that yourself by copying {{{1|{{{year|{{{1}}}}}}}}} into Special:ExpandTemplates. --Ligulem 10:53, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] selfref

This template use {{selfref}}, but without real reason... Can an administrator remove it please. 16@r 16:18, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

The syntax is so convoluted that I don't dare, but I'll ask at WP:AN. - Jmabel | Talk 04:48, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Ral315 wrote on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard ([1]):

I believe it's so that mirrors don't take the age, which might be inaccurate should the person later die. Ral315 (talk) 07:30, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

--Ligulem 10:35, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

The {{age}} template called by this one is also used extensively itself and doesn't 'selfref' the value so we're inconsistent there. Mirrors which copy the templates would be fine. If some mirrors just copy the final value they would have the age off by a year between the person's birthdate and the next update. Thus, only mirrors which do not update regularly might have a serious impact from this... but they'd also be failing to include things like the fact that the person had died at all - making the un-updated age seem like a relatively minor concern. As such I think it should be ok to remove this and will do so. --CBD 12:57, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, when I made the change I noticed that parameter 2 of the selfref template was set to blank... which would actually prevent the selfreference class from being set and effectively caused the selfref template to do nothing except display the contents of parameter 1... which is exactly what happens when we remove the selfref entirely. --CBD 13:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

How about <small> tags after the date of birth?

It would look like this:

December 25, 1984 (age 22)

---Majestic- 08:24, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and made this change. Just remove the 'small' tags if there is a consensus in favor of the larger text. --CBD 13:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{subst:noprint}}

The "age" section should be wrapped in "noprint," so that we don't produce dated paper versions. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 21:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. Luna Santin 23:23, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there an opposite to noprint, such as printonly? If so, could change to add "as of yyyy mmm dd", so that "flattened" material is always correct. --Scott McNay 04:55, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Current, IncludeOnly

May I suggest adding the word "current" in front? I was looking at a bio page, and saw "age nn" under the picture, and wasn't sure if that meant the age as of when the picture was taken. Adding the word "current" should help.

Also, I'd like to suggest that <includeonly> and </includeonly> be added to suppress the error message that appears on the template page, and add "See Template_Talk:Birth date and age for discussion about this template" in the <noinclude> section. --Scott McNay 04:52, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Small?

Any chance we could get rid of the <small/> tags around the age. It makes it more difficult to read for people with visual difficulties (like myself). For the number of characters an age will ever be (three at most), it's not like it's saving any space… — OwenBlacker 01:01, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Considering most people can view the small text I don't see this change as necessary, you can add some CSS to Monobook.css to set small font-text to 100%.

small { font-size: 100%; }

Hope this helps. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 01:10, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that this template is used with the infobox templates (ex. Ang Lee which uses {{Infobox actor}}). The infobox uses "font-size:90%;" so the "small" is in addition to that. I don't see OwenBlacker's request as unreasonable as that is getting pretty small for a significant portion of the population. -- JLaTondre 14:35, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

By the way, the <small> tags only make the numbers smaller, but not the word "age" or the brackets. It was originally intended that it would make both "(age" and ##) smaller. Example: (age 30). Currently it reads: (age 30) which looks kinda weird. Can you fix this? ---Majestic- 01:25, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I second this request. Can we pick one or the other? Fethers 02:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to grant this one, since the majority of people with opinions want it, and everybody seems reasonable. Only questions before I go for it: (a) is there anybody who strongly disagrees, at this time? (b) What about italics, instead of small font? Luna Santin 03:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I was just about to propose this change, but see that someone's beaten me to it. Please do remove the <small> tags as it makes the text look strange, and doesn't really add any value. Thanks. robwingfield ^«T•C» 15:43, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Righto, done. I've put it in italics, as well -- somebody let me know if you think that's just as bad. :p Luna Santin 22:47, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Uhh.. please remove the italics :-\ thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 22:53, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Will do, if someone else agrees they should go. I guess I figure there should be some text decoration (to mark it as transient information subject to change?), but if I'm the only one, no problem. Luna Santin 23:03, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I second that request. I'm not a fan of the <small> script, but I can live with that. But italics... yeech! I'm sorry, but it looks really bad imo. --Badmotorfinger 00:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Fair enough -- I appreciate your candor, actually. Removed 'em. Luna Santin 00:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The </small> tag needs to be removed. --PhantomS 00:53, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Could've sworn I got that. Perhaps this'll go down in history as my most bungled protected edit ever? :p Luna Santin 00:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Add category: [year] births

It would be useful if this could be used to automatically categorize the bio into the category of whatever year of birth it is. For example if {{birth date and age|1971|04|09}} automatically sorted that biography (Peter Canavan) into [[Category:1971 births]] --Macca7174 16:11, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but I don't think it would work. There could easily be birth dates for people who are not the main subject of an article, and there could be articles whose subjects might include a birth date, but should not appear in the [[Category:nnnn births]]. --Ccady 04:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

But if another birth date was used within an article about a different person, there is no need to use this template, surely? Could you show me an example of where it is neccessary. I assumed the usage of the template was restricted to Infoboxes?--Macca7174 14:33, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rename template

With the introduction of a similar template providing output in International Dating format, I intend renaming this template to "US birth date and age" in order to maintain consistency and reduce confusion. As it stands, many editors are using this template for articles where the subject is not a U.S. or Phillipines citizen, and of course this produces a date format which is inconsistent with the remainder of the article. --Pete 00:02, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand. This template already outputs the date in European format if the user's preferences are set for that format. Why do we need seperate templates? Dismas|^(talk) 01:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Nutshell: The preferences would cover it all, or even the majority of users signed up and properly set the prefs. This is to address the issue of casual/annom users. A casual user in London should get an article a bout a British celeb in a "proper" and consistent formatting. — J Greb 02:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Most Wikipedia users aren't editors and don't have accounts. This goes to the issue of quality and professionalism, to have all dates in an article in the correct standard. We should label the two templates appropriately, not leave one as an implicit default. --Pete 02:58, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Why not add an optional field for Euro dates, in order to merge the two? --PhantomS 03:07, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Considering that the U.S. and the Philippines are about the only two nations using American Dating format, why not have an optional field for U.S. dates? I'd prefer to have one template that takes the input as a standard wikidate in either format, and outputs the same format, adding the calculated age. --Pete 03:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I see the problem now. I would rather have the template changed than have two templates. I think it would lessen the confusion for editors. Dismas|^(talk) 14:53, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest that the template name not change, but that the template itself be changed to use the ISO order of Year Month Day, which would be unambiguous to all English speakers, and follow the international standard, thus avoiding regional issues. This would of course still also follow user preferences for those that have them. —MJBurrage • TALK • 14:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

A neat solution, but unfortunately it goes dead against the Manual of Style. We write out dates with the full month, and we format them in the order relevant to the country. --Pete 16:35, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The ISO format is not for narrative text, but for computer interchange. Why can't this template have an optional 4th parameter for the default formatting for "no date preference" users? And by the way Canada usually uses the Mmmm DD, YYYY format, too. --rogerd 15:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Canada uses both, but the month-day-year format remains a minority usage globally. Using ISO as an input parameter might seem straightforward to you, but it's confusing to the average editor. What is needed is wikidate input, just like every other date in Wikipedia text, and have the template just spit it out as input, after working out the age. The idea is to keep it simple so people will use it effectively. --Pete 17:16, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

As I just added in another section above, I had not meant to sugest the exact ISO standard, just the ISO order, so that today would read as 2007 March 03 to anyone without a preference set. —MJBurrage • TALK • 13:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

If you can get this through WP:DATE, fine. Otherwise, it's not worth talking about anywhere else. In the meantime, let's stick to what the Manual of Style says, hmmm? --Pete 17:01, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

According to the ISO date formats section of WP:DATE, “ISO 8601 dates may sometimes be useful elsewhere; for example, they are useful in lists, tables, for dates of birth/death” —MJBurrage • TALK • 01:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

"...birth/death, for conciseness and ease of comparison." Finishing the quote for you. It may be that the points of contention become: 1) is use in an infobox a form of list or table, and 2) does the information need to be more concise for comparison against other articles. — J Greb 01:17, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Given that this template is intended to be used primarily in Info-boxes, and not as part of a sentence in flowing text, I do not see that it would be a problem for it to use an order that might be different than the order used for dates in the narrative text of the article.
So whether an article’s dates are in American order (March 4, 2007), or Commonwealth order (4 March 2007) having this one date in ISO order (1997 March 4 (age 10) for example) does not seem to me to be a problem. Furthermore it solves the whole order/multi-template debates with out favouring American vs. Commonwealth, and it does not, in my humble opinion, violate the spirit of WP:DATE. —MJBurrage • TALK • 14:20, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I make the point that it isn't American vs Commonwealth. It's American vs International, as day-month-year format is in wide use throughout Europe, Africa, South America and much of Asia. I see your point about the template being a table, and yes, using ISO format would solve the problem. I can't say that I love it, however. --Pete 17:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] born aged 42 - ouch!

[edit] Why can't I edit this template?

Why can I only "view source", there's no edit button. Gronky 12:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

The template is protected to avoid vandalism. Templates, like this one, that are widely used are favorite targets for vandalism as it will show up on many, many pages. I have added the appropriate template to the top of this page to explain that. -- JLaTondre 14:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] born aged 42 - ouch!

This template currently says says that people were born at a certain age. Surely it should say "currently aged 42". Can someone fix this? I can't, the page has no edit button for some unexplained reason. Gronky 12:35, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not positive I understand your request. The template shows up as "(age #)". For an example, look at Arthur C. Clarke which shows its typical usage in an infobox: "Born: December 16, 1917 (age 89)". I think that's pretty clear that the date is when he's born and his current age is 89. As it's normally used in an infobox, adding "currently" will cause it to wrap which won't look as nice. -- JLaTondre 14:16, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Like Chinglish, I know what is meant, but it looks strange: "Age 89 at birth". If a linebreak was added before the parenthesis, it would wrap nicely, or better yet, if was used instead of spaces, it would only wrap when necessary, and in those cases would wrap nicely. Then "currently aged" could be used, or something equally proper. Gronky 20:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Or you change "(Age ##)" to "(## years old)" or "(now aged ##)". Examples - Born: December 16, 1917 (89 years old), or Born: December 16, 1917 (now aged 89).

Or just make a new infobox field: "Current age", if the current system is so confusing. ---Majestic- 20:46, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, you can prevent wrapping by adding &nbsp ; codes to this template in between the words, numbers etc., wherever there is a space (punctuation) between them. Actually there is already &nbsp ; between "age" and the numbers so it can't wrap. ---Majestic- 21:05, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] use in hCard microformat

This template has (positive!) implications for the deployment of the hCard microformat. Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats/hcard. Andy Mabbett 15:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)