https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4582





--- Comment #238 from Philippe Verdy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  2008-11-26 20:05:48 
UTC ---
I strongly support the removal of the request. Autoformatting dates (or
numbers, currency amounts, percentages, zip codes and phone numbers if there
are some...) according to user preferences at the server level is a very bad
idea.

Autolinking dates is a separate issue that is not to be done in MediaWiki but
based on community decision on each Wiki project, and implemented in utility
templates if really needed, and used according to local usage policies.

Removing autolinked dates could however be performed on the server as it will
not be dependant on user preferences: however this should be done by a
configuration PHP hook to enforce a local policy decision (so the existing
templates trying to bypass this limitation would stop working, or a complex
utility template would have to be designed to tweak and complicate the syntax
so much that the PHP hook will not detect it, but at the same time the usage of
such utility template could be monitored.

My view about it is just that the default dates generated for example in user
signatures with tildes, should JUST be surrounded by something indicating this
is a date and giving its effective numeric value in abbreviated ISO format (in
Zulu timezone). This can be done just by generating (example on French Wikis):

<span class=date"id="date-20081126T184500">mercredi 16 novembre 2008, 20:45:00
CET</span>

instead of just the date and time formatted with the SINGLE DEFAULT format that
has been set according to the local Wiki localisation settings (and not
accoriding to user preferences). This will be useful for example when someone
that can't read Arabic or Farsi goes there to discuss something and has to
reply in some local discussions: even if the discussion is made in English, the
defautl signature will appear formatted in a way that is impossible to read by
most non-readers of Arabic (but a gadget selection and user preference settings
should help those users see the dates in a way they can read, and formatted at
times accurate for their local timezone (instead of the timezone of the
server).

With this type of code, connected users could still use a gadget to transform
those dates and interpret the signature dates (notably in discussion pages)
accordingto their curerntly selected locale in their preference (the transform
would NOT be performed by the server but locally by the user's browser, using
the Javascript loaded from the gadget). Nothing should be done for dates
inserted in articles.

This would just concern the way the MediaWiki parser transforms four-tildes and
five-tildes into formatted current dates...

Nothing is needed for all other dates, that articles will specify directly
using a single locale setting (users editing articles to insert dates manually
or defisigning templates computing and displaying dates on the Wiki should use
only a format suitable for the localization of the current wiki project (but if
they want, they may insert the same markup as the one used by MediaWiki for the
substitution of tildes. Note that this won't work completely for such dates
(with the markup above) occuring in section titles : only the section title
will be converted by the Javascript gadget running in the user's browser, but
not the formatted date visible in the TOC. I don't think this is a problem.


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