Talk:Lisbeth L. Petersen

Latest comment: 5 years ago by Doremo in topic MOS:DATERET

MOS:DATERET edit

I've (again) reverted the date format in this article per MOS:DATERET based on all points there: 1) the article has evolved using predominantly one date format (MDY), 2) the article has no national ties to so-called American or English date formats (the Faroe Islands are not a British or American colony), 3) the date format chosen by the first major contributor (MDY) should continue to be used. The date format used in Faroese is completely irrelevant for English—if that were the case, then all Chinese articles would use YMD format. Any discussion regarding the (mis)understanding of MOS:DATERET should take place at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Doremo (talk) 14:54, 1 June 2018 (UTC)Reply

The article has a strong national tie to the Faroe Islands, which use the dmy date format. Please see date format by country and the Faroe Islands listed there as dmy. No relevance to Britain or the US is being argued here. Yes, it should be continued unless there is a strong national tie. How is birth within that country, being of the nationality of that country and being a representative of that country as a politician in the country's parliament not result in a strong national tie? If you take a look at people born in and of the nationality of a country that uses a certain date format, you will see in the vast majority of cases the date format used will represent that which is used where they are from, due to a strong national tie. Also the reason ymd is often not used is because adding |ymd after a date code does not change it to that format. Helper201 (talk) 15:09, 1 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
If this article were written in Faroese, DMY would be obligatory (the only valid format). If it were written in Chinese, YMD would be obligatory (the only valid format). However, it is written in English, for which both MDY and DMY are both valid formats. I fail to see what Faroese date order has to do with an English-language article. This should be addressed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style because it calls into question basic MOS principles. If the MOS followed your logic, all English WP articles about Hungarians would use Surname–First Name order (violating English practice), all Chinese WP articles not about China would need to be reformatted to use date formats that are not valid in Chinese, all German WP articles about American topics would have to use MDY order (violating German practice), etc. Doremo (talk) 15:25, 1 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
The language of the article is irrelevant, when it comes to date format it should still match that which is used by the country the page is associated with if there is a strong national tie. That's why the MOS page mentions strong national ties, as strong national ties are still relevant and applicable on English pages. As I said, if you take a look at articles which have strong national ties to a country which uses a certain format, for example pages with a strong tie to America pages will use the MDY format, whereas British, French, German, Italian, Spanish etc will use DMY, because DMY is used in those countries. This is about date formats only, not about other writing styles. Please don't muddle or equate the two. Helper201 (talk) 15:42, 1 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
It sounds like you are proposing a change to the MOS that should be discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. It also seems unworkable, because it would require English WP articles on Chinese topics to use YMD format. If that is not the case, you need to explain why Faroese style (but not Chinese style) should overrule English style on English WP. Doremo (talk) 15:54, 1 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
I'm not proposing any change. This is the way things are. Please view the date format of pages with strong national ties and see that they match what is used by that country. Chinese articles and others using YMD cannot be changed as using |=ymd on date codes does such as 'birth date and age|X|X|X' does not not work. Helper201 (talk) 15:59, 1 June 2018 (UTC)Reply
A "strong national tie" means that a British topic would logically use British English conventions, and that an American topic would logically use American English conventions. There is no "Faroese English" to apply in this case. Doremo (talk) 17:31, 1 June 2018 (UTC)Reply