Date delinker

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I noticed that I started doing a significant number of script edits to conform to the mission below. I use this account because these edits are "grunge work", many in number and do not form what I consider to be "proper" copyediting efforts. The idea is to reduce the effect this has on my edit count. The account will reply principally on semi-automated tools, namely AutoWikiBrowser and third party scripts (I will not be writing any scripts).

Mission statement edit

This account is to be used to remove low value links to dates and other overlinked situations, in line with the deprecation of Date-autoformatting in Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) and with Wikipedia:Only make links that are relevant to the context, which summarises:

Only make links that are relevant to the context. It is counterproductive to hyperlink all possible words. This practice is known as "overlinking". A high density of links can draw attention away from the high-value links that readers would benefit from following.

Chronological items—such as days, years, decades and centuries—should generally not be linked unless they are demonstrably likely to deepen readers' understanding of the topic. Articles about other chronological items or related topics are an exception to this guideline.
Links to articles on a topic in a specific chronological period, such as 1441 in art, 1982 in film, and 18th century in United States history, may add significantly to readers' understanding of the current topic. It is possible to use piped links to such pages ([[1997 in South African sport|1997]]), but these have the disadvantage that readers do not see where the link is targeted. If an explicit link is provided, preferably in the lead, then it alone can be the gateway for the reader to access the available sibling articles for other years (1998 in South African sport and so on), making multiple links throughout the article unnecessary.
Note that dates should no longer be linked for the purpose of autoformatting, even though such links were previously considered desirable.
— Wikipedia:OVERLINK#Dates

Bookmarks edit

I have found on my travels that a certain fraction of articles have both linked and unlinked dates, and dates with different formats. I use the scripts with AWB in order to make all date formats consistent.