Editing Incubator escapee wiki:Help desk/Archive 12 (section)

==Linking dates and years. Also, question on capitalization==
I was working on slowly updating some music pages related to Throwing Muses. While doing so, I got confused about something I saw on one of the wikipedia faqs about linking dates and years. Could someone let me know if I should or should not be linking every year that appears in an article? I am totally confused about when to do it, and I want to be consistent. I need to go add links to years in a discography if they are supposed to each be linked. Also, I'm not clear on when to link full month/day/year, such as in a magazine article citation in my References. And I'm not sure when to spell out the month. Usual practice in reference citations in most style books is to abbreviate the month, but maybe an online internally linked site may have different needs. 

Finally, as for capitalization, I am understanding that when writing wikipedia page names and section names, the naming conventions are to only capitalize the first word and proper names after that in the name/title. I try to keep this straight from when I am typing references to magazine article titles or naming the title of a website in a reference; then I think I'm to use usual APA or Chicago stylebooks' cap style. Additionally, sometimes when I describe a website name in references or External links, I may give it a descriptive name when there's no real title for it, and in that case, i guess I'd fall back to wikipedia naming conventions of just the first word and proper names being capitalized. Trying to get things straight as I edit, [[User:Emerman|Emerman]] 19:05, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

: Link the ''first'' occurrance of every year number (and none of the subsequent occurances).  Some people also link the rest (e.g [[2 September]]), but I think that's dependent more on whether the event in question is notable.  Wikipedia's captitalisation rule is essentially the same as "normal english" (whatever that might be), like you say. - [[User:John Fader|John Fader]] 19:38, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::Link every date which has full day month year information. That allows the software to display the date in the user's chosen preference. Also link any day month for the same reason. Years alone are only linked if they are important and then usually only once per article unless it is a list or a really long article. [[User:Rmhermen|Rmhermen]] 19:59, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
:::Also month names are always written out. [[User:Rmhermen|Rmhermen]] 20:04, Dec 19, 2004 (UTC)
::::So even in a reference citation, we do not abbreviate the month as per normal footnote and reference list style in other publications due to our linking needs? This is not a problem for me; I just want to be sure before I go back and correct a bunch of magazine and newspaper citations in articles. thanks very much for this help. I will be adjusting several articles soon. [[User:Emerman|Emerman]] 20:22, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
:::::Y'know, I still don't agree with Rmhermen in the specific context you mean.  The citation standard to which you refer, [[Wikipedia:Cite_your_sources#Web_sites_.28not_from_periodicals.29]] doesn't wikify the dates and abbreviates the month names.  Rmhermen is quite correct for things that are in the article as a whole, but wikifying the "retrieved" dates seems rather counterproductive to me. -- [[User:John Fader|John Fader]] 21:27, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::::::Interesting. I posed the question at [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check]] which is probably the most likely place. [[User:Rmhermen|Rmhermen]] 04:55, Dec 20, 2004 (UTC)
:::::::Emerman must be the only person who actually follows the standard.  Damn new people showing the rest of us up by actually reading the policy documents :) -- [[User:John Fader|John Fader]] 01:18, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::::::::Oh, yes, that's right, months are abbreviated in the Notes and References area citations per the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources Cite sources] page. Now the question of when to wikify links for months and years still remains. So far in the one article, I have unwikified the retrieval dates just now and wikified and unabbreviated the months in the Notes and References area. I have all the full month/day/year ones wikified. I have not yet wikified magazine citations that say "June 2001" or "November/December 1991" yet. I have spelled out the months but I used to have them abbreviated in the Notes and References citations area. Now, I'm wondering if I should go back and abbreviate the months in the Notes and References area, but if I do that, should I unwikify them? The only thing that would show up if I did that is the year anyway since abbreviated months are red link dates. Now, Rmhermen says to not link to years except the first occurrence but then in the same paragraph says some people link specific month/dates in an article every time they appear and says he thinks that should depend on importance of the date, thus mixing the issue of years and specific dates. I think consistency should be important in developing a style. I will be glad to link every month/day/year if that's the style. I'm not sure if I should just show every instance of a month/day ([[September 2]]) without the year if the year has already been linked earlier in the article. Confusing, but surely not impossible to develop a style for this, explain it somewhere, and show examples in the[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cite_sources Cite sources page] with wiki links. [[User:Emerman|Emerman]] 15:52, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)
::::::::: Y'know, I really wouldn't worry ''too'' much about super-correct formatting. Providing what you put in is sensible, someone can always come along later and change things (and policies change faster that we can ever hope to keep up with implementing them anyway). Content is ''far'' more important than format, so please don't let style and format slow down your really valuable contributions. BTW, having watched her play from about 6ft away, I can personally attest that [[Tanya Donelly]] has ''teeny tiny'' hands (not really an encyclopedic fact, I'll grant you). -- [[User:John Fader|John Fader]] 16:05, 21 Dec 2004 (UTC)