The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was No consensus. Interested editors are encouraged to continue discussing improvements, merges, and the future of this page in it's talk page. — xaosflux ^Talk 19:26, 4 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:As of[edit]

There is no evidence of a benefit. It merely creates a link to the date article. See discussion at wp:mosnum Lightmouse (talk) 11:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Would suggest that some process of migration to template:update after/Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating would be handy, if possible, rather than blanket deletion. (I occasionally find it handy to look through, but agree it's not particularly elegant) Paulbrock (talk) 12:44, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Delete As proposed. Lightmouse (talk) 08:33, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep. This has been discussed before, and defended as a useful method of marking and finding statements which need updating. If there is no longer sentiment to use it this way, fine. Migration as Paulbrock proposes, or rewording to change the link, both seem better solutions. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:53, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete. The usefulness of [[As of xxxx]] links has not been demonstrated. In theory, yes, this is a way to track statements that require updates. But is that happening? Are editors using it in that way? I, for one, am not. If there was no cost in using [[As of xxxx]] links, I would vote to keep. But this is not the case. The presence of of [[As of xxxx]] imposes a clear cost to readers: [[As of xxxx]] tempts them to click on a link that 1) typically takes a long time to load, and 2) has almost no relevance to the article they're reading. I strongly encourage continued use of 'As of xxxx' text for qualifying statements that date. Whether the ((update after)) template is a useful way to deal with statements that date is a separate issue. The point here is whether [[As of xxxx]] links add more benefit to editors (and the encyclodpedia) than the cost imposed on readers. I believe they do not. Noca2plus (talk) 16:14, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment MFD debates must be conducted on the respective subpage and not the main WP:MFD page. Please add your comments here. Hut 8.5 18:00, 26 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Speedy keep, at most we would mark it as historical (or some other tag). -- Ned Scott 04:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong delete. The days when people would methodically sift through the as ofs and go update information in thousands of articles are gone. We now expect/hope that the guardians of articles will do that. Splotching yet more blue in text by linking as ofs is a bad idea, and they've become in essence the trivial links to year articles that have been deprecated over the past year or two. I have nothing against the year articles by themselves, though—it's just that it's impossible to see how they enhance and focus readers' understanding in the articles that link to them (with the possible exception of years in pre-modern times—there it depends on the year article). Tony (talk) 08:13, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Question. I strongly support Tony's position that trying to use blue links in articles to perform wiki-functions is a terrible idea from start to finish; we screwed up with autoformatting of dates. But please, please don't throw a big pile of useful information in the trash; have a bot convert them to templates or something. Maybe a bot could create a reminder on the talk page when it's time to update the information. If it's decided that people want to keep on doing this because it's faster to type and they're used to it, then have a bot go through every night and convert the links to something else. Here's the question: if this page is deleted, what's the plan to notify people trying to come to this page of the change? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 17:20, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You bring up a good point. If this MfD succeeds, there should be an informative explanation placed at WP:AO. Perhaps WP:AO and WP:As of could redirect to a section in WP:DATED indicating that the [[As of xxxx]] technique is now deprecated (perhaps Lightmouse will volunteer to do this?). Regarding the pile of information: my understanding is that success of this MfD would not delete all the [[As of xxxx]] redirects -- them being separate pages themselves. So definitely, the ability to track changes via seeing what links to [[As of xxxx]] will not immediately go away. If I understand this MfD, not even the present [[As of xxxx]] links within articles are in jepoardy. I like your suggestion that a bot change those article links to a template instead. That would solve the link-clutter objection, while preserving the editing advantages. If that is done, then I would still favor a policy change that [[As of xxxx]] be deprecated, and WP:As of be deleted (or redirected) as proposed. Noca2plus (talk) 18:30, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete, Keep and mark historical. People should be pointed to some section of some page that explains that wikilinking for this purpose is deprecated, and strongly support use of a bot as suggested (especially since I can't write bots :) Thanks for the explanation, Noca. I haven't read all of WP:As of and its talk page, and I'm not saying all the content has to die, it could get moved somewhere, but the page shouldn't exist in its current form. - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 18:46, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep until we have actually implemented something better. The problem of keeping Wikipedia updated is going to pyramid as we get further along in time. The pages linked here represent only a very small part of the problem. DGG (talk) 23:51, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. until something better is, I think, the best idea. Would be best if it did not show as a link but the function is useful. Rmhermen (talk) 23:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment Not sure if everyone is aware that we commonly archive proposals, even when rejected. MfD is for the technical removal of the page, and not so much for its status. -- Ned Scott 05:41, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but this is not so much a proposed procedure as a current procedure, would that category still apply? It does seem to be the case that the normal thing would be to stick a "This page is retained for historical" message at the top rather than to obliterate it. Paulbrock (talk) 10:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete These serve no purpose whatsoever. As far as I'm aware (I've sampled some, not all, of them) they are redirects the the year or month-year articles themselves (if ever they are not I cannot imagine why not). Thus, you're better off just linking directly (leaving the as of outside the double square brackets) or, in most cases, not linking at all. JIMp _talk·cont 17:19, 28 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Question Where are we? Is template:update after the "something better" that the "Keeps" are looking for, or should we post a notice on WP:Bot requests? Can the "Deletes" live with a "historical" tag? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:42, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Quick description: this is in the Effects section at the template:

• When the template is added to an article, the article is linked to As of yyyy (where "yyyy" is the expiration year); a list of such pages can be found at Wikipedia:As of. [Obviously this won't be needed if we're successful.]
• At approximately the expiration date (the exact day can be varied with changes to the template formulas), the article is linked to Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating, and the category (if any) which is specified as a parameter. The phrase "update needed", or a banner, also appears in the text of the article at the indicated spot.

See Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating for a list of pages currently needing updates.

- Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 15:46, 30 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Keep for now, but migrate to a better method and delete eventually. ((update after)) is a good start. The existing ((as of)) template could be redefined such that "((as of|May 2008))" works a bit like "May 2008((update after|2008|06|01))". —AlanBarrett 13:36, 2 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.