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I hope you haven't taken the title too seriously; I simply think it makes for an eye-catching description of how I and others feel about auto-formatting. It goes without saying that neither the technical features of on-line encyclopaedias nor their developers are inherently malevolent. Auto-formatting has been considered a good idea by many people, or it wouldn't have persisted for so many years. But times change, and now is the time to revise our views on date linking.
What exactly is auto-formatting? According to the relevant guideline, "a combination of day-number and month can be autoformatted by adding square brackets ([[5 November]]). If a year is also given, with a separate link, all three items can be autoformatted as a single date." (Example: [[5 November]] [[2007]]) In other words, auto-formatting constitutes adding regular wiki-links to dates, which will appear as such on the page. The essential difference is that only registered users who have chosen a setting in their preferences will see properly linked dates in their preferred format. This is a function of the MediaWiki software and cannot be overridden manually;[1] proper date links will always be auto-formatted.
Unless, that is, this situation changes. And there is no shortage of arguments in favour of such a change.
- ^ Pipe-linking can prevent a linked date from changing formats—for example,
[[September 11, 2001 attacks|September 11]]—but it causes inconsistencies for users with date preferences on, and the link is obscured by other, identical-looking date links of little value.