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Currently, the only way to get date preference formatting to work is to link the date. While this works, it has the side effect of cluttering up a page with otherwise unnecessary links. Wikipedia:Make only links relevant to the context is a good guide in this regard. Unfortunately, because of the desire to get date formatting preferences to work, you end up seeing lots of unnecessary links.
It has been suggested that some new Wiki syntax be created which would allow date preferences to function, but would not act as a link. This would be an alternative to, not a replacement for, the current link-based syntax. This has been proposed at Bugzilla bug #4582, but that feature request has not yet been accepted by the developers.