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The use of date autoformatting presently available in Wikipedia is overloaded on the function of interwiki linking. [[May 1]], [[2000]] autoformats the date for registered users who have set a date preference, but it also (for all users) provides links to the pages May 1 and 2000. In addition to other problems with this approach to date autoformatting, this has led to issues with articles becoming overlinked. Discussion on the WP:MOSNUM page in August 2008 led to a decision to deprecate such links, meaning that their use is now discouraged. However, that consensus has since been disputed. This RFC aims to settle that dispute as well as answer additional questions relating to dates and auto formatting.
This RFC seeks input about how editors and readers of Wikipedia expect dates within articles to be handled, including if they should be autoformatted and when dates should be linked. Understanding Wikipedians' views on these issues will help to resolve current disagreements about how to handle date links.