Wikipedia talk:As of

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This page was nominated for deletion on 25 April 2008. The result of the discussion was no consensus.

Note: the most efficient way to find newly created as of-pages is to use Special:Allpages/As of. Please add new as of-pages to the list.

Contents 1 Entries prior to 2006 2 Historical As of 3 Statistical batch, topical and regional "as of" 4 Deletion of obsolete pages? 5 Use of a template 6 Template:Update after 7 Different approach for activation logic 8 Further simplifications 9 {{Update after}} ready for testing 10 Caching? 11 Earlier "as ofs" 12 Please comment on "update after" 13 auto-update? 14 R for as of 15 Deprecated "As of" pages (?) 16 Update to Template:Update_after 17 Template:Update after can't replace As of 18 Template and Categories 19 Linking to this from articles 20 "As of" in discussion 21 Rise of the bots 22 Proposal: Deprecate links to [As of xxxx] and delete Wikipedia:As of 23 Following deletion proposal...migration?

[edit] Entries prior to 2006

Entries prior to 2006 have been moved here. --Scott McNay 05:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Historical As of

I think "As of" should only be used to give information meant to describe the contemporary world, when that information is likely to change somewhat rapidly. For example, one should say that "As of 2006", there are 1000 (just an example) languages spoken in Africa. However, one should not say "As of 1950", there were 25 colonies in Africa. Rather, just say, "In 1950" or present the information in a different way. Do people understand my objection? No one is ever going to (or should) come back to the 1950 one and change it. It will always be true (and useful information). However, the language factoid should be updated. Essentially, no one should ever use the past tense with "as of." Thus, there should never be ancient pages like As of 1889. They should either be updated with the most current information, or the "as of" link eliminated. Superm401 | Talk 02:11, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

For similar reasons, I don't think there should be future as ofs, like "As of 2007" (As of 2006 :) ) Superm401 | Talk 02:54, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Ideally, yes, but what if the most recent information available to us is from 1889? It's unlikely, but just the other day I read a statement that said something like "As of 1911, Lily's Latin Grammar was under perpetual crown copyright in the United Kingdom." This fact was mentioned in the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica, and apparently it is difficult to determine whether or not it is still the case. The "as of" is a marker that this information should be updated if possible. I agree that in your African colonies example the "as of 1950" is inappropriate, since it described a state of affairs in 1950 that is meant to be used as a historical snapshot. But there are situations in which "as of" is appropriate for such old years. —Bkell 06:54, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

That's a valid point, though I don't think all of the historical ones fall in that category. However, would you agree that there should never be a future "as of"? Superm401 | Talk 05:43, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, saying "as of 2008" in an article written today would be bizarre, and I can't really think of a reasonable use for something like that. —Bkell 22:34, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. I think many articles could benefit from "as of" links in the future. For instance, right now, one article, Ruvuma River, has an "as of 2008" link, in the sentence:

Construction is to finish in [[As of 2008|2008]] and will cost 28 billion USD.

This seems a perfect use for future "as of" links to me. It sounds like you are suggesting this should be recast either as

[[As of 2006]], construction is expected to finish in 2008 and cost 28 billion USD.

or as:

Construction is to finish in [[As of 2006|2008]] and will cost 28 billion USD.

Both reworkings seem bizarre and less elegant than the current one. I think using future "as of" links is perfect for the next few years (I would say, not beyond 2010 or so) when there is an extremely high probability that a) the fact being stated will be true at that time, and the only cleanup task will be to verify that it was actually true (and change tenses), and b) there is unlikely to be any further developments requiring a fact-check of the statement until that date arrives.

I think it would make perfect sense to put [[As of 2009]] into a statement about the next U.S. Presidential inauguration, for instance. It's extremely likely that it will actually happen then, and there's little chance that anything will come up in the interim requiring cleanup of the statement. --TreyHarris 22:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Statistical batch, topical and regional "as of"

"As of" is great for fact-checking, but because so many articles make use of it, it is hard to identify those articles which are actually due an update. Note that there are also very many "(Year) in (topic)" articles. My suggestion would be:

• Some topical "as of" links to topical year article e.g. in a cricket article [[As of 2006 in cricket|As of 2006]], with [[As of 2006 in cricket]] set as a redirect to [[2006 in cricket]] and also categorized in some way under "cricket" (not sure of the best way to do this though). Similarly [[As of 2006 in film|As of 2006]] in a film article, redirecting to [[2006 in film]].
• Some regional "as of" links e.g. in a United States/African related article, [[As of 2006 in the United States/in Africa|As of 2006]], with [[As of 2006 in the United States/in Africa]] set as a redirect to [[2006 in the United States]]/[[2006 in Africa]] and appropriately categorized (again, open to suggestions as to how this should be done).
• For large batches of statistics it may be better to have specific "as of" links e.g. [[As of the Statistics Norway Yearbook, 2004|As of 2004]] or [[As of the United States Census, 2000|As of 2000]]. I'm not sure what these should redirect to: if there is an article on the statistical batch (e.g. the U.S. census) it may be best to redirect there (it seems sufficiently intuitive that a casual reader clicking on the "As of 2000" in "As of 2000, the population is..." wouldn't be utterly shocked to end up at the 2000 census) but in other cases the redirect should probably simply be to the year itself.

Is there support for these proposals? I think they would make updating significantly easier. TheGrappler 14:22, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion of obsolete pages?

Is there any reason not to delete pages for years such as 1975, and deprecated pages such as August 2001, etc.?

I can't see any reason not to delete deprecated pages which are no longer used, but I'm not sure about the full years.

--Scott McNay 05:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of a template

Considering that the as of technique apparently violates Wikipedia conventions, can we use a template or something similar instead, to produce a more elegant result? Presumably, a template or similar technique can be mixed with regular text (to mark the right spot) without becoming visible.

--Scott McNay 05:44, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Update after

I created a template to play with. So far, it looks like the best solution is to use the template to add the page to a category. See Wikipedia:Requested_templates#Template:As_of. --Scott McNay 07:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't understand what's wrong with your [[template:Update 2007]] technique, which leaves a reference to the template in the database (that can be found with what links here) but without anything visible in the article. There could be one of these templates per year, much like there's one "as of" redirect per year. Putting articles into a category is certainly possible, but seems wrong (since the categories are visible). -- Rick Block (talk) 15:31, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I have the [Template:As_of] template fairly well documented, including my objection to the space that is left; this space could be awkward in some cases, just as the current hotlinking is awkward.

As for the categories, what specifically is wrong with that? I see plenty of articles which are in admin-like categories. Although, I guess it's intended for stuff which is expected to be fixed eventually (in a perfect world).

Hmm, I just re-checked, and I see that the template does indeed have a what links here, and the template itself, of course, does not need to return ANY text (can be completely empty aside from comments).

Thought: is it possible for a template to return a value only if a user is logged in (therefore is probably an editor)? Could then have a marker of some type appear where the template is. This would have the advantage of:

1. Let editors know whether an item is already marked as needing update at some time in the future.
2. Let editors know where to look to see if something needs updating.
3. People who are not logged in (and therefore presumably just readers/users) will see nothing special.
4. The mark could link to the template page, which would have a comment describing what the mark is for, for those unfamiliar with it. If can't have a mark that only shows up for people who log in, then a non-invasive mark would probably be ok for readers as well. I think there should be SOME mark, even if it can't be hidden from readers.

--Scott McNay 15:59, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

My issue with "as of" categories is that if this technique catches on, I think there will be "as of" notes essentially permanently on hundreds of thousands of articles (every current political officeholder in the officeholder's article and the geographical article about the place, every sports team's current roster, every article about any annual award, ...). I think most of the current "administrative" categories are not meant to be permanent. Re visibility - perhaps the note should be invisible until it "expires" and then turn into a "please update me" tag of some sort. This would be possible with a template using m:ParserFunctions (if the currentyear is greater than or equal to the update year, then show the tag). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:33, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I've been fiddling with [[Template:Update 2007]]; I have it documented and have a "{{Update 2007}}" as the marker. I was intending to use a magic word to insert the template name into the link (so that the template can be copied to other years without modification), but I couldn't figure out how to make that work. I also checked to see if What links here will work with individual page topics, but apparently not. Would using a subpage be better for all of the years?

If using a "please update me", then probably should have a flag indicating low-priority and high-priority stuff; hgh-priority for things which you know will change, and low-priority for things which may change and/or it's not critical. --Scott McNay 17:52, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

A "Date-sensitive articles needing attention now" category which is used for critical articles when the date expires, perhaps? --Scott McNay 17:55, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Articles can't be automatically added to a category by a template at a later time, the cateogry addition has to happen when an edit to the article is made. We could set it up so if the time has expired and anyone edits the article it is added then, but there's no way to auto-add when the timer expires. Rather than "as of" this is more of an update reminder - perhaps the name should be more reflective of this purpose. Note that with a template doing a date comparison, the comparison could be to the month or even to a specific day with the "expiration" month/day included as (probably optional) parameters. I'd be OK with the note looking sort of like what template:fact produces, i.e. ^{[citation needed]} (which does not appear on printed copies). Perhaps it could be ^{[update needed]}. Note that there is an existing template:update, which produces a much more intrusive flag. We could have two versions, both taking date parameters, that "go off" on the indicated date. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:15, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

1. Well, it shows the category at the bottom of the page when I change the year in the template from 2007 to 2006; maybe that's due to the cache flushing (which would be a way to force all aged articles to join the category, once someone simply views the page). I suppose can leave the conditional category in for now, and see how annoying it is, and take it out later if it's excessively so.

It might display even though the article doesn't actually appear in the category listing. Changing the template causes the article to be re-rendered when it is next viewed. My guess is the renderer shows it as in the category but the category database record is not updated.

2. I think it might be better to have two different templates, one for "update needed" and one for "review needed" (this would also lack the category), thus giving two different priority levels.

The difference being "update" means the article is for sure stale (e.g. Bush being listed as president and the date being after Jan 2009) and "review" means only that the content might be stale (any incumbent politician after the next election)? I think it might be worth worrying about "update" first and seeing how it goes.

3. What do you think of using subpages for months, as in "Update needed on 2006/07/31"

What do you think about using optional parameters for the day and month?

4. I dislike hardcoding the year, but I can't think of a way to do that AND have a separate template for each year (and maybe month). Maybe have a higher-level template which creates the year templates?

I think separate template by year is fine (and hardly worth creating a meta-template for). I'd prefer the month to be a parameter. There could be categories for each month.

5. Take a look at what's there [[Template:Update 2007|now]] and tell me what you think. The year is set to 2006 {{as of 2007}} at the moment.

I'd rather have it be completely invisible until the indicated date. It's in the source, so editors will be able to see it. Why does it need to be visible? -- Rick Block (talk) 03:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

--Scott McNay 19:54, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I've replaced {{As of 2007}} with {{Update 2007}}, and have changed all references from the old version to the new one. --Scott McNay 02:49, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I've NOINCLUDEd the "*" mark (which was almost invisible) and the category code.

I don't see how to make the months work in What links here, so that one knows that a particular article is "expiring" in a particular month.

I've already made a meta-template, Template:Update_year.
--Scott McNay 04:11, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh! I also created the Wikipedia:Updating information article that you suggested. --Scott McNay 04:24, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

This is good! BTW - I think adding the articles to a category would be good as well, even if they only truly show up in the category listing the next time they're edited after the expiration date. Before going too public with this we should add at least a month option if not month and day. This could all be done in one template at the expense of an extra space (linked to an "update needed on year/month/day" article. I've extended your [[Template:Update 2007]] to include a mandatory year parameter with optional month and day params at User:Rick Block/update after. The idea is you have to give it a year but you can also give it either a month or both a month and day. For example

• (in a list of world leaders) President of the United States: George Bush

• George Bush

• George Bush^{[update needed]}

This version leaves a space where the reference to the by-year or by-month update needed article is (which makes it mostly invisible), and adds the article to a by-year or by-month category. Let me know what you think about this version. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:07, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

---

Looks good.

Why the space that you mention? If not going to have something which is visible, then might as well not have anything which is mostly invisible, either. (later) Oh, I guess the space is there for the same reason that I had it; gotta have SOMETHING there. Can you put a comment there?

As a programmer, I find the duplicate code annoying, yet, as someone new to templates, I find it hard enough to understand as it is.  :) Maybe we can merge it once the fine-tuning is done.

I guess we were pretty much looking at different sheets of the same music, with our talk about parameters and subpages. So, we're getting the best of both this way, looks like.

We'll probably want to put month links in the year pages, and year links in the main page.

Having it all nested in subpages feels better to me than each on its' own independent page.

--Scott McNay 05:15, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Like you surmise, if you want the article to show up in "what links here" you have to have something "visible" to attach the HTML anchor to, and it doesn't look like a comment is sufficient. As long as the invocation is adjacent to blank space, it will be invisible until the appointed date.

The code isn't exactly duplicated, but I do know what you mean. If you looked at the history you might have noticed I struggled a bit to get it actually working. We can work on it more, if you'd like, to try to make it more readable (most of the really weird stuff is to escape line feeds) and to eliminate code redundancies (I'm not big on redundant code either).

Yes to both subpages and parameters. Thinking about it, perhaps "by day" subpages are overkill (we could use just the month if a specific day is given).

There isn't anything automatic (yet) that will create the year or month (or day, if we have them) "update needed" articles. These could perhaps all be subpages of Wikipedia:Updating information, with the "update needed" text being a link to the specific subpage (rather than the general one). When we start creating these, I agree the months should link to the years. I'd probably make both months and years link to the main page and have next/prev links as well. We could probably make a template for the content of these pages as well :).

Oh, and btw, I think we should include some pretty strong "use of this template should be considered only in cases where there really isn't any other alternative" sort of statement with a reference to Wikipedia:Avoid statements that will date quickly (which I don't think is currently strongly worded enough either, but that's another matter). The point is this template should not be used if there's a way to write an "ageless" statement instead. Each and every time it's used, it's creating work for some future editor. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I see that someone, earlier today, created a link to As of 1900 in the main article, which indicates that a number of editors are totally missing the point about how to use it, which in turn implies that it is used more often than it should be. If data is over a century obsolete, then there is definitely no rush in reviewing it. As of needs to go if only because it is misused so often, and thus wastes or discourages a lot of sincere effort.

The problem that needs to be dealt with is that there is a lot of forward-looking prose, much of it for good reasons, and, if nothing else, the tense needs to be changed once the date has passed; depending upon the context, it's often hard or impossible to write tense-free prose that doesn't sound odd.

I'm not sure of the day is overkill or not; there are cases where an event will occur on a specific day, and such events may be documented in an article which is not reviewed very often; if it can be updated that day, it may help WP (or at least that one article) look like someone is actively maintaining it. Also, having it by day may encourage people to review/update the articles, since instead of having a lengthy list of hundreds of articles to slog through for the year (and getting the feeling of a too-large problem), one only has a (relative) handful to look at each day. The problem that I see is with doing the day pages; you'd need 31 of them for each month, and THAT does seem excessive. I'll see what I can come up with.

I see that the As of pages deprecate the use of months (and forget about days), but that's possibly a reaction to misuse.

I edited your template to include strong language. :) I even considered adding "incompetence", but decided that was a bit too strong, as it may be simple ignorance, or judgement call. :).

(Later) I've renamed the template and imported your changes.
--Scott McNay 05:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I've created Template:Update after2, which creates month pages and Template:Update after3, which creates day pages. I've also created Wikipedia:Updating_information/2006 and Wikipedia:Updating_information/2006/9 using these templates and updated Wikipedia:Updating_information to match.

I updated United_States_presidential_election,_2008#Later_events with links.

Getting about ready for use, I'd say.
--Scott McNay 06:55, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Different approach for activation logic

Thinking about the code redundancy issue, using an algebraic comparison to figure out if the designated date has past might be a simplification. I created template:datecnum that computes a date comparator number, [ (year)*400 + (month-1)*31 + (day-1) ], and a version of User:Rick Block/update after using this template that's (logically) something like:

<sup title="The text in the vicinity of this tag needs to be updated {{#if: {{{3|}}} | on | in}} <!--
-->[[{{{1}}}((#if: {{{2|}}} |-{{{2|}}}{{#if:{{{3|}}}|-{{{3|}}}}}}}]]." class="noprint">{{
#ifexpr: {{datecnum|<current year, month, day>}}  >=
   {{datecnum|{{{1}}}|{{{2|}}}|{{{3|}}} }}  <!--
  -->| [[[Wikipedia:Updating information/<subpage>|''update needed'']]]<!--
        -->[[Category:Update in  <year/month>|{{PAGENAME}}]] <!--
  -->| [[Wikipedia:Updating information/<subpage>| ]]}} </sup>

where <current year, month, day>, and <subpage> are the appropriate expressions (lots of curly braces). I think it's functionally equivalent to what was there before. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:32, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I imported it into the main template, and then fiddled with it to see if I could get rid of the space. I discovered that I could get rid of it by using  (this might be useful for future reference). THEN, I realized that that the entire #IFEXPR wasn't even necessary; it was just there for the now-gone asterisk. I removed the entire line, and now not only is the space gone, but the template has been simplified a bit more. Go to United_States_presidential_election,_2008#Later_events and fiddle with it and preview it to see what it looks like. I like your in/on conditional. Better watch out, people might think it looks professional! <grin>

But now there's no reference to the appropriate updating information subpage until after the indicated date. For example, Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Updating_information/2008/8/25 should show United States presidential election, 2008 (right?), but doesn't.

Also, I'm going to merge the Template:Update after documentation into Wikipedia:Updating information, so that everything is kept in one place. The month and day templates are already pointing there. --Scott McNay 03:06, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. Is there a way for users to receive a notification of some kind (I don't mean by email or whatever) when the event occurs? At present, the people noticing are those who look at the linked date pages, or readers who see the "update needed" message. I was thinking of something like the message that you see when someone has updated your talk page. That way, if the editors on the date pages haven't fixed the article already by the time you log on, you'll see the notice and be reminded to update the article. --Scott McNay 04:17, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I can't think of a reasonable way for any sort of notification like this to work. I don't even think the rendering difference (when "update needed" first shows up) will cause the article to show up on the watchlists of folks watching it.

P.P.S. I don't think that the above can be done, but perhaps can have the page linked to a parameter-specified topical category, such as "Category: U.S. Political Articles Needing Updates", or something else along those lines, so that the article can be updated by someone who likely knows something about the subject or knows someone else who does. I'll tinker with that later if you don't beat me to it. --Scott McNay 04:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

This one's possible, but I think I'd keep it simple (without this) for now. I think the updating information subpages need to be a little more user friendly. Since the "update needed" link leads to these pages, they may very well be visited by folks who've never edited before. I'll take a stab at some rewording. I think this is nearly ready to invite broader comments. Agree? -- Rick Block (talk) 16:25, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Further simplifications

Having spent some time revising Wikipedia:Updating information, I think we can simplify this a little bit by having [update needed] appear on the specified day but link only to Wikipedia:Updating information and, whether [update needed] shows up or not, include an "invisible" link to a subpage for the specific year and month (January if the month is not given, the indicated month if a day is given). I think if we do this, we don't actually need to create any of the subpages for Wikipedia:Updating information, and probably don't need the categories either. Thoughts on this? -- Rick Block (talk) 17:53, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

You'll have to show me what you mean; sounds like you're referring to having two links in the article, one tied to "update needed" for people who want to know what it means, and perhaps another which uses  to hide the link.

Also, I think we should at least try out the days to see how people like them; if not, it's easy enough to turn them off in the template. Consider the looong list of [[As of]] items.

--Scott McNay 18:55, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

P.S. If articles 100% need updating, then we should not let the month and day be optional. That would be appropriate for a future {{Review after}} template, but not for {{Update after}}. Even if we can't think of a situation where it doesn't matter exactly when, as long as it's in the specified year or month, it shouldn't be a hardship for any editor to be forced to pick a specific day (by throwing a dart at a calendar, if necessary) in such a case. --Scott McNay 19:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

P.P.S. What the heck, force future {{Review after}} template users to pick a specific day too, for the same reason. If nothing else, it'll simplifiy the template(s). --Scott McNay 19:14, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

What I mean is have the template always generate an invisible link to a year/month subpage of Wikipedia:Updating information, and show ^{[update needed]} (linked to the main page, not a subpage) only after the selected date. The update needed text will always show up on a specific day, so whatever month that day is in should be the target of the "invisible" link. Perhaps some examples might help.

invocation	wikitext equivalent of result (as of August 6, 2006)
{{update needed|2006}}	<sup>[''[[Wikipedia:Updating information|update needed]]'']</sup>[[Wikipedia:Updating information/2006/1| ]]
{{update needed|2006/6}}	<sup>[''[[Wikipedia:Updating information|update needed]]'']</sup>[[Wikipedia:Updating information/2006/6| ]]
{{update needed|2006/8/2}}	<sup>[''[[Wikipedia:Updating information|update needed]]'']</sup>[[Wikipedia:Updating information/2006/8| ]]
{{update needed|2006/10/20}}	[[Wikipedia:Updating information/2006/10| ]]
{{update needed|2006/12}}	[[Wikipedia:Updating information/2006/12| ]]
{{update needed|2008}}	[[Wikipedia:Updating information/2008/1| ]]

I'm not sure if you noticed my comment above about the current version not generating links to the subpages (in the case the date is still in the future). I don't understand your comment above about using  to make this link "invisible". To get the link to show up in the "what links here" database, I think there needs to be some text the HTML anchor is attached to (minimally, a space character, although perhaps a Unicode zero width space would also work). We do want the links to show up before the specified date (right?).

I think the main reason not to have links to "by day" subpages is it makes it much more tedious to find the invocations (and would make the nice tidy little table at Wikipedia:Updating information way bigger). I suppose we could generate links to the specific day, and month, and year if all are given, and only month/year otherwise. This would allow "what links here" for a specific day to show the invocations specifying the day, while "what links here" for a month would show any day that month as well as invocations only specifying the month. -- Rick Block (talk) 20:07, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Hidden link (with ) : HH
Space link: H H
Hidden link (with <s/>): HH

Hidden link works fine, and there's no space. See the results: Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia_talk:As_of2 Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia_talk:As_of3 --Scott McNay 21:16, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Oh, that's what you mean (cool). So, where are we? What do you think about linking the visible ^{[update needed]} string directly to the main Wikipedia:Updating information page, and using subpages only as invisible link targets? And creating invisible links to multiple subpages (by day and by month if a day is specified)? -- Rick Block (talk) 03:26, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, please note references to the current version don't have links at all until the specified date. Special:Whatlinkshere/Wikipedia:Updating_information/2008/11/4 should show a link from United States presidential election, 2008 (right?). What I'm suggesting is that it should have invisible links to at least Wikipedia:Updating_information/2008/11/4 and Wikipedia:Updating_information/2008/11, and perhaps even Wikipedia:Updating_information/2008. Thinking about why the  thing works, I'm trying just <s/> (above). I suspect this will work as well (this says start and simultaneously stop using strikethrough font). -- Rick Block (talk) 20:06, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

---

1. HTML doesn't care if the link is empty or not; the problem is WP attempting to prevent people from creating empty links. WP just treats as text anything that it doesn't recognize, which includes valid HTML such as  and <s/>. Yes, I figured out what <s/> meant the other day when I used it on the Wikipedia:Updating information page to cross out the obsolete/unused months.

2. Yes, I was already doing all that... or trying to. A visible link to the main page, and invisible links to year, month, and day. This will let things work both ways, with the small and simple month/year linked table (without the size and kludginess of individual days), and the quick-n-dirty links for today, yesterday, this month, etc., for those who want a daily task which is small enough not to be overwhelming. I hadn't realized that the update link wasn't linking until the day in question. I don't recall now if I read your msg first or noticed it in the template first. :)

3. If you're going to be 100% certain that the article needs an update, then you should also know WHEN that event will occur, and I think it's best to not permit people to be sloppy; we have that already with Wikipedia:As of. Forcing an editor to specifically list the month and day reduces the number of brackets and pipes in the template, which makes it simpler to work with (not that that's been helping at the moment).

4. I'm replacing Template:datecnum with Template:JULIANDAY, which comes with a complete set of sibling templates for doing date arithmetic. Thus, this can be used to cause the message to appear a specific number of days late (but I'm leaving it at 0 for now), giving daily update editors a chance to fix it before readers see it. It can also be used on the updating page for the yesterday, last month, last year links. --Scott McNay 05:10, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] {{Update after}} ready for testing

The template appears to be ready for testing, review, and approval. The visible parts have been simplified to the point that they do not need any maintenance; all that is needed is that editors click on the links at Wikipedia:Updating information and update the articles listed. There are links for articles needing update today, yesterday, this month, last month, this year, and last year; that should be plenty of time to get a page updated one way or another. Documentation for using the template is in the template itself, at Template:Update after. If you see any problems or think of any improvements, please report them here. See the development discussion above to see what has already been suggested and tried.
--Scott McNay 07:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, no one has said "no" yet... --Scott McNay 03:56, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Caching?

I suspect this will not work correctly for anonymous users due to page caching, and other caches such as the translated HTML cache may also interfere with its dynamic appearance. Considering that part of the point of "as of" is to indicate to a reader that a fact may be out of date, unintentional hiding of this sort could be quite detrimental to accuracy. Deco 20:37, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Er, the above is with reference to the update-after template, whose talk page misleadingly redirected me here. Deco 20:39, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

It redirects here because it's not official yet; will un-redirect after it becomes accepted. If caching were a problem, there should have been repercussions well before now. The software SHOULD be setting the HTML headers to disable caching. --Scott McNay 22:38, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I've wondered about this as well. The main page uses a date sensitive transclusion (and apparently works) so I think this should work, too. I don't quite understand how it works, but it seems to. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:50, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

On the client side, the icon is cached for a week, and the CSS and images are cached for a month. The page itself appears to be set to "not specified", which generally means "check to see if a newer version is available". I don't recall if IE shows this info, but FireFox does. As for the WikiMedia software (which runs Wikipedia, as well as many other wikis, such as my own), my understanding is that it checks all transcluded items, and if any of them has a newer timestamp (such as {{CURRENTSECOND}} would have every second), the page is rebuilt, and it's up to the client to detect that there's an updated page available. Things like the user name/IP are handled by CSS, if I'm not mistaken, which is entirely separate, so it's possible to have customized pages without ruining the cache. --Scott McNay 02:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I've asked about this at WP:VPT. After they're generated by mediawiki running on an Apache server, the pages are cached (usually in memory!) in the front end squids. I'm not exactly sure how the squid caches are managed, but I think when a page is saved the caches are actively invalidated (without waiting for the next fetch request). I'm pretty sure the squids don't check timestamps for every transclusion on every fetch (I could be wrong, but I think extraordinary efforts are made to optimize the squid performance - they serve something like 80% of the total hits). In any event, I think we'll get a definitive answer fairly soon. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:35, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

No developer responses yet (and I haven't broken down and looked at the code :) ), but responders so far are under the impression there's no automatic squid cache purge for these time sensitive variables (the assumption is the main page is manually purged from the cache every day at GMT midnight, perhaps by a bot). I don't think this is a killer for update after, it just means the note may not appear quite as timely as it should. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:51, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Earlier "as ofs"

There are certainly some monthly earlier ones. Rich Farmbrough, 21:20 7 September 2006 (GMT).

Category:Redirects from "As of" has probably the full list. So should the deprecated ones be deleted? Rich Farmbrough, 21:26 7 September 2006 (GMT).

If I'm intepretting the list on Wikipedia talk:As of correctly, shouldn't some of these months be added (i.e. more from 2001) and eventually, some should be deleted? JPG-GR 20:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please comment on "update after"

user:Scott McNay and I worked out a pretty sophisticated template (template:update after) that can be used as a marker for content that is known to require updating at some future date. For example, this could be used for political officeholders whose term will expire. The template is invisible until the appointed date, and then adds a visible ^{[update needed]} indicator (which links to Wikipedia:Updating information). There is no maintenance required to make the mechanism work. The template has been written. The only thing lacking is a consensus to start broadly using it, presumably instead of the wikipedia:as of technique. Please comment on this proposal at Wikipedia talk:Updating information. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:43, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] auto-update?

For some articles, there is a numerical value which changes, and can be obtained from a known web source. e.g. "population:" Obviously it is possible to write code that will obtain this value on-the-fly and display it. But is this still too complicated or unreliable for WP? Please note that I'm not suggesting this a an immediate project. DGG 03:41, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

It's quite possible for a Wikipedia:Bot to do this, but doing this in the article source is not currently possible. If you're interested in pursuing this you might bring it up at Wikipedia:Bot requests. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:09, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] R for as of

This article said:

The redirects are marked with {{R for as of}} so as to allow locating the articles easily by clicking Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:R for as of.

But this doesn't seem to be the case. Follow the link above and you'll see. Because of this, I've reworded this sentence, removing the Whatlinkshere link. Someone else can put it back in if they figure out what the point of it is. - dcljr (talk) 22:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deprecated "As of" pages (?)

The section has the quote "The form [[As of (month) (year)]] is deprecated and should be avoided, as described above.". There is no such description above. There really should be one, so one can understand *why* the as of pages were removed. Matthew0028 22:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

There isn't really much of a reason not to use them, afterall they are redirects. Besides [[As of 2006|As of December 2006]] seems really complicated, an unwikily. Thus I suggested we update the guideline accordingly-- User:Docu

[edit] Update to Template:Update_after

I've made changes to Template:Update after (it now links to Category:Wikipedia articles in need of updating and As of), and made significant changes to the documentation at Template:Update_after (including documenting the built-in ability to add a comment, and a changes in where it's allowable to be used); please review, and provide comments at Template talk:Update after if you think any are appropriate. Thanks! --Scott McNay 04:10, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template:Update after can't replace As of

Template:Update after and can't entirely replace As of because an update isn't always needed — you may just want to record a fact which is true at the current time and which you know will change in time. It may be important to record what a fact was, "as of" a specific date — or the future change may just not be important, and you don't want to create unnecessary work by stipulating that it must continue to be updated. ··gracefool |☺ 22:28, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

{{Update after}} is not intended as a complete replacement. It is designed for the specific purpose of drawing attention to an article on and after a particular future date, for artcles which definitely WILL need updating.

A {{Review after}} template can be created for items which simply need to be reviewed to see if a change is needed. We want to see how well {{Update after}} does first. {{Review after}} may or may not be deemed suitable for taking the place of many or all of the remaining uses for As of; that depends upon the design and usage guidelines that get worked out and the community consensus.

--Scott McNay 00:32, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template and Categories

I had an idea that these could be replaced by a template which adds the article to "As of [Year]", "As of [Month] [Year]", and "Articles containing time-sensitive information" categories. I've created an initial version at Template:Asof; what does everyone think? --Random832^T 03:44, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Updated to forget about month-based categories since people are saying here that As of month year links are deprecated. Added sorting for categories. --Random832^T 04:06, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Linking to this from articles

Should this be avoided in articles? Very occasionally I see As of occur, e.g. in PRC. Richard001 (talk) 03:48, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "As of" in discussion

It seems painfully obvious to me that "as of" statements are appropriate for discussions, especially for content that one intends to change. The statement remains valid after a consensus is reached either way. — Nahum Reduta [talk|contribs] 19:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Rise of the bots

This project seems like a great idea, but there seems to be one significant issue with the method currently used. Your problem is this: there are bots which fix double redirects, and they will certainly consider these to be in need of "fixing." Here is my suggestion: Use templates such as the one I created at {{As of 2007}}. This template transcludes another template, {{As of}}. This way, you can still see what pages use "as of"-type links at Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:As of, and bots will not "fix" the redirects. Also, I bet regular people are "fixing" your redirects, which they would probably not do so much if this method were to be used instead. Good day- Eliyak T·C 01:02, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

Bots fix double redirects but not single redirects which is what should be used in the as of technique. Have you seen double redirects for as of? PrimeHunter (talk) 01:09, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal: Deprecate links to [As of xxxx] and delete Wikipedia:As of

See discusion at: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (dates and numbers).
Lightmouse (talk) 11:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Following deletion proposal...migration?

Closed as no consensus - but what about a way forward? Should we be looking to migrate to something better? If so, here's a suggested way forward:

1. amend the As Of page,and MoS to state 'As of' links are now discouraged, and to use {{update after}} instead.
2. write a bot/make a request at WP:Bot requests? I'd be interested in helping with this but have no bot experience as yet.
3. alternately in the absence of a suitable bot manually/semi-automatically move over using AWB or the like.
4. once migration is complete, redlink the [[As of xxxx]] pages to discourage future linking.

Am I jumping the gun here? From what I read on the deletion discussion, there is broad consensus to move away from this,somehow? Paulbrock (talk) 23:56, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the proposal. BTW, jumping the gun is encouraged (WP:BB). As my comments in the MFD indicated, I'm in favor of eliminating [[as of XXXX]] links. However, I think retaining the text "as of XXXX" is important (see WP:DATED). I would hate to see terms like "currently" be considered acceptable in article text just because they're paired with a {{update after}} template. Futher, my opinion is that the {{update after}} technique is insufficient for dealing with statements that date. I say this because {{update after}} relies on editors predicting when statements will need to be updated. And predicting the future is notoriously difficult. For example, Barack Obama begins with

Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (born August 4, 1961) is ... a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

If one were to set an {{update after}} template, what date should one use? The date of the Democratic Convention? Perhaps. But that assumes no other deal is struck. For example, Obama might fold his nomination bid in exchange for the VP position on Clinton's ticket. In that case, an update may be required long before the convention. Being such a widely watched race, this is perhaps a weak example, but I think I've made my point: No editor can reliably predict when an article will need to be updated. That is why editors are encouraged to use specific language in the text (again, see WP:DATED.

One suggestion from Dank55 (talk · contribs) in the mfd was to create a template that would function like [[as of XXXX]] links, yet not be a link. The difference between this suggestion and {{update after}} is that the new template would simply flag "as of XXXX" text (presumably a bot would do this). That is, it wouldn't involve an editor's prediction of the future. I like this idea. Further, I don't see the new template and the {{update after}} template as being mutually exclusive. Unfortunately, I lack the template and/or bot knowledge to do this. Noca2plus (talk) 02:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree there is a *slight* difference between "This info is valid as of x" and "This info will need to be checked after x". The later is much more useful though -one of the criticisms of 'As of' has been that there's no way to tell *if* the info is out of date e.g. census data is updated every 10 years in some countries whereas a sports team's record may need updating every year. I think it's much better to encourage editors to effectively note "check this after x",and it should cover most occasions shouldn't it? In the case of Obama, I'd probably put the Convention date(not really up on the intracies of the US political system),but even so,a tag such as this should really imply "part of this article may/will be out of date after x. Please check and update then,but if you find out something before then,feel free to update anyway!" Paulbrock (talk) 00:19, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It seems we both agree that [[as of XXXX]] links should be deprecated/discouraged/etc., so I'll stop talking about that. As I noted above, I'm not arguing for one solution ("as of XXXX" text or {{update after}}) over the other. I see them as complementary, in part, because I see {{update after}} as insufficient (as I mentioned). This is not to disparage {{update after}}, any more than it is to disparage the "as of XXXX" text technique (which I also see as insufficient for the reasons you noted).Noca2plus (talk) 01:04, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Let me also point out that we need to recognize what cues the reader will get about statements that date. If I understand it correctly, {{update after}} only shows [update needed] after the trigger date. Prior to the trigger date, nothing is shown in the article. This means that without information in the text, a reader cannot, for themselves, evaluate the the timeliness of a statement. In part, that is why I'm wary of changing the guidelines to advocate {{update after}} unless we simultaneously re-emphasize the importance of precise language such as "as of XXXX" in the text, consistent with WP:DATED. Noca2plus (talk) 01:04, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

You are correct - update after displays nothing until the indicated date. Note that precise language is already recommended, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Precise language. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:59, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Nice. Thanks for pointing that out. Noca2plus (talk) 02:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think "as of" is precise language. Anything that is subject to change could be tagged "as of ...":

Mark Cuban (born July 31, 1958 in Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania) is an American billionaire entrepreneur. As of 2008, he is the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, an NBA team, and Chairman of HDNet, an HDTV cable network.

It's a 100% certainty that Mark Cuban will not be the owner of the Mavericks at some point in the future, so this usage of "as of" follows the guidelines laid out on this page. (Ironically, "quickly" is imprecise... what does it mean? 10 days? 6 months? a year? a lifetime?) Since "as of" can be used to indicate either beginning or end, its meaning is also unclear in many cases:

Burj Dubai (Arabic: برج دبي‎ "Dubai Tower") is a skyscraper under construction in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and is the tallest man-made structure on Earth as of 2008.

Does that mean it became the world's tallest structure, or remained the world's tallest structure in 2008? The usage laid out by this page implies the latter, but the common meaning is the former. This is something that should be dealt with precise language, of course, but right now editors just tack on "as of" phrases lazily.

Finally, this use of "as of" basically amounts to a content disclaimer since it implies: "Disclaimer: if you are reading this after 2008, this statement may not be valid". It violates Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles. The prescribed usage of an "as of" phrase is to indicate a statement that is expected to be invalid in the "near" future. I think the "update after" mechanism is a much better way to do this, and is much closer to that meaning. If an editor expects a statement to become invalid "soon", that editor can mostly likely come up with a date to check on the validity of the statement. If not, there's no need to tag it ({{update after|Mark Cuban dies?}}). – flamurai (t) 09:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)