Wikipedia:Full-date unlinking bot

I am sorry that the community is presented with another RfC on date links. This is needed because of disagreement over the implementation of a previous RfC.

• After a recent RFC, MOSNUM states that years ("1795") and month-day combinations ("February 24") should not be linked unless their target article content is germane and topical to the subject of the article with the link. Such links should share an important connection with that subject other than that the events occurred on the same date.

• Many such irrelevant links were created for the purpose of autoformatting dates by using links, a practice that is no longer recommended on the English Wikipedia. Removing all the double square brackets manually would be slow and tedious; an automatic process (a bot) should remove them in a carefully controlled way. The arbitration committee has recently determined that the process of mass delinking should be approved by the community.

• This proposal does not preclude future autoformatting-system proposals.

The details of the proposal

1. The bot will unlink only day-month-year (triple) combinations such as:
   • [[January 15]], [[2005]] → January 15, 2005
   • [[27 May]] [[2007]] → 27 May 2007
   • [[1989-11-05]] → 1989-11-05
2. Links of solitary years ([[1989]]) and solitary month-days ([[November 5]], [[5 November]]), and links such as 1983 in film will not be unlinked by the bot.
3. Intrinsically chronological articles (such as 1789, January, and 1940s) will not be treated by the bot.
4. Each article will be edited only once by the bot while performing this task. If the edit is reverted the article will not be retreated by the bot.
5. The bot will follow normal bot exclusion rules using the {{bots}} and {{nobots}} templates.
6. An exclusion list will contain the articles that the bot will not edit. This list will contain the few "false positives" where linking to month-day-year (triples) is appropriate. (If only one of the links is good, then it is easier to edit the page directly, remove the bad link, and the bot will leave the good one.) Articles will be added to the list after manual review, however there will be no indiscriminate mass-adding of articles to the exclusion list. The list will be openly editable, and will be available for one month before the bot starts running.
7. The bot will also fix some uncontroversial errors, such as missing commas and spaces.
8. The bot will also unlink month-day items that appear in combination with a triple i.e. in date ranges and slashed dates. The bot will unlink only those month-day items that are closely associated with a triple in that way. Examples are:
   • [[October 17]] – [[November 8]], [[1987]] → October 17 – November 8, 1987
   • [[23 April|23]]/[[24 April]] [[1966]] → 23/24 April 1966
9. The bot operator must be responsive and civil to anyone who has questions or complaints about the bot. The bot operator will be someone who has not edit-warred or been uncivil in relation to date links. Any user who has been sanctioned as a result of the arbitration case or was heavily involved in the matter should not be the bot operator.
10. The bot user page and talk page will describe its task and function in respectful language.
11. If a problem is discovered, or the bot operator is unable to keep up with questions, the bot will be paused until the issues are resolved.
12. The source code of the bot will be available to the community.
13. The implementation of the bot will be subject to approval by the Bot Approvals Group.