Talk:David G. Greenfield

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Dates on events[edit]

The article currently says:

Greenfield denounced an Anti-Semitic outburst in New York City Council Chamber by pro-Palestine activists[when?] protesting commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.[20]

I removed the Template:When, because it is inappropriate. The documentation says this template is to be used "after a time period to indicate that the time period is so vague or ambiguous that you do not understand what is being said". Since no time period is given at all, and the sentence is perfectly clear without one, the template is inappropriate and should be removed, so I did so.

It is not and never has been standard practise, on WP or any other encyclopaedia, to compulsively give the exact date for every reported event, unless knowing it is necessary in order to understand what it was that happened. The Template:When documentation explicitly acknowledges this, saying it should not be used even on very general period terms if they are sufficient for the purpose they're used for; it should only be used when the term can't be understood, such as "this year", which can't be understood without knowing when it was written.

In this case there is simply no need to know the date in order to understand what happened. The relevant facts are given in the sentence, and the date is a trivial detail; anyone curious about it can look up the reference given. Obviously if every detail, however irrelevant, must be given for every event reported, such reports will have to expand to several paragraphs and bloat the articles in which they appear, not to mention giving them undue weight by sheer length.

Unfortunately, User:JesseRafe has decided to continually revert my edit, refusing to address my explanation which I gave in the edit summary and on his talk page. He has given no explanation for why he thinks the date is needed, but simply insists that one must be given or the inappropriate template left in place. And he has the gall to accuse me of edit warring, and of being on a "crusade". I call on him to explain himself or leave off. As a sign of good will I will leave the template up for another day to give him a chance to make a case for it; if he does not do so I will remove it tomorrow. -- 76.15.128.174 (talk) 14:52, 18 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Literally, just open up the source and say when it happened. It is vague! It could have happened at any point in his life, are you kidding? There should be a year in every sentence/paragraph about a thing if it's notable enough to be mentioned in a BLP -- that's how we keep things in the right order. The only reason a when tag should be removed is by saying when, not your whim. JesseRafe (talk) 14:01, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]