Template talk:Date table sorting

Seasons.

Looking for general ideas here... Using DTS for charactering dates for Fraternities and sororities. Occasionally the information exists that it has occured in a particular season. Right now, in a list of charters, I have to take Spring 1990 to {{dts|1990|4|format=hide}}Spring 1990. I know that in general seasons are to be avoided because of the fact that the seasons are reversed in the southern hemisphere, but that is *much* less of an issue for tables under the Fraternities and Sororities wikiproject. Would it be possible to have {{dts|Spring 1990}} become something useful? I know additional discussion would have to be done to determine the date that Spring matches up to, and similarly with the other seasons. (additionally an argument for hemisphere???)Naraht (talk) 15:30, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

I don't see Fraternities and Sororities listed as an exception at MOS:SEASON. Why is it needed there? Gonnym (talk) 06:12, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

In this case, "Spring 1990" would be a shortened form of "Spring Semester 1990" and similarly for Fall.Naraht (talk) 16:12, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Links to example articles are always helpful. Are semesters or seasons needed? Can simple years be used instead? – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:38, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

Some of these tables include most if not all of 1) Full dates, 2) Month year, 3) season year and 4) just year.

Examples that might show include Chi Alpha Omega which has both a spring and a fall of the same year in the list, List of Phi Beta Kappa chapters is one where the information about 1971 for each school appears to differ. Nu Gamma Alpha is similar to Chi Alpha Omega. Probably one of the better examples is Association of College Honor Societies. Omega Rho was founded on April 1, 1976. Theta Alpha Kappa was founded on Fall of 1976. Dropping the fact that it was in Fall would invert the order in the search.Naraht (talk) 01:45, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

If we look at Association of College Honor Societies as an example, then the table is just bad. "Alpha Delta Mu" was not founded "Fall 1976" as "Fall" is not a date. If the date is unknown to the authors of the article, then use "1976". I'm also sure that an actual date or at least a month can be found. Gonnym (talk) 11:22, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

One of the other members of WP:FRAT has October in the Alpha Delta Mu article, but I've gone to the reference he added from (Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities 20th edition), but it isn't there. I need to talk to them about that. Otherwise, the reference is at which said "Fall 1976". And the WP:FRAT members spend a *lot* of time looking for more exact dates for chartering (or in this case founding) and in many cases we've worked our way through the internet, jstor, newspaperarchive.org and school newspapers looking for that information. Ideally, all of those should have more accurate dates, but frankly in some cases, figuring out which semester a group was founded in counts as an improvement. If you'd like to help improve the semester/seasons, drop a note at WT:FRAT and we'll give suggestions on where to look.Naraht (talk) 17:18, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

This is an aesthetic rather than a technical response: the date columns in the table at Association of College Honor Societies looks terrible and are a nightmare to parse. I recommend cutting it down to just year values. Do the calendar dates have some encyclopedic significance? – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:07, 21 September 2025 (UTC)

Of the two columns, the first is the date that the honor society was founded, the second, the date that they joined the ACHS. And I simply don't see the advantage of fuzzying it up to year *especially* given that that will make the sorting *less* accurate. Example, If we know one is January 1956 and the other is February 15, 1956, we know how the sort should be, and yet we'll be giving that up (unless the more specific dates are hidden using format=hide which seems ugly to me).Naraht (talk) 07:37, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

And there are lots of other chapter lists on WP:FRAT which have been assembled from multiple sources leading to the variety of levels of knowledge of information on the date.Naraht (talk) 07:38, 23 September 2025 (UTC)

We can also look up the date and inning when Barry Bonds hit each of his home runs, but we would not put that information in the article about him. What is the encyclopedic value of having the specific dates, as opposed to the year, with a link to a reliable source that reports the calendar date if people want to look it up? – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:57, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Avoiding repeats

See also: Wikipedia: Help desk § Template: Date_table_sorting

Is there a way to make "abbr=on" and "format=mdy" apply to a whole table instead of repeating it on every row? ~2025-32119-45 (talk) 08:37, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Added the "help me" notice. ~2025-32119-45 (talk) 09:19, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

To echo the answer at the other discussion, "no"; a parameter specific to a template cannot be passed to that template from outside the template (unless you're using something like {{for loop}} but then the template is inside another template that is passing that value directly to the template). Primefac (talk) 11:47, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Also, this template is meant to create an HTML data attribute. The way that the web is designed, these attributes apply to individual parts of the page. If you are thinking of the way that {{cite xxx}} templates read Template:Use dmy dates, that would be a pretty large change from the purpose of an already widely used template. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 14:18, 8 November 2025 (UTC)

Best practice for "by X", "after X" , "circa X" dates?

When building a table, what is the best way to add data such as "By 26 June 1986"? At the moment I have it in plain text as "By 1986-06-26", and I want to convert all those entries to DTS format but retain the "by X date" or "after X date" or "circa X date" as a text prefix which will be ignored by the sort function; so in that case, "By 1986-06-26" should be sorted between "After 1986-06-25" and before "circa 1987". Anothersignalman (talk) 07:32, 3 May 2026 (UTC)

I've found {{circa}} which covers one of these cases, though I have to put it after the dts field for the sorting to work. I can't nest it. Anothersignalman (talk) 13:42, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

The sort key is not compatible with the sort produced by {{dts}}, but {{extract}} can display a sortable date. It's prefix parameter allows extra text that does not affect sorting. Johnuniq (talk) 01:19, 27 July 2026 (UTC)

Do you know whether I need to replace all instances of {{dts}} or just the ones where I need to use extract+prefix? Anothersignalman (talk) 10:25, 27 July 2026 (UTC)