Problem: Wikidat calendar Now the only calendar for inputting data in Wikidata is the Gregorian calendar. there are some other local calendars which are supported by MediaWiki at here (Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Thai solar, Minguo, Japanese nengo). some article's data are base on these calendars and users should convert them to Gregorian to input them at Wikidata at it is difficult.
Who would benefit: At Wikidata local users can edit simply the dates base on their local calendar
Proposed solution: Develop a gadget which converts these calendar to Gregorian to input them at wiki data. I didn't propose to change the database date format I only suggested a converter gadget.
I think it would be better to allow data in different calendar being input into the form as it is instead of having a program to convert them? Some calendars are used differently in different era and people in different place also follow different rules that it might cause some troubles in conversion....C933103 (talk) 09:05, 10 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, have a unique input type for the database is a good idea having different calendar make some difficulty for bots and external data users and I support a simple converter.10:10, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Both your views can be conciliated, it only requires that both data to be stored side by side. From a traceability point view, it's clearly better to keep the reported data as close at possible to the source it come from. Calendars are a difficult topic, usage across documents are nowhere close to a linear synchronized trustful information. On the other hand, simple converter which feed a separated field provide a convenient way to build some interesting aggregation which are aware and fine with such a naive approach, which have both its pros and cons. So it would be more prudent to expose dates in several flavour of accuracy with explicit qualifiers for each. --Psychoslave (talk) 10:37, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I do not like the idea of storing the dates differently based on a calendar. A point in time is a point in time no matter which calendar it was specified in by the source. Of course a reference need to specify the calendar the date was specified by the source. So I support user:Yamaha5 idea of date input in other calendars, but oppose the idea of storing dates in multiple formats side by side, as it is done in d:Q22687867 or d:Q165671. --Jarekt (talk) 18:44, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If the proposal were accepted, the developers should carefully determine the earliest past date and the date furthest in the future for which the converter can convert accurately. The converter should refuse to convert any date outside the range for which the converter has been rigorously tested. This will require an understanding of history as well as computer programming. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support NMaia (talk) 00:23, 28 November 2017 (UTC)