Template talk:Birth date

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Birth date template.

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Only a year is supplied

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Change:

{{{1|{{{year}}}}}}-{{padleft:{{MONTHNUMBER|{{{2|{{{month}}}}}}}}|2|0}}-{{padleft:{{{3|{{{day}}}}}}|2|0}}

to

{{{1|{{{year}}}}}}-{{padleft:{{MONTHNUMBER|{{{2|{{{month|}}}}}}}}|2|0}}-{{padleft:{{{3|{{{day|}}}}}}|2|0}}

By putting a vertical bar after "month" and "day", the template will function as expected even if only a year is provided. I discovered this after creating Draft:Rufus Steele. Faster than Thunder (talk | contributions) 02:29, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't fully examined this but a quick glance makes me think that would not be desirable. As explained on the doc page, this template outputs the birth date in hCard microformat (machine readable). That requires a month and a day. The doc says to use alternate templates if the date is not given in full. Why would the proposed change be helpful? Johnuniq (talk) 08:47, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]