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MOS:UNLINKDATES states, "The linking of dates purely for the purpose of autoformatting is now deprecated." This is as of August 24, 2008. I agree that it has some problems, and I agree with the policy as generally applied. However, I believe an exception should be made for this template.
All US Statutes can be properly described in an American format: MMMM DD, YYYY.
All US Statutes can be properly described in the Gregorian calendar.
Without linked dates, ALL the dates will look bad: "(False Claims Act Amendments of 1986 (Pub.L. 99-562, 100 Stat. 3153, enacted 1986-10-27)"
The (many) readers who don't have dates-preference set won't be hurt by linking, they won't be affected at all.
The few readers with the dates-preference will be helped.
Until this is resolved, it should remain linked.—Markles 10:34, 5 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed my mind.—Markles 10:45, 3 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Would it not be better to use one of the date templates, such as {{date}} or {{start date}}? They also emit microformat tags extending the usefullness of this template. Int21h (talk) 04:05, 21 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]