Template:When

Usage

Add {{When}} after a seasonal reference that is used as a time to indicate that the time period is ambiguous and would be clearer by being reworded. Seasons are local phenomena and their usage as a substitute for dates, month names and the like is an example of systemic bias.

This usage often manifests itself in phrasing like the following:

• (some event happened) in the (season) of (year).
• (something was completed) by [the] (season) [of (year)].

Most commonly, such phrasing uses Northern Hemisphere temperate zone seasons interchangeably with month names or other times, and this can be the source of confusion for people in the tropics or in the opposite hemisphere.

Finding such references

Google can be used to find some examples of such references efficiently, and this suggests that a bot can be written to work in a similar manner. A google search like "the spring of" site:en.wikipedia.org typically returns several thousand hits, of which maybe half are phrases like "the spring of [year]". This suggests that tens of thousands of pages in the English-language Wikipedia may be in need of attention to remove this ambiguous phrasing.