Media Viewer uses excess precision for date
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Authored By

	Tacsipacsi
	Nov 8 2025, 12:04 PM

Description

Steps to reproduce

Specify the |date= parameter in the information template with year- or month-precision ISO 8601 format. Example
Notice that the output HTML correctly uses the appropriate precision: <time class="dtstart" datetime="2008-02" lang="en" dir="ltr" style="white-space:nowrap">February 2008</time>
Press the Open in Media Viewer button, and look at the Created date.

Actual result

It reports 1 February 2008, the first day of the month it was taken in (if the specified date had a precision of year, it’d report 1 January of that year).

Expected result

It reports February 2008, without specifying a day.

Notes

In MultimediaViewer, newFromImageInfo() preserves the date as is (it doesn't add a day when a day isn't provided). However, formatDate() calls JavaScript's native Date constructor, which adds the missing day.

Requirements:

Dates are preserved as is. When a month-year date is provided, do not reformat the date with a numeric day.
Add a test, such as a missing day in the date

Event Timeline

Tacsipacsi created this task.Nov 8 2025, 12:04 PM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptNov 8 2025, 12:04 PM

Note that this is not a new problem, I just took the time to report it now.

I’m not sure if it happens at the metadata extraction (CommonsMetadata) or on display (MediaViewer), so I tagged both.

It's MediaViewer's fault

From https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox#action=query&format=json&prop=imageinfo&titles=File%3AQantas%20and%20contrails.jpg&formatversion=2&iiprop=extmetadata&iilimit=10

"DateTimeOriginal": {
    "value": "2008-02",
    "source": "commons-desc-page"
},

Jdlrobson-WMF added a project: Reader Growth Team.Tue, Nov 25, 5:09 PM

HSwan-WMF triaged this task as Low priority.Wed, Nov 26, 5:32 PM

HSwan-WMF raised the priority of this task from Low to Medium.

HSwan-WMF moved this task from Incoming/Inbox to Backlog on the Reader Growth Team board.Wed, Dec 3, 4:47 PM

egardner moved this task from Backlog to Needs Refinement on the Reader Growth Team board.Wed, Dec 3, 4:48 PM

There are a bunch of MediaViewer things that need maintenance, but with current experiments and future work the path is unclear. We anticipate making future changes in this area next year and will look at this then.

HSwan-WMF lowered the priority of this task from Medium to Low.Wed, Dec 3, 5:45 PM

lwatson added a project: patch-welcome.Thu, Dec 4, 9:33 PM

lwatson updated the task description. (Show Details)

HSwan-WMF moved this task from Needs Refinement to Backlog on the Reader Growth Team board.Wed, Dec 10, 5:29 PM

Media Viewer uses excess precision for dateOpen, LowPublicBUG REPORTActions