Thread:Mhommer/@comment-15636815-20150921154609/@comment-15636815-20150922043837

Good call on putting the year last. That matches the format of every page name that needs disambiguation, too. I'll start a forum thread to gather community input, and I'll start looking at the templates.

Just off the top of my head, putting the year last is easiest to read and understand, AND easiest to create and maintain, but only if we require the year for all seasonal contractors (even ones that appear only once and are gone forever). The current template gets messy because some seasonals have years and others don't. Obviously, none of the permanent contractors have years, so the answer is:
 * No contractor of any type, anywhere, at any time, contains a year as part of the contractor's name.
 * Every seasonal contractor contains a year as part of the page name.
 * Once I fix the cluster f**k, the template will do the dirty work--and we can stop thinking about how to format . ;-)

After writing that last section, I've decided not to poll the community, after all. The year at the end is the only format that is simultaneously the most clear and the most consistent. I'll start working on a non-live version of the new, fixed template. When it's ready, we can push it live, then rename and reformat the pages that need it.