I've spent 20 minutes trawling help pages, but I can't find anywhere the date format used by the expiry field in the page protection interface. I tried using ISO 8601 without success. Can anyone enlighten me? OrbFu 23:10, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Found it. It should be placed in what is called "GNU Standard Format", which apparently can be in any format: October 24 1444, 210003151000, or even UTC 1993 Mar AM 25 1:36. You can read about this format here. Timeroot Talk • Contribs • Edit count 23:55, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. According to that it should accept ISO 8601, so I'm a bit puzzled as to why it wasn't working. :shrug: I'll experiment on my user page. OrbFu 00:33, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah! The problem wasn't with the date format at all, but with my mistaken assumption of the meaning of "default" on a page generated by pressing a link titled "Protect". OrbFu 00:39, 2 March 2009 (UTC)