Forum:Making a delete template self-dating

On the His Dark Materials Wiki, the delete template is supposed to be used as (five tildes), to make the last line of the on-page notice read "This article has been flagged for deletion since ". Unfortunately, most users ignore the parameter (or don't know there is one), so the notice comes out as "This article has been flagged for deletion since ". This is probably due partly to most users not knowing the "three tildes=username, five tildes=timestamp" markup, and mostly to laziness.

I know it's possible to make display of the last line conditional on a parameter having been supplied, but is it possible to have the parameter, if not supplied, default to the date and time of save, preferably by auto-replacing with  as if  had been typed? If so, how? -- RobertATfm, 16:51, July 8, 2012