Change date format in site-styled entries

[blue_rampion]

Title:
Change date format in site-styled entries

Area:
entries, site

Summary:
Instead of displaying the date in site-styled entires numerically, the month should be displayed as the name of the month.

Description:
Currently, all dates on site-styled entries are displayed numerically in the year-month-day order. But not everyone in the world is used to that order, so this can cause confusion for readers used to differently-ordered dates - particularly when the day is 12 or under. I'm used to dates being written with the day before the month, and I'm always having to stop and think about dates when I'm reading and remind myself that a date like 2012-07-03 is actually July and not March.

I suggest that dates instead be written with the name of the month in text, because regardless of what order you are used to for dates there's no chance for confusion.

Other solutions could include allowing users to set the order for all dates in their account settings. The benefit here is that everyone could have dates set up exactly how there are used to. But, I would imagine that this would be more difficult to implement and could increase decision fatigue.

Poll #11029 Change date format in site-styled entries

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 50

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
26 (52.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (10.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
12 (24.0%)

(I have no opinion)
6 (12.0%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.0%)

Comments

[zellieh]

I say this should be implemented, with changes -- I think the main suggestion of [year--named month--day] for dates is great*, and I'd like to see it implemented.

I think the side suggestion of letting people choose their own date order is a terrible idea, though; at least for dates that use all numbers. That means 2012-06-07 could mean 6th of July on some journals, but 7th of June for others, if date format depended on what that journal or community owner preferred.

While logged-in DW users would be able to override that with their own date settings, having contradictory usage on journals and comments would be very confusing for people who don't have a DW account, or who aren't logged in, because different journals & communities would be using different systems.

*ETA: On second thoughts, would this be anglo-centric? Considering month names are different in different languages, is it easier for global users to just use numbers?

Would allowing people to set month-names in languages other than english be difficult to do? What about Greek or Russian? Could existing services for global users be easily extended to cover this?

[tyger]

I think the side suggestion of letting people choose their own date order is a terrible idea, though; at least for dates that use all numbers. That means 2012-06-07 could mean 6th of July on some journals, but 7th of June for others, if date format depended on what that journal or community owner preferred.

This is pretty much already the case, though, practically speaking. Trying to figure out what date a datestamp actually means on the internet can be really confusing, particularly if you are already perplexed by the American standard. On the site style everything will probably be to a certain standard, but on personal journals people can already switch things around however they please, so there's no real way or knowing absolutely for sure, unless there's actual words.

[blue_rampion]

Yup, and while Dreamwidth isn't as bad as some other sites, I've had times where I've been needing to cite websites and online articles and have been completely unable to tell which way the date was being written. Sites that have the month written out were always a godsend, because I didn't have to figure out what system they were using.

I tend to exclusively use the site scheme myself, so I don't have as much experience with the dates on journal layouts, but I can definitely see how you'd have to play the guessing game with them too.

[tyger]

Oh god, that would be an absolute nightmare, yeah.

I use a combination of whatever comes up and site-schemed if it's too narrow for my browser, and yeah, you see a whole lot of different formats. At least when it's [year]-xx-xx, it's USUALLY [year]-[month]-[day], but there's really no way to be sure, early-month. =/

[blue_rampion]

For one site I ended up having to go digging through other random articles until I found one that was dated for a day beyond the 12th in order to be able to tell. And it wasn't like I could just guess from the site, because the site in general seemed international in scope but the article itself was specific to Australia. So it really could have been anything (though it ended up being the American order).

To be fair, out of all the ones written numerically year-month-day is the best one. It's just difficult to read when you're used to dates being written in the completely opposite order. Half the time I'll be looking at dates and automatically reading the month as the day, until I realise what I've been doing and go "...wait. This isn't February, it's October!"

[tyger]

Oh, geeze. D: That sucks.

Yeah, I know what you mean. =/ Dates! Why so complicated, seriously.

[blue_rampion]

Curse you, different standards!

[aunty_marion]

I agree that if numerical, dates formatted as year-month-day are best. I use it myself, as six digits, for file naming, so that things will sort in year/month/day order! i.e. 120703, today, will sort correctly with 120307 (7th March this year) and 110705 (5th July 2011) and 030712 (12th July 2003) and so on!

I've got a different style on my journal, so have selected to have dates appear as (e.g.) Jul. 3rd, 2012. Which is nice and clear. But the option should be there for *anyone* who'd like more clarity.

[blue_rampion]

For file naming I imagine it would definitely be useful, I imagine! That does have a different purpose to it than displaying a date that's meant to be read, though - the numbers you list are definitely useful, but I wouldn't call them easy to read.

I pretty much use the site-scheme comment pages exclusively, so even though you can alter that on journals it's not too useful for me! Although, I do vaguely recall some mention somewhere that DW plans to have the site default pages also coded through the styles system? If I'm remembering that right, perhaps that would allow for more user customisation in terms of display dates.

[blue_rampion]

Oops, I think I was a bit unclear there - I meant is as you view the entire site in your own set order, not that you set the order for your journal and that's what everyone else sees. So like, it doesn't matter what everyone else is set as, you just see your own preference wherever you go.

As for the language issue, I must admit that since I don't know much about how that works I don't really know how difficult that would be! Hopefully though it could be incorporated into the rest of the language translation that goes on when you switch languages? Certainly it would be best that people see the month name in their own language.

[azurelunatic]

Dreamwidth inherited LiveJournal's translation ... cluster ... but it is one of the things that is being torn out because managing it is a stone bear (no offense intended to actual rocks or bears of any description). So Dreamwidth does not offer the site in other languages.

[blue_rampion]

Oh, really? I had just assumed that they did. (Just goes to show how much I know!)

[kaberett]

Hmm, YYYY-MM-DD is an international standard and therefore probably a good compromise (not that this means it's used that way in practice!). I haven't gone and looked at the code (and should do before blathering about this...!), but suspect that the English-stripping involved would be a bit awkward.

[msilverstar]

YYYY-MM-DD is really the only way to go, it's easily decoded by people from all over.

[deborah]

+1

There are only two ways to be sure of what date was intended with certain conditions (July 4/April 7, for example). YYYY-MM-DD and spelling out the month. I'm currently writing code that tries to figure out from the context around it what was meant in cataloging when the date used is ##/##/##, and trust me it's very difficult. OH BAD METADATA.

[turlough]

Exactly! (And here in Sweden it's the way everyone writes it. You only ever see someone writing out the month name in handwritten letters and such. In any kind of official or standardised format it's always YYYY-MM-DD.)

[ninetydegrees]

As someone's who's not used to seeing dates in that order, ever, it really isn't.

[msilverstar]

which is more clear, 6/4/12 or 2012/06/04?

[ninetydegrees]

None of them. All I read at first is Day-Month for both because that's what I'm used to so both requires I put numbers in a different order (if the first one is month-day). The first one is less confusing but the last one isn't easier to *read* for me. If the first one's day-month it's actually my country's format.

[blue_rampion]

Oh, I didn't know that year-month-day was an international standard. You are right that it doesn't seem to be used that much in practice though, which is probably the main reason I find trying to read it difficult. For me at least, the only time I seem to encounter dates written that way is on Dreamwidth/Livejournal. (It is certainly preferable to month-day-year, which I can all too easily mistake for being written as day-month-year.)

I must admit I don't really understand complex coding though, so I can't really comment on the difficulty of the English-stripping.

[turlough]

How much it's used in practice depends on where in the world you're living. Here in Sweden it's what everyone uses.

[blue_rampion]

Kinda sounds like pretty much any other standard then - some places use it, others don't.

[alexbayleaf]

I was also going to point out that it was an international standard, and one that (IMHO) should be more widely used, not only because it avoids the US-vs-most-other-places month/day ordering confusion, but also because when you consistently use dates in this format, they sort correctly when you have a list of them! Not that it's relevant in this case, but consider the situation where you have files named things like:

Backups-Apr2012.zip
Backups-Feb2012.zip
Backups-Jan2012.zip
Backups-Mar2012.zip

(Sorted alphabetically, as you can see.)

I always prefer to name things eg.

Backups-2012-01-01.zip
Backups-2012-02-01.zip
Backups-2012-03-01.zip
Backups-2012-04-01.zip

As I said, this is not relevant to the current discussion, apart from being a general argument in favour of ISO-8601 and its variants.

Then again, give me half a chance and I'll lecture you enthusiastically about why A-series paper (A4 etc) is the Best Thing Ever because of SCIENCE.

[matgb]

IAWTC.

Also

chance
2

[velocivector]

Hmm. I chose "should be implemented with changes" because my idea is to allow a DW user to choose between American standard and European standard for the date format they see. A site I use frequently, which has a fair number of non-US users, offers this as one of their customization options. This could be easier to implement than your initial proposed "type out the name of the month" thing.

[erik]

I totally support standards-based solutions, and in that sense I think "2012-07-02" is the "right" answer.

But I also support clear communcation. And it's obvious that significant numbers of people don't know about or use that standard. "02-Jul-2012" is impossible to misunderstand. Even if you have to look up the English names of months to figure out which month it is, there's no way to misinterperet it as the seventh of February.

[ninetydegrees]

I think this overlaps http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/350464.html.

[blue_rampion]

Oh, I hadn't seen that! (I put this up after Denise said that this was different enough to warrant it's own suggestion while commenting in another post, so I must admit I didn't look around too much.) I definitely like your suggestions there.

[montuos]

Is it possible to set it up to follow the user's own system format? If so, that might be simplest.