Date Format

[ten-tackle]

The Date format should be changed to international standard. Simple reason: say you want to search something by date, but you only know year and month. Right now you'd have to brute force up to 31 times, when in the normal format you could just type "[month][year]" in the search bar and the results would be all entries published within that month.

 

[gene.sis]

international standard

[month][year]

As far as I know, the "international standard" is YYYY-MM-DD. (It seems it is consistently used in just a few countries.)
I would prefer that format.


If your browser supports regex search or if you have installed an addon that allows you to, you could use the following regex to work around the current situation on the story map:

oct( \d{1,2}, )2020

(Replace the month and year with what you are looking for.)

the normal format

[month][day][year] is actually the normal format in the USA

 

[ten-tackle]

My mistake. Yes the format used in computer science is indeed year, month, day, though outside the USA people usually display dates as DD.MM.YYYY and I would be fine with either. I assume the admins are Americans and have no plans of changing it? I guess Americans are used to working around stuff like the date format, their units of measurement,...

 

[gene.sis]

though outside the USA people usually display dates as DD.MM.YYYY and I would be fine with either.

for about 2.8 billion people DMY is standard
for about 1.7 billion people YMD is standard
the rest is mixing the formats. (Though there might be a preference to DMY there.)

I assume the admins are Americans and have no plans of changing it?

I don't know if Friedman is up to change that.
Maybe an option to choose from the three formats might make the most sense.

I guess Americans are used to working around stuff like the date format, their units of measurement,...

^^
Well, I actually think that MDY is more useful than DMY. (Though YMD being the best solution.)
You usually know the year, so the month might already be enough to have an idea of when the date is. If not, the day comes right after.

 

[ten-tackle]

TIL, there are places that genuinly use YYYY MM DD outside of IT or maybe some forms.
It seems so counterintuitive to me. Like if somebody asked me for the date, I'd first respond with just the day (maybe day of the week)(and I'd be confused if someone then asked for clarification).
I am curious: Does it really make a difference if the month is first, or are you simply used to it that way? I just know, that filtering timestamps is easier when it's either sorted descending (as in Year is bigger than month, is bigger than day,...) or ascending (second<minutes<hours<days<months<years). Of course if you got something like receits in a folder that's way different... I guess for someone to be able to tell, which works better, they'd have to have lived with both for several years.

 

[gene.sis]

It seems so counterintuitive to me.

Well, it's the same with numbers... 1,527... you start with the thousand, then the hundreds, ...

I am curious: Does it really make a difference if the month is first, or are you simply used to it that way?

I'm not using the American system but can see some merit in it.

For sorting, MDY can be better if you cut off the year and use it as the folder.
But that works for YMD as well and you can even have the whole thing as sortable filenames.
That said, DMY is horrible when it comes to sorting.

 

[ten-tackle]

That said, DMY is horrible when it comes to sorting.

Definetly true.
I like it, when it is already sorted, because I read left to right and so when looking for something with a known date, like in a folder, I find it easier to find the right day.

That said, if I switched over to American I doubt the difference would be more than a few seconds.
Best format is YMYDYDYMY that way you can tell who can and who can't concatinate

 

[merkros]

Personally, I think we should use the Maya Calendar:
13.0.8.5.0

Spoiler

13 baktun
13 X 144,000 days = 1,872,000 days
0 katun
0 X 7,200 days = 0 days
8 tun
8 X 360 days = 2,880 days
5 uinal
5 X 20 days = 100 days
0 k'in
0 X 1 day = 0 days

It is after all one of the first formats of keeping track of dates before all of you silly plebian Gregorians came along. If we were going to use a superior format, then that one would be the obvious choice.


This is a joke. Nothing to see here.

 

[ten-tackle]

Get out of here with your place value system!
If you're gonna use numbers, use letters: XVII II MMXXI