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Old August 14, 2009, 06:28 AM   #1
Falcon5NZ
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Date Format

Howdy. Can someone please, for the sweet love of Bob Marley, tell me if I can change the date format into something I can read Eg DD/MM/YYYY not that american YYYY/MM/DD. Sorry guys it confuses and annoys the hell out of me

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Old August 14, 2009, 07:02 AM   #2
Bud Helms
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No way of which I am aware or I would have done the same thing.

I don't think it's an American date style. More of a machine preference. Dates get filtered down in a search and other date related software functions. It is logical, when you look at one field at a time. We humans look at the whole thing at once.
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Old August 14, 2009, 09:47 AM   #3
Mal H
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I can see how it might confuse you, Falcon5NZ, but annoy the hell out of you? That's a bit hyperbolic, eh wot?

Seriously, I have often wondered why we have dates in that format myself, but I guess it never bothered me enough to take the 20 seconds to change it.

Bud can't see the formatting sw, but all dates have a lot of leeway in the way they are presented. I'll change it to month-day-year in the American tradition with the month spelled out. That way you will only be slightly annoyed, not full-fledged bent out of shape!
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Old August 14, 2009, 02:40 PM   #4
Evan Thomas
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A tiny change, but a good one... much easier for all, given that numbers-only formats differ from country to country.

I like it.
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Old August 14, 2009, 10:18 PM   #5
tyme
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Resident date format pedant here.

Like Bud said, yyyy-mm-dd has nothing to do with the U.S. It is the international date format standard: ISO 8601.

Most Americans use mm/dd/yyyy because it's tradition here (no idea when or how that got started). As is well known known to the rest of the world, we Americans tend to be creatures of habit who see no need for unambiguous international communication, or international standards of any sort.

Despite being born and schooled in the U.S, I hate the U.S. style (mm dd yyyy). The rest of the world (just about) uses dd mm yyyy, which makes more sense. Unfortunately, the existence of the U.S. format makes both formats ambiguous, so neither one can be used -- unless it's inconsequential (or even desirable) that U.S. residents misinterpret it. Particularly on a board like this one, where most of the members are North Americans, using dd mm yyyy would be a recipe for disaster.

The ISO 8601 format is the only readily understandable alternative without resorting to spelling out months. That's why it was in use.

The sooner Americans are shamed or tricked into abandoning their preciousss date format (and English units of measurement), the better, as far as I'm concerned.

There's an interesting graph of international date-format prevalence at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_date#Usage_issues

BTW, the default vbulletin date format is the U.S. style: mm/dd/yyyy. I have no idea why. I thought most of the developers were British.
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Old August 15, 2009, 12:44 AM   #6
Falcon5NZ
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Thanks guys. I think that makes more sense for all concerned.
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