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Date Format - Anyway Of Changing It?

scottpa100

By scottpa100
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scottpa100

+scottpa100

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Posted
If that's the case, then the site will just stagnate.  ...

The fact that you joined such a 'US-centric' site and continue to use it bears this out.

 

:lol:

You seem to be implying that I have an anti-US thing going on. I don't. Its just a request, an idea, and I acknowledge the fine work that development are doing (the searches in a radius from your postcode is serious coding and works great!).

 

You are right in that the date functionality is not the be all and end all, not like world poverty or other such global things, and that's why I still use the site. The site itself uses US English, which is fine. The site is administered from the US. However, to say it is US centric is bit like putting your head into the sand. There are caches all over the world. Admittedly, probably the majority of caches are in the US, but look at the number of geocaches across Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Czech Republic, the UK, southern Scandanavia, New Zealand, and on the west and east coats of Australia. You can see all these caches accessing this graphic.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/goodies/2006-01/1024.jpg

 

As you can see it is very much a global game with global users.

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Chwiliwr

+Chwiliwr

Posted
Posted

Most computers and programs do not store the date in any way that is readily readable by humans and it a conversion of some sort by the system that displays it into a month/day/year, .. etc on the displays. That is why I would prefer to have it as user preference as suggested by Jeremy but the effort involved may not be worth it.

 

The 'Hidden' date on the main cache page and on the 'My Account' page are the most confusing date for those not used to the M/D/YYYY format. On the 'My Account' page it isn't quite as confusing due to the dates being in a list but on the main cache page it is seen in isolation so can be frustrating at times for those not used to this format. (Or do not know that it COULD be in that format)

 

Of all the main pages I go to it is these two dates and the timestamps on various pages that the month is not spelt out in words, either fully like 'January' or part like 'Jan'.

 

I would therefore suggest that Jeremy consider changing these two displays of date to use the full or part spellings of the month. They would then be consistent with the displays of dates on the rest of the system, apart from the timestamps but they could be changed also to be consistent. It does nothing for those that use different spellings of the months but they already have this problem with all the other dates displayed on the site.

 

I feel that this would immediately solve most of the ‘confusion’ factor that started this discussion in the first place and makes the personal preference option for dates less of a priority.

 

On a slightly different tangent all the dates I see from the site are in the format m/d/y except for one page that shows dates as dd mmm yy. Is this page coded differently to pick up my PC options for dates. I couldn't tell from the source code with my limited html knowledge. The page concerned is the one that gets displayed as the result of the list newest in Western Australia search link from the 'My account' page (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?state_id=56) search.

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ParrotRobAndCeCe

+ParrotRobAndCeCe

Posted
Posted (edited)
Hi

 

Well you did imply that you new what "most registered gc.com users" felt of the date issue.

No, I said I "think", not "new" (knew). And I still think that way, despite your objection - I'll just assume you're one of the ones not included in what I termed "most".

 

Think does not mean Know.

Most does not mean All.

 

however you statement did indicate you are in a position to reflect their views on this topic

 

No. My statement indicated that I have an OPINION (get it, I "think"?), which may or may not be rooted in fact. And that OPINION is that MOST people don't care about the date format. Again, I stand by that opinion.

 

If I walked outside and it was 0° and I said "I think most people would consider it cold", that in no way implies that YOU would think so, now does it?

 

If it makes you happier, I will rephrase my initial post thusly:

 

"I, ParrotRob, am of the personal opinion that if a poll were taken of all registered geocaching.com users, more than 50% of them (i.e. "most") would say that they place a lower priority on web site date formats than they do on fixing broken functionality, and at the same time I hereby acknowledge that some, including Aushiker, may be of the opposite view."

 

Does that work for you?

Edited by ParrotRob
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Dr. Boggis

+Dr. Boggis

Posted
Posted
Localized settings - user could customize - then we don't have to argue which is best. None are inheirently better than others - just different. Makes sense to show them in a way that is natural to your local custom. I'll have patience and see what Jeremy can cook up but I also agree that thier are more pressing issues.

So what's next? A "user preference" that lets you pick what language the site is displayed in? After all, isn't coding the site in English kind of ethnocentric when there are thousands of languages out there? How about we add a "user preference" to change the color of the pages? Or the font that it's displayed in?

I presume you've never looked at a cache page in a non-english-speaking country? Them darn foreigners are quite happy writing their cache pages in whatever language they speak! It wouldn't hurt for users to be able to write their *dates* in the same language they speak too, would it?

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===sgb

+===sgb

Posted
Posted (edited)

This is a reply to the original post in order to avoid all the wrangling going on between some US folk and some others. I am referring to the dates listed in the geocaching website in cache logs and so forth, not to forum dates.

 

I find US dates inherently confusing - that is why I bothered to come to the forum and do a search on "Date format" and find this thread. With another hobby I have, the UK association organised an internet tournamet for the month of June one year. It was reported in the US association's journal as lasting from Jan 6 to June 30. A classic reason for wanting clear date formats.

 

My preference is for user customisable date formats - I would always choose "yyyy-mm-dd" given free choice, or any option with a central month as second best. US format confuses me since I haven't grown up with it.

 

This is a serious issue and isn't just cosmetic.

 

===sgb

Edited by ===sgb
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scottpa100

+scottpa100

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Posted

I am pleased to see that this concern has not gone away. It is not about applying a change across the website. It is just a request for a preference button. The thing is, this is just not a UK thing. All the Europeans and Oz / New Zealand use the d/m/yyyy format. That is something like 500 million people!

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Kryten

+Kryten

Posted
Posted

Failure to accodmodate data localisation other than that used in the United States was a feature of Early PC DOS software but was something that Microsoft erradicated from Windows many years ago. It's a pity to see the issue is still alive and well on this site. It's not that we can't understand the US date format but we always initially read the day and the month the wrong way round and have to remember to mentally swap them back again. It's ok when the wrong ordering wouldn't work like 03/31/06 but dates like 05/06/06 are a nightmare because they work either way and are so close that the wrong version don't feel wrong. It's like a stone in your shoe, you can live with it and it's not going to kill you, but it's still a constant irritation.

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ParrotRobAndCeCe

+ParrotRobAndCeCe

Posted
Posted (edited)

If we're going to go TRULY "international" or "global", then maybe we should list dates in Gregorian, Julian, Hijri, Jewish and Chinese formats as well.

 

I call today 6/13/06. You call it 13/6/06 and claim it is the global or international. Well, contrary to your assertion that "they include EVERY country, also U.S.", that format DOESN'T work for the U.S. Nor does it work for the Hijri (Islamic calendar) countries, where today is 16 Jomada 1 1427AH, nor for the Jewish calendar, where today is 17 Sivan 5766AM, or the Chinese, where today is 18/5/4643AC. How about the Chinese traditionalists who think of this year as year 23 of cycle 78 Bingxu, year of the Dog? Maybe there's someone left still following the Julian calendar, where it is still May 31, 2006AD?

 

The "standard" is hardly a "global" or "international" one, is it? :unsure:

Edited by ParrotRob
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BigFurryMonster

+BigFurryMonster

Posted
Posted

This is the reason why we have international ISO standards.

 

A summary can be found here:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html

 

Quote:

 

The international standard date notation is

 

YYYY-MM-DD

 

where YYYY is the year in the usual Gregorian calendar, MM is the month of the year between 01 (January) and 12 (December), and DD is the day of the month between 01 and 31.

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===sgb

+===sgb

Posted
Posted (edited)

If we're going to go TRULY "international" or "global", then maybe we should list dates in Gregorian, Julian, Hijri, Jewish and Chinese formats as well.

 

I call today 6/13/06. You call it 13/6/06 and claim it is the global or international. Well, contrary to your assertion that "they include EVERY country, also U.S.", that format DOESN'T work for the U.S. Nor does it work for the Hijri (Islamic calendar) countries, where today is 16 Jomada 1 1427AH, nor for the Jewish calendar, where today is 17 Sivan 5766AM, or the Chinese, where today is 18/5/4643AC. How about the Chinese traditionalists who think of this year as year 23 of cycle 78 Bingxu, year of the Dog? Maybe there's someone left still following the Julian calendar, where it is still May 31, 2006AD?

 

The "standard" is hardly a "global" or "international" one, is it? :laughing:

 

I am not, and I don't think others are claiming that dd/mm/yyyy is either standard or globally applicable. What we are saying is that mm/dd/yyyy isn't standard and isn't globally applicable. The obvious fix is a parameter in "my preferences" or "my account" (or whatever it is called) which US folk can leave empty with it defaulting to mm/dd/yyyy and UK folk can set to "dd/mm/yyyy" and I can set to "yyyy-mm-dd".

 

I fully agree that forcing dd/mm/yyyy on everyone would be bad; as bad as forcing mm/dd/yyyy on everyone. So lets not force either of them on anyone.

 

Can we have a user date format preference please.

 

===sgb

Edited by ===sgb
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aleung

aleung

Posted
Posted

or the Chinese, where today is 18/5/4643AC. How about the Chinese traditionalists who think of this year as year 23 of cycle 78 Bingxu, year of the Dog?

 

The "standard" is hardly a "global" or "international" one, is it? :)

 

No, in Chinese we use 2006-06-13.

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scottpa100

+scottpa100

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Posted

 

 

No, in Chinese we use 2006-06-13.

 

Well, say if Groundspeak had to do one change and it was to keep everyone happy, I would work with the ISO standard, which is the one that the Chinese use anyhow (as it turns out). It is clear what the pattern the information is presented in due to the 2006-xx-xx format.

 

Ultimately though, I still think it should be a user preference so that anyone across the globe can use the date format that they want to use.

 

Scott

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DonB

+DonB

Posted
Posted

I am pleased to see that this concern has not gone away. It is not about applying a change across the website. It is just a request for a preference button. The thing is, this is just not a UK thing. All the Europeans and Oz / New Zealand use the d/m/yyyy format. That is something like 500 million people!

There are probably more people then 500 million people that drive on the right hand side of the road too, but it's your country and if you want to drive on the left that's your business. If I want to visit there and drive there I know that I have to drive on the left. I don't expect anyone to change for me.

 

The bottom line is, there are more important issues on the site then date formats.

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