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date format


kerravon

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Currently when emails are being sent out, they are sent in the American date format, ie MM/DD/YYYY, e.g.:

 

Log Date: 4/27/2007

 

America is the only country in the world that uses this date format. Europeans and Australians use DD/MM/YY(YY), so a date of 4/5/2007 is extremely confusing as we normally recognize that as 4th May, and we have to remember whether dates normally come from this site in the American date format or not, so that we can decipher it.

 

Fortunately, there is a great solution. There is an ISO standard for dates, and it is YYYY-MM-DD (note that it uses "-" rather than "/"). Could you please update the emails that you send out (and ideally the rest of your site) to use this international date format so that the entire rest of the world outside America doesn't get confused?

 

Note that Americans won't get confused by this date format either, as there is no such thing as a YYYY-DD-MM date format. There is only ever one meaning for 2007-05-04, which is the 4th May, 2007.

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Wow, no offense, but this website is located in the United States. Geocaching is a global activity, but when in Rome ...

 

Most well written software is capable of being configured to display date and other numeric information in the preferred format of the user. It was a fature of some early Windows programs that the United States date

and currency symbol were hard coded but eventually even Microsoft learned not to do this.

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Wow, no offense, but this website is located in the United States. Geocaching is a global activity, but when in Rome ...

 

Hmm, the International standard is ISO 8601. When on Planet Earth...

 

At least giving users the option in their profiles would be going a long way. This date format has been driving me nuts for a long time, and would take very little work anyway, as every web page and email is customised to the user anyway.

Edited by fehrgo
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This insistence on making the rest of the world adjust to US date format has been an annoyance for years, as ......

 

This insistance that the US adjust ourselves to a different date format has been an annoyance for years.

 

;)

 

(Sorry just had to restate it that way)

 

Change is difficult. As hard as it is for you to get used to seeing dates our way, it is VERY hard to adjust the way we look at dates.

 

Of course, the best solution is to allow some customization.

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...4th May, 2007.

 

4 May 2007.

 

That's the format I like. Numbers in general are confusing when the context is not clear.

 

2007 - 4 - 5 could be confused as 4 May 2007 or 5 April 2007 depending on your orginal frame of reference.

 

Ignoring that my favorite version and your's appear to be differnet I do wish the USA would get off its Lazy Butt and adopt SI, and other universal conventions. If we had done the job in the 50's or 60's when it was first thought about...It would be a done deal.

Edited by Renegade Knight
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This insistence on making the rest of the world adjust to US date format has been an annoyance for years, as ......

 

This insistance that the US adjust ourselves to a different date format has been an annoyance for years.

 

;)

 

(Sorry just had to restate it that way)

 

Change is difficult. As hard as it is for you to get used to seeing dates our way, it is VERY hard to adjust the way we look at dates.

 

Of course, the best solution is to allow some customization.

 

Your last line is the crucial one!

 

I would never insist that you adjust to how the rest of the world does things.

I'm just asking (as a resident of the rest of the world) that we be given the OPTION to have dates displayed in a way which doesn't cause us endless confusion. :D

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Currently when emails are being sent out, they are sent in the American date format, ie MM/DD/YYYY, e.g.:

 

Log Date: 4/27/2007

 

America is the only country in the world that uses this date format.

 

Actually, you need to add Canada, The Philippines, The Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau as using mm/dd/yyyy (Source)

 

But I agree with RK's post...spelling out the month would be acceptable to me.

Edited by Stunod
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Dear World,

 

You are welcome to use our satellites to play your geocaching game. We were quite happy to pay for billions of dollars worth of technology so that everyone could have fun finding tupperware containers in the woods.

 

But you do need to use our wacky backwards date format, sorry.

 

Sincerely,

 

The U.S. Taxpayers

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Would it make sense to report a Latitude or Longitude as Minutes Seconds Degrees? No, of course not, it's not logical as it mixes things up. A logical format goes from least to most specific.

 

That's the problem with both MM-DD-YYYY and DD-MM-YYYY formats. A logical date format is YYYY-MM-DD, as it goes from least to most specific. When a time is added, it's just added as a natural extension YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (use whatever delimiters you like in place of - or : as they are irrelevant). It's numerically consistent, and that's the key.

 

This provides for a natural sorting method as well. If you throw a list of dates in YYYY-MM-DD at a generic sorting mechanism you get a correct, chronologically ordered list, just like you do in looking at a list of coordinates in Degrees Minutes Seconds (or Degrees Minutes.Minutes or even Degrees.Degrees) formats.

 

That's my opinion, worth what you paid for it.

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Currently when emails are being sent out, they are sent in the American date format, ie MM/DD/YYYY, e.g.:

 

Log Date: 4/27/2007

 

America is the only country in the world that uses this date format. Europeans and Australians use DD/MM/YY(YY), so a date of 4/5/2007 is extremely confusing as we normally recognize that as 4th May, and we have to remember whether dates normally come from this site in the American date format or not, so that we can decipher it.

 

Fortunately, there is a great solution. There is an ISO standard for dates, and it is YYYY-MM-DD (note that it uses "-" rather than "/"). Could you please update the emails that you send out (and ideally the rest of your site) to use this international date format so that the entire rest of the world outside America doesn't get confused?

 

Note that Americans won't get confused by this date format either, as there is no such thing as a YYYY-DD-MM date format. There is only ever one meaning for 2007-05-04, which is the 4th May, 2007.

 

Throw my vote in for this! I'm an American living in Germany, and it confuses me. I'm now so use to reading logs with the DD/MM/YY that I always find myself reading it that way in the emails.

 

DcCow

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Dear World,

 

You are welcome to use our satellites to play your geocaching game. We were quite happy to pay for billions of dollars worth of technology so that everyone could have fun finding tupperware containers in the woods.

 

But you do need to use our wacky backwards date format, sorry.

 

Sincerely,

 

The U.S. Taxpayers

 

I think I read something like that before - written by the Romans. :P:D

Edited by DcCow
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Throw my vote in the no change category.

If you can't figure out the dates then configure your computers operating system and youre software to do so for you. And while you are at it, all the different email (web) sites I use have their own way of specifying dates so just asking geocaching.com to make a change is not going to do a bit of good.

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Dear World,

 

You are welcome to use our satellites to play your geocaching game. We were quite happy to pay for billions of dollars worth of technology so that everyone could have fun finding tupperware containers in the woods.

 

But you do need to use our wacky backwards date format, sorry.

 

Sincerely,

 

The U.S. Taxpayers

:P

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It turns out this was promised by Jeremy in 2005:

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...t&p=1591288

 

And Elias in 2002:

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...st&p=352823

 

Sooooo, it is now 2007. Yoohoo!

I suspect that while TPTB may agree that this change may be helpful to those non-US players who may be bothered by the current format, it is probably not really high on the priority list to allocate their limited coding resources to. Also, since the entire site is apparently being recoded, this might be part of the larger project.

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I suspect that while TPTB may agree that this change may be helpful to those non-US players who may be bothered by the current format, it is probably not really high on the priority list to allocate their limited coding resources to. Also, since the entire site is apparently being recoded, this might be part of the larger project.

you have to ask youself... what is the larger project.. and what is top of the priority... performance.. well what if the performance never improves?

I wonder what they are doing with the limited resources.. perhaps some peak into whats "on-the-list" and whats off..

As far as I can see there have been no changes in the last six months or have I missed some new features?

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We all pay the same membership fee and are all entitled to see dates represented on screen in a format that we can atually read. This kind of problem usually arises not as a deliberate decison to support only one format but because the original programmers were simply unaware that their method of representing dates was not used universally or they did not envisage that their software would be used internationally.

 

The complaint is not that it happened but that years later it is still here. Were the date format to be changed to DD/MM/YY there would, quite rightly, be immediate uproar as US users discovered this is not the minor issue they assume it to be. It is broken and it has needed fixing for years.

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I suspect that while TPTB may agree that this change may be helpful to those non-US players who may be bothered by the current format, it is probably not really high on the priority list to allocate their limited coding resources to. Also, since the entire site is apparently being recoded, this might be part of the larger project.

you have to ask youself... what is the larger project.. and what is top of the priority... performance.. well what if the performance never improves?

I wonder what they are doing with the limited resources.. perhaps some peak into whats "on-the-list" and whats off..

As far as I can see there have been no changes in the last six months or have I missed some new features?

Hasn't the site's performance been improving all along? Why do we need to see TPTB's things-to-do list?

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We all pay the same membership fee and are all entitled to see dates represented on screen in a format that we can atually read. This kind of problem usually arises not as a deliberate decison to support only one format but because the original programmers were simply unaware that their method of representing dates was not used universally or they did not envisage that their software would be used internationally.

 

The complaint is not that it happened but that years later it is still here. Were the date format to be changed to DD/MM/YY there would, quite rightly, be immediate uproar as US users discovered this is not the minor issue they assume it to be. It is broken and it has needed fixing for years.

Entitled?

 

When I joined, I don't remember being promised that the dates would be in whatever format I wanted them in. The site was what it was. Based on that, I chose to join and pay my membership fee.

 

Entitled. :huh:

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I've always supported the idea of making the date adjutable based on user preferences. I completely understand where those from the international community are coming from.

 

Even though I am an American, I much prefer and often use the DD/MM/YY format. I've found that it can often cause problems.

 

However, that being said, I have to chuckle just a bit along with sbell11 when I hear people say things like "entitled".

 

Here's the issue as I see it. It is not a priority... we do not have any entitlements with regards to either the date format and/or TPTB's to-do list. Therefore we should adjust our way of thinking.

 

When I travel to Europe/Asia or when I purchase things from an international website, I keep in my mind what I'm doing, where I am, and why I'm there. When I look at things like date formats, monetary formats, etc... I will change my mindset to fit that which I am working with.

 

If you are so pidgeon holed in your wayof thinking that you can't adjust your thought process to an "international" date format... then you should probably try and open you mind a bit and expand your experiences.

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Currently when emails are being sent out, they are sent in the American date format, ie MM/DD/YYYY, e.g.:

 

Log Date: 4/27/2007

 

America is the only country in the world that uses this date format.

 

Actually, you need to add Canada, The Philippines, The Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau as using mm/dd/yyyy (Source)

 

But I agree with RK's post...spelling out the month would be acceptable to me.

 

lol, don't add Canada to your list.

We use 2007-01-30.

We understand the US date system though, same as we understand feet-inch measurements.

 

Per the OP, there are bigger things to fix (like server scaleability) before worrying about date formats.

Edited by ron1337
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unfortunately no details if this will be resolved, but the other big annoy features is the default date when I log a find .. its always "yesterday" as Canberra time is +14hours I have mostly set this day forward also when I show caches it shows it has been found "today" for 2 days even thought is was "yesterday" my time.

Basically they need a common routine to display with users local time

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...4th May, 2007.

 

4 May 2007.

 

That's the format I like. Numbers in general are confusing when the context is not clear.

 

2007 - 4 - 5 could be confused as 4 May 2007 or 5 April 2007 depending on your orginal frame of reference.

 

Ignoring that my favorite version and your's appear to be differnet I do wish the USA would get off its Lazy Butt and adopt SI, and other universal conventions. If we had done the job in the 50's or 60's when it was first thought about...It would be a done deal.

Well if the month number is replaced by the spelling, one way or the other, that would be better than how it is now. If there's not enough time to make the date format customisable, then the default should be either the ISO date format or the month spelled out. It is a minor programming effort to make this change to the default date format (customized dates are a lot more programming work).

 

However, your complaint about the ISO date format is not valid. No country uses YYYY-DD-MM so there is no confusion over what 2007-04-05 means.

 

We live in a globalized world, and the non-American audience is huge. YYYY-MM-DD, metric and English are the standard forms of communication. Unless you have an American-only audience, which in this case you don't.

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As an American I personally am used to Month, Day, and Year. That is how I know it and it has always been here.

 

I would not object it being user customizable, but would absolutely object to changing it to ANY other format only.

 

So lets not make this a Metric vs. Standard type issue on dates.

 

Customizable or leave alone. IMO If it Aint Broke.... (and It's Not!)

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ya, lets confuse and annoy majority of the users so that a couple noisy people in other locations don't have to make any effort to conform.

 

If GC were a non-US web site, you people would be all over it. A non issue would be a huge issue. You just don't want to admit that.

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I'm a programmer myself and I know just how easy it is to use the locale features of the programming language that the site is built in - i.e., easy! It really should be changed to be locale-specific or just set by the user's profile, and I can't see the whole process taking longer that an hour to do. Having US-style dates force fed to me is an annoyance..especially when it makes me think a six month old cache is a new one! I.e., 01/06/07 - oh goody, a new cache says I..wait..there's logs for january..grrrrr!!!

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ya, lets confuse and annoy majority of the users so that a couple noisy people in other locations don't have to make any effort to conform.

 

If GC were a non-US web site, you people would be all over it. A non issue would be a huge issue. You just don't want to admit that.

 

BS. If this was a European based web site I'd go with the flow and realize the date format is different from what I'm used to. I have the same issue where military time is used. It's not what I like to use but, when that's what is presented to me, that's what I use.

 

I have no issue with making it customizable according to the user's wishes. In fact, I don't understand why is isn't already that way. It only makes sense. However, don't try forcing YOUR way on me. The site is based in the US and there is no way we should be forced to change how we do things just to make you happy. We don't weigh ourselves in metric measurements, stone, or any other method of that sort. We use pounds and ounces. We measure in feet and inches rather than meters and centimeters. We don't use the Euro for coinage - or pounds, dinar, kwanza, pesos, florin, minat, taka, franc, kroon, forint, rupiah, punt, pataca,litas, tugric,yen, etc. We use dollars and cents. It is our country and we do things our own way.

 

Again, I firmly believe that this is something that should be user selectable. I'm not insensitive to your desires but if it means changing it to ONLY YOUR WAY then I'll fight it tooth and nail. Feel free to establish your own satellite network and your own cache listing site and do things however you see fit. We won't try to stop you.

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Dear World,

 

You are welcome to use our satellites to play your geocaching game. We were quite happy to pay for billions of dollars worth of technology so that everyone could have fun finding tupperware containers in the woods.

 

But you do need to use our wacky backwards date format, sorry.

 

Sincerely,

 

The U.S. Taxpayers

 

I think I read something like that before - written by the Romans. :D :D

 

you know, the roman republic lasted about as long as ours. and since our republic is currently dying, if you want to make roman comparisons, look forward to some centuries of really brutal world domination. you ain't seen nuthin' yet.

 

and while i'm still not in the custody of the secret police, let me quicky add: long live the empire!

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