First day of the week

[+ekhoc]

Hi,

 

suggestion: user selectable setting for which weekday one considers as the first day of the week.

 

Currently, the site is using Sunday as the first day, which is against the international standard (ISO 8601) stating that Monday is the first day of the week.

 

Regardless of what one thinks what should be considered as the first day, it would definitely help to have all the calendars following the same notation.

[Moun10Bike]

Moving from bug reports to Feature Discussions and Suggestions.

[+T.D.M.22]

Well then I suppose the whole site should be locked after December because the world will end. I don't believe the world will end, nor do I think the first day of the is Monday. It's a matter of opinion of the people who wrote the program, Does it really make a difference? What if it started on Tuesday? Is there really any point other than to make you-and maybe a couple others-happy just because you are used to it being one way? or am I actually missing something here-which honestly happened a lot lately on these forums.

[+niraD]

Wow... It took me a while to find somewhere on the site where it mattered which day is the first day of the week. But sure enough, such a place exists:

http://www.geocaching.com/calendar/

 

Anyway, I have no objection to a configurable setting for which day is the first day of the week. But I do object to being forced to switch to Monday being the first day of the week. All my calendars and calendar-based systems use Sunday as the first day of the week, no matter what ISO 8601 says.

 

And while I can see how it would be useful to allow people to display calendars in a format they are familiar with, I can see no use in having all the calendars using Monday as the first day of the week when so many of us use Sunday as the first day of the week.

[+pppingme]

Actually a lot of people have read into what 8601 really says.

 

It does not clarify what the first day of the week is, only how it counts weeks.

 

A lot of confusion comes in because numerically Monday is referred to as "1", so Sunday is referred to as "7" by many programming languages, etc. BUT, and this is very important, we all know computers don't start counting at 1, they start counting at 0, thats right, a big ZERO.. And guess what day that is? SUNDAY.

 

So, indeed, Sunday is the start of the sequence.

[+The A-Team]

Actually a lot of people have read into what 8601 really says.

 

It does not clarify what the first day of the week is, only how it counts weeks.

 

A lot of confusion comes in because numerically Monday is referred to as "1", so Sunday is referred to as "7" by many programming languages, etc. BUT, and this is very important, we all know computers don't start counting at 1, they start counting at 0, thats right, a big ZERO.. And guess what day that is? SUNDAY.

 

So, indeed, Sunday is the start of the sequence.

Well, here's ISO 8601. As you can see in section 2.2.8, it says:

calendar week

time interval of seven calendar days starting with a Monday

Apparently "a lot of people" didn't look close enough, because it very clearly states what day the week starts with under that standard.

 

Edit to add: FWIW, I couldn't care less whether this change was made or not. If all it will change is the event calendar, then I don't care.

Edited September 26, 2012 by The A-Team

[+tozainamboku]

ISO-8601 is a standard for representation of dates and time for the interchange of information. It says nothing about what the first day of the week is other than to define the concept of a calendar week. This allows for interchange of something called a week date. It allows you to specify a date as [2012-W38-3] (Wednesday of the 38th calendar week of the year 2012). I don't know of anyone who actually uses dates in this format, but supposedly it gets used in some business and government applications. I guess when you are paying people once a week or do something periodically an a certain day every week or every 6 weeks, it may be convenient to use.

 

I can't see anywhere where it says a calendar must be laid out to starting on Monday or that a week (other than the constructed concept of calendar week used in the week date format) begins on any particular day of the week. In fact the standard defines week as the duration of a calendar week, but then goes on to state in a note that week also applies to the duration of any interval which starts at a certain time of day at a certain calendar day and ends at the same time of day at the same calendar day of the next calendar week.

 

The ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD standard is one of several formats for dates selectable in your Geocaching profile. I don't really see the need for including the 8601 week date.

[+ekhoc]

Wow... It took me a while to find somewhere on the site where it mattered which day is the first day of the week. But sure enough, such a place exists:

http://www.geocaching.com/calendar/

 

Actually, I was thinking about http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/ which is also using Sunday as the first day. I'd prefer to have the first day user selectable, as there are local differencies on which day is seen as the first day of the week.

[+ekhoc]

A lot of confusion comes in because numerically Monday is referred to as "1", so Sunday is referred to as "7" by many programming languages, etc. BUT, and this is very important, we all know computers don't start counting at 1, they start counting at 0, thats right, a big ZERO.. And guess what day that is? SUNDAY.

 

So, indeed, Sunday is the start of the sequence.

 

It can also be the end of the sequence, for example in crontab:

 

day of week 0-7 (0 or 7 is Sun, or use names)

 

While Sunday definitely is commonly used as the first day of the week, Monday is also commonly used as the first day of the (work) week in calendars, Saturday and Sunday being then placed together at the end.

[+ekhoc]

The ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD standard is one of several formats for dates selectable in your Geocaching profile. I don't really see the need for including the 8601 week date.

 

The main, if not only benefit would be to have the Pocket Query calendar not being "one day off". I guess this is largely an European phenomenon, but over here you just cannot find a calendar which would begin with Sunday.

[+stijnhommes]

I'm someone who likes options and since geocaching is a worldwide phenomenon, I think the OP has a good point. US users might not be affected, but the option to change can be very helpful to the rest of the world...

[+NYPaddleCacher]

The ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD standard is one of several formats for dates selectable in your Geocaching profile. I don't really see the need for including the 8601 week date.

 

The main, if not only benefit would be to have the Pocket Query calendar not being "one day off". I guess this is largely an European phenomenon, but over here you just cannot find a calendar which would begin with Sunday.

 

I just looked at five major online travel sites which use a pop-up calendar for date selection. Every one of them showed Sunday as the beginning of the week.

[jholly]

The ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD standard is one of several formats for dates selectable in your Geocaching profile. I don't really see the need for including the 8601 week date.

 

The main, if not only benefit would be to have the Pocket Query calendar not being "one day off". I guess this is largely an European phenomenon, but over here you just cannot find a calendar which would begin with Sunday.

 

I just looked at five major online travel sites which use a pop-up calendar for date selection. Every one of them showed Sunday as the beginning of the week.

Every paper calendar I have ever seen the left most day is Sunday. Now is Sunday the first day of the week? Don't know, but it is the first day in a row of days. Your call.

[+T.D.M.22]

How about Friday being the first day of the week? That way we can actually look forward to the beginning of a new week.

[+The A-Team]

I just looked at five major online travel sites which use a pop-up calendar for date selection. Every one of them showed Sunday as the beginning of the week.

Without knowing where those sites are based out of, your research doesn't really mean much. If all 5 were North American, I would be surprised if one of the five didn't have Sunday first.

[+GeoTrekker26]

The ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD standard is one of several formats for dates selectable in your Geocaching profile. I don't really see the need for including the 8601 week date.

 

The main, if not only benefit would be to have the Pocket Query calendar not being "one day off". I guess this is largely an European phenomenon, but over here you just cannot find a calendar which would begin with Sunday.

 

I just looked at five major online travel sites which use a pop-up calendar for date selection. Every one of them showed Sunday as the beginning of the week.

 

Did you check the European site for a European Airline? It's a regional convention and there is no reason to think our (USA) convention is any more correct than another.

 

Bigger issue: I can't see the day on which the sequence begins makes one iota of difference to caching. Not many of us are using crontab to schedule PQs. I must add, I do see an opportunity for a trick or two in a puzzle cache!

[+The A-Team]

Did you check the European site for a European Airline? It's a regional convention and there is no reason to think our (USA) convention is any more correct than another.

That was basically my point above. As an example, I just tried bringing up the Lufthansa site. It automatically took me to the Canadian version of the site, and the calendars used Sunday as the start of the week. When I switched to the German version of the site, Monday was the first day.

[+me N u]

We have lived in Saudi Arabia where the weekend is Thursday and Friday, making Saturday the 1st day of the week, but neighbouring countries (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, U.A.E. and Oman) have Friday and Saturday as their weekends so then Sunday is the 1st day of the week! In our mind there is no "one size fits all" 1st day of the week.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

The ISO-8601 YYYY-MM-DD standard is one of several formats for dates selectable in your Geocaching profile. I don't really see the need for including the 8601 week date.

 

The main, if not only benefit would be to have the Pocket Query calendar not being "one day off". I guess this is largely an European phenomenon, but over here you just cannot find a calendar which would begin with Sunday.

 

I just looked at five major online travel sites which use a pop-up calendar for date selection. Every one of them showed Sunday as the beginning of the week.

 

Did you check the European site for a European Airline? It's a regional convention and there is no reason to think our (USA) convention is any more correct than another.

 

Bigger issue: I can't see the day on which the sequence begins makes one iota of difference to caching. Not many of us are using crontab to schedule PQs. I must add, I do see an opportunity for a trick or two in a puzzle cache!

 

I wasn't looking at specific airline sites. I believe that all of the sites are based in North America but are internationally used. I looked at kayak.com, travelocity, orbitz, hotels.com, and expedia. All of them allow you to books flights, car rentals, and/or car rentals from many different countries around the world. Perhaps the regional convention in the U.S. is Sunday first, and Monday first in other countries, but I looked those internationally used sites to see if there was an *International" convention.

 

Just as English is the official language in the U.S. and German is an official language for Germany, English is almost exclusively used as the international language for business.

 

Okay, I looked at a few regional airlines. KLM (Dutch based), Swizz Air, and South African airlines all use Monday as the first day in the Calendar. China Airlines and, surprisingly, British Airways use Sunday.

 

I agree that it makes little difference for geocaching to spend much time developing something that will show a regional view of the calendar. I suppose it depends on how "international" GS wants to make all their user interfaces. I've done a fair amount of work with internationalizing web sites and applications and it can get fairly complex in a hurry. I think GS does a fairly good job of providing multiple language support and don't see a significant enough impact for developing something that provides multi-regional convention support beyond the ability switch between miles/feet and kilometers/meters.

[+ekhoc]

I wasn't looking at specific airline sites. I believe that all of the sites are based in North America but are internationally used. I looked at kayak.com, travelocity, orbitz, hotels.com, and expedia. All of them allow you to books flights, car rentals, and/or car rentals from many different countries around the world. Perhaps the regional convention in the U.S. is Sunday first, and Monday first in other countries, but I looked those internationally used sites to see if there was an *International" convention.

 

Just as English is the official language in the U.S. and German is an official language for Germany, English is almost exclusively used as the international language for business.

 

Okay, I looked at a few regional airlines. KLM (Dutch based), Swizz Air, and South African airlines all use Monday as the first day in the Calendar. China Airlines and, surprisingly, British Airways use Sunday.

 

I agree that it makes little difference for geocaching to spend much time developing something that will show a regional view of the calendar. I suppose it depends on how "international" GS wants to make all their user interfaces. I've done a fair amount of work with internationalizing web sites and applications and it can get fairly complex in a hurry. I think GS does a fairly good job of providing multiple language support and don't see a significant enough impact for developing something that provides multi-regional convention support beyond the ability switch between miles/feet and kilometers/meters.

 

I took also a look at these booking sites. Travelocity has multiple sites, and the beginning of week varies accordingly. Orbitz and Expedia began week with Sunday. Hotels.com and kayak.com and also booking.com offered Monday, probably based on my location.

 

While none of this has much direct connectivity to geocaching, it would just be nice to have the Pocket Queries page with 'similar' week as other calendars. Thus, it would be great to have this user selectable.

[+ekhoc]

Every paper calendar I have ever seen the left most day is Sunday. Now is Sunday the first day of the week? Don't know, but it is the first day in a row of days. Your call.

 

I have occasionally seen paper calendars having Sunday in the first column. Most of them are having Monday.

[+tozainamboku]

I used to run my most important pocket queries on Friday so that I would have fresh and up-to-date data on the weekend when I did most of my caching. I now have the most important queries run on Monday or Tuesday so that they include the new caches that people have hidden over the weekend. It's pretty clear that the first day of the week has little to do with geocaching or when a PQ runs.

 

Still I can see it may be an issue for some, if you live in a country where you are use to seeing the week laid out as:

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun

 

you could easily select the wrong date if the grid is laid out as:

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat

 

However, I think the bigger problem is that PQs run at midnight Pacific Time. That causes problems (especially for cachers in Australia or Japan when it may actually already be Monday). You could ask for a PQ on Monday and wait for it to be Monday in Seattle for it to run, or if you know what is really going on you would ask for it on Sunday and have it run immediately. Of course if it's late in the day on Monday it may already be after midnight in Seattle and then asking for a PQ on Sunday means you'll have to wait to next week. People ought to be able to ask for PQs according to their local time.

[+Harry Dolphin]

Every paper calendar I have ever seen the left most day is Sunday. Now is Sunday the first day of the week? Don't know, but it is the first day in a row of days. Your call.

 

I have occasionally seen paper calendars having Sunday in the first column. Most of them are having Monday.

 

We receive calendars from vendors. One year I got one that I liked (beautiful scenery on each page - think it was Swiss). But I stopped using it very quickly, because it had Monday as the first day of the week. That just did not work for me.

[Findor]

I think what matters is how is the calendar date picker usable for people, and for me (my region is middle Europe) I have almost never seen calendar with Sun as first day (I guess most software is correctly localized), so I have quite a hard time using date picker on geocaching.com. You know, when I look for tuesday, I click second column, Sunday I click last column... automatically without reading header of the calendar, so I probably picked the date wrong several times.

 

I think making this configurable should not be difficult and it would make life a bit easier for lots of people.

[cezanne]

Every paper calendar I have ever seen the left most day is Sunday. Now is Sunday the first day of the week? Don't know, but it is the first day in a row of days. Your call.

 

I have occasionally seen paper calendars having Sunday in the first column. Most of them are having Monday.

 

We receive calendars from vendors. One year I got one that I liked (beautiful scenery on each page - think it was Swiss). But I stopped using it very quickly, because it had Monday as the first day of the week. That just did not work for me.

 

Your experience also explains the background of the starting post. In most countries of Europe almost every calendar one will be able to get hold of has Monday as the leftmost day.

On the rare occasions I need to choose a date via the calendar on gc.com I always need to remind myself of the fact that the calendar starts out with Sunday which is extremely unusual in Europe.

 

Cezanne

[+Walts Hunting]

The two biggest calendars I know of (apple and google ) start with Sunday.

[jholly]

The two biggest calendars I know of (apple and google ) start with Sunday.

From the Google calendar help ...

To change which day is displayed as the first day of week in Google Calendar, follow these steps:

 

Click the gear icon at the top of any Google Calendar page

Click Settings

Select the General tab

In the Week starts on section, select an option from the drop-down menu

Click Save

 

I don't have a apple product but I suspect there is the same ability.

 

Any product that has the users preference in mind will have the same type of ability.

[+TriciaG]

The two biggest calendars I know of (apple and google ) start with Sunday.

And they're both US companies. AND on Google Calendar you can change the week to start on Sunday, Monday... or Saturday. I'd bet $10 Apple has the option, too.

 

I'd be in favor of a setting one can change to determine the first day of the week, like Google Calendar has, or like GS has for time zones.

Edited June 16, 2014 by TriciaG

[+Walts Hunting]

You know I didn't think of that. I wonder if it defaults to the preferred style depending on where you first setup your account.

 

Always thought the whole sun first was out of whack with a christian created calendar.

Edited June 16, 2014 by Walts Hunting

[jholly]

You know I didn't think of that. I wonder if it defaults to the preferred style depending on where you first setup your account.

 

Always thought the whole sun first was out of whack with a christian created calendar.

Now there is an oxymoron.