How can I set my preferences, that the calendars start correct on Monday?

[+Saenger]

All calendars, where I can search or set a date for a new event start on the last day of the week, the Sunday. That's very inconvenient, the week ends at the weekend, and that's Saturday/Sunday, and the week starts on Monday. Why is here everywhere a wrong order of the days?

 

The ISO 8601 clearly states, that a week starts on Monday, why is it here wrong?

 

 

I just found this, and obviously in North America they start the week with a day of rest. Here in Europe we rest at the weekend, thus Sunday.

Edited May 7, 2022 by Saenger

[+Hügh]

I agree that there should be an option to change the starting day of the calendar. However, I am confused by your argument:

 

On 5/6/2022 at 12:54 AM, Saenger said:

Why is here everywhere a wrong order of the days? The ISO 8601 clearly states, that a week starts on Monday, why is it here wrong?

 

Why does ISO 8601 matter? We are not computers talking to each other. And even if we were, it is not "wrong" to start the week on a Sunday. We here in Canada do. It's simply a cultural difference⁠—one that the HQ engineers should strive to accommodate on their website—and nothing more.

 

I for one use a system involving a 14-day week that begins on a Wuesday (what you people call "Thursday") and ends on Froday (two "Wednesday"s later) .

[+Saenger]

ISO is the norm for such stuff, and in an international enterprise you should stick to such norms and not blindly stick to you pure local customs.

But if somebody would like to start the week with a day of rest, and have the weekend on Friday and Saturday without Sunday, so they may do so, it should not be that much of an effort to let them use their weird system via preferences.

 

[+2Abendsegler]

16 hours ago, Hügh said:

Why does ISO 8601 matter? We are not computers talking to each other.

ISO 8601 not only relates to computers that talk to each other, but generally to date format spelling rules.

[+niraD]

9 hours ago, Saenger said:

But if somebody would like to start the week with a day of rest, and have the weekend on Friday and Saturday without Sunday, so they may do so, it should not be that much of an effort to let them use their weird system via preferences.

Here in the US, every calendar I've seen has weeks that run Sunday through Saturday. The weekend is still considered Saturday and Sunday though.

 

Anyway, that's the "pure local customs" of this little corner of the world.

 

As a personal note: I usually use the ISO 8601 date format 2022-05-08 because I now find both 05-08-2022 and 08-05-2022 confusing. And I could accept the idea that Monday is day 1 if Sunday is day 0. But calling Sunday day 7 is just bizarre to me.

[+Saenger]

12 hours ago, niraD said:

But calling Sunday day 7 is just bizarre to me.

Calling Sunday anything else but day 7 is just bizarre for me.

Calendars always run from Monday to Sunday, sometimes Saturday/Sunday are even combined in one field.

The week starts off on Monday (I don't like Mondays), and ends on Sundays, thus the end of the week is the weekend, the weekend is not something on two distinct weeks.

[+Goldenwattle]

13 hours ago, niraD said:

But calling Sunday day 7 is just bizarre to me.

Bizarre to me not too. Week starts Monday and ends Sunday. 1 to 7 which is Sunday. Sunday as day 0  - strange... it exists!

[+Hynz]

15 hours ago, niraD said:

But calling Sunday day 7 is just bizarre to me.

According to some old book it was even god himself who stated that it was that seventh day when he needed to rest  But I'm not sure how authoritative that is...

[+Saenger]

Just to illustrate this, this is a typical calendar sheet like all of them are, sometimes just one month, but of course always starting on Monday. 

Sorry for the blurry pic, but only 2MB are allowed.

Edited May 12, 2022 by Saenger

[+TriciaG]

 

8 minutes ago, Saenger said:

Just to illustrate this, this is a typical calendar sheet like all of them are, sometimes just one month, but of course always starting on Monday. 

In your area. In North America, I don't think you could find a printed calendar that starts on Monday.

 

1 hour ago, Hynz said:

According to some old book it was even god himself who stated that it was that seventh day when he needed to rest  But I'm not sure how authoritative that is...

...which was Saturday. Just ask those who follow the religion of that God.

 

Seriously, though, that's where it came from. The Judeo-Christian tradition is that Saturday (the Sabbath) is the 7th Day. I guess North America has held onto that tradition longer than other parts of the world.

 

But all that is moot. What is important here is that the website doesn't allow the option to start the week on Monday, as per regional conventions.

[+barefootjeff]

8 minutes ago, Saenger said:

this is a typical calendar sheet like all of them are

 

Not all of them. In this part of the world, they look like this with Sunday on the left:

 

 

As others have said, it's a regional thing.

[+Goldenwattle]

3 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Not all of them. In this part of the world, they look like this with Sunday on the left:

 

 

As others have said, it's a regional thing.

I make my own A3 calendar each year using an online program. I put my own photographs into it, people's birthdays, etc. Then I pay money and a physical calendar arrives in the mail. Anyway, the choice is given whether you start the week with Sunday or Monday. I choose Monday, although growing up with calendars starting with Sunday it's taken some getting used to. Sunday separated from the other half of the weekend is illogical.

[+Saenger]

2 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

As others have said, it's a regional thing.

Yes, it is, I've shown this in the very first post here in this thread. But it's not just a regional thing here on this website, here I have to use the for me very hardly usable calendar that starts with the last day of the week. For me this is typical monolinguistic us-anglocentrism, that doesn't care about anyone else.

I asked for a preference, to make the calendar usable, not a change for everybody to the (in this region only correct) start on Mondays.

 

Edith says: In the android app that must not be mentioned my week starts on Monday.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Saenger

[+Goldenwattle]

17 hours ago, Saenger said:

Yes, it is, I've shown this in the very first post here in this thread. But it's not just a regional thing here on this website, here I have to use the for me very hardly usable calendar that starts with the last day of the week. For me this is typical monolinguistic us-anglocentrism, that doesn't care about anyone else.

I asked for a preference, to make the calendar usable, not a change for everybody to the (in this region only correct) start on Mondays.

 

Edith says: In the android app that must not be mentioned my week starts on Monday.

Dates are another confusing problem. When I upload files to my Garmin the numbers are back to front. 9/23 is obvious, as there is no 23rd month, but dates like 6/7 are confusing and I often don't wake up immediately that the numbers are back to front. It would be nice to be able to choose the day/month order, say tick American or International. I don't find it confusing if the year comes first or last as that's still obvious; its the day and month that's confusing if back to front.

Why does America do so many things different to the rest of the world.

Edited May 10, 2022 by Goldenwattle

[+Saenger]

On 5/10/2022 at 1:57 AM, Goldenwattle said:

Dates are another confusing problem.

Yes, I saw this here now as well, the quote her looks like it was from 10 October, because the natural order of the numbers is from small to big, i.e. day/month/year, to arbitrary change that to a random order is really confusing. 5/10/2022 is 5. Oct. 2022, nobody would expect this to be 10 May 2022 (at least not in this part of the world). I can't find any preferences here for this forum as well.

Edited May 11, 2022 by Saenger
typo

[+Hügh]

On 5/11/2022 at 3:53 AM, Saenger said:

because the natural order of the numbers is from small to big

 

Personally the "natural" order is big to small, ie. 2022/05/11 (this is what the Canadian government encourages, just to be different from both the US and Europe .) It has the advantage that, if you have a bunch of files on your computer named according to dates, they automatically sort in chronological order:

 

 

Even though the year comes first, 2022/05/11 is still pretty readably "May 11".

Edited May 12, 2022 by Hügh

[+Saenger]

OK, then even more family friendly.

 

Nothing seems to happen in this regard, this seems to be an exclusive north-American website, that doesn't want to be international.

Is there any other venue, where such matter of fact  things can be wished for?

The current situation, and the obvious disregard for anything international, seems very unsuited for this very international pastime. Which is imnsho far more family-unfriendly then any four letter word with asterisks.

[+Bl4ckH4wkGER]

20 minutes ago, Saenger said:

Nothing seems to happen in this regard, this seems to be an exclusive north-American website, that doesn't want to be international.

[...]

The current situation, and the obvious disregard for anything international, seems very unsuited for this very international pastime.

The Geocaching website and app are heavily localized and support various distance units, date formats, and time zones. As such your communication and focus on one particular feature appears a bit out of proportion. 

While I understand that this particular inconsistency may be inconvenient, it is by no means game breaking and does not warrant dropping everything to fix it. That is especially the case with this being the first complaint about it since the Event widget was introduced several years ago.
 

20 minutes ago, Saenger said:

Is there any other venue, where such matter of fact  things can be wished for?

You have brought it up in the right forum section and received an overall mixed community response. You have exhausted your options at this point.

Geocaching HQ does not always respond to every forum post however we do make note of suggestions and community wishes. This was also done in this case.

If you expect something to be changed right away within 3 weeks, after a mixed community response, because few players on a single communication channel were very passionate about it, I am afraid you will have to adjust your expectations. 

[+MartyBartfast]

22 minutes ago, Saenger said:

OK, then even more family friendly.

 

Nothing seems to happen in this regard, this seems to be an exclusive north-American website, that doesn't want to be international.

Is there any other venue, where such matter of fact  things can be wished for?

The current situation, and the obvious disregard for anything international, seems very unsuited for this very international pastime. Which is imnsho far more family-unfriendly then any four letter word with asterisks.

I was about to write this and the saw Bl4ckH4wkGER made some of the same points, but I'll post anyway.

I think you're being pretty harsh on GS, they have had options for localised preferences for all the major stuff for years e.g. date/time format and distance units.

 

The start week isn't something that's occurred to me to be significant enough to bother about and the only place I see it in use is the calendar for events on the profile page and it's not difficult to look across the top row at SMTWTFS and work out what day is what - or is there somewhere else the start of the week is used which is causing confusion?

It's the first time I've seen anyone ask for this so I can't imagine it's a big deal for many, and as such not a priority for GS, and there are many more things I would want GS to sort out before they even think about working on this.

 

 

 

[+Saenger]

International means as default anything ISO, that's of course meter, kilometre, and a week from Monday to Sunday.

Local customs, like outdated stuff as miles and feet, or dividing the weekend in two opposite ends of the calendar, should be made by preference and not by default.

 

Edit:

I didn't expect any change asap, but I definitely expected a kind of "Sorry for this inconvenience, we'll try to get it right soon." by some officials. It's so far out of my thinking, to start the week with the last day of the week, that it's hard to plan an event without looking tat least twice, because the chance to make faults is big.

I was completely flabbergasted, that this unnatural week-order is anywhere really accepted as normal.

 

I had expected at least some recognition of this problem, and that it is something wrong in an international environment, which it definitely is, without any doubt.

Edited May 27, 2022 by Saenger

[+Bl4ckH4wkGER]

As adhering to ISO standards is voluntary and not legally binding, personal preferences are perfectly fine and any person's preferences are still no better or worse just because they are grounded on ISO or not.

I am closing this thread due to the continued nature of OP's communication and the fact that everything has been covered in this thread.