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In here I'd like to choose a date format for general use.
I think some will agree that converting our precious day-month-year or year-month-day to the abomination which is month-day-year is kind of inconvenient.
I propose use of one of the following date formats:
And one of the following separators:
Easy one: I'd say dd/mm/yyyy, with "/" as separator.
Also, I've seen that German translation often point out ordinal numbers with a dot; this is not used by other nations, as far as I know (surely not in English), and was actually quite confusing the fist time I saw it. I therefore propose to adapt to the English standard:
-LofB
I favor yyyy-mm-dd with "-" as separator. It is in compliance with the ISO 8601 standard and already in use in lots of countries (also used as formal data format in Germany btw.)
dd/mm/yyyy and mm/dd/yyyy can and will easily be mixed up, like 04/07/2017.
Mh, I have to agree. Every time I translate something from the original Foundation, I automatically inverse day and month, but with lots of cultures working in the same space it will become more problematic. Also, it's an ISO standard, so makes sense that we apply it too.
EDIT: in the end, the dd mm yyyy is more pyramidal and logic overall, so I vote for that, with the "/" separator.
-LofB
I vote for "DD/MM/YYYY" with "/" as separator.
Mostly it's because of how I think of dates. For example, for 19/05/2016, I think (and say) "The ninetheenth of the firfth, two-thousand-sixteen" or "Fifth May". Though that's mostly because it's the system I'm used to in Swedish. Lots of other languages work differently. I think English, Hungarian and Japanese all work in a MM/DD (e.g. "May's fifth") format in their spoken languages.
A lot of these formats seem to dominate in different parts of the world, partly due to local language structure.
Still, considering that the DMY-format seems to dominate, as can be seen here, I strongly recommend for that to be the main form. If we take a look at the different SCP branches, we'll see that most branches would fall under that standard as well (according to the map):
DMY:
YMD:
MDY:
As can be seen, the DMY format dominates both in terms of sheer number of people covered by the system, and by the number of countries using it. YMD comes second, mostly concentrated in the highly populous East Asian countries, with it being the International Standard being a second argument in its favour. The MDY format, however, seems to be limited to the US, Philippines, and a handful of equatorial African countries.
As for another standard unrelated to the date, as I mentioned here french people will usually put a space between words and punctuation. It may not be a very relevant topic, but we should decide if they have to put a little effort and adapt to the rest of us, or if it's ok to do it, as it doesn't impair readability.
-LofB
As far as I know, in the English language (and Swiss french) there is no blank before ! ? : and ; though in French it is as well as after french « quotaion marks ».
I think we should use the english model, as in the end, the goal is also to have our translated content posted on the -EN wiki. So it would be kinda strange to post things with different standards… isn't it ?
And yeah, we have space before some of our ponctuation, but the english language doesn't.
First, i want to vote for afromentioned DD/MM/YYYY format (as for seperators, im neutral, i used / only as placeholder), i think Nederbird explained it far better than i can.
Also, as we can all see on our posts, Wikidot also uses DD MM YYYY format, but with MM replaced for first letters of the month. I think that this option will be the best, as there will be no confusion over date.
But if thats not an option, im voting on dd mm yyyy with any seperator.
Definitely not the third format, as it's useless. Parts of a date should be ordered smallest to largest - day, month, year, or year, month, day.
While dd mm yyyy sees more day-to-day usage, yyyy mm dd is the most useful when sorting things chronologically. For example, that's how I sort my photos - using folders named as such: "YYYY.MM.DD - Description". When opened in any file manager, sorting them by name also sorts them chronologically.
I'm voting YYYY MM DD with any separator. Dot is preferred, but any other will do.
Results up until now:
Date Format
5 voted, 13 did not vote.
Separators
4 voted, 13 did not vote, 1 neutral.
-LofB
To throw in my (late) opinion: I'm for dd mm yyyy. With Dot or Slash as separators.
Regarding yesterdays discussion about the separator in chat, I want you to keep in mind that in the EN wiki the date format MM/DD/YYYY is used. This can (and will) be easily mixed up with DD/MM/YYYY. Though DD-MM-YYYY, DD.MM.YYYY or DD MM YYYY are clearly distinguishable.
Just try to find out wether 08/03/2017 is in March or August without having read the guide declaring what date format we use. If we have the choice, I'd always go for the user-friendly solution.
This particular argument was something I did not think about, and makes sense to me. While I don't thinks it guarantees distinction between the two, it's still a difference, and since the separator choice is pretty much relegated to aesthetics otherwise, I am in favour of dd-mm-yyyy.
-LofB
I reviewed my position once more. Normally I'd go for DD-MM-YYYY because it's a pyramidal and logical scheme, but since it can and probably will be confused by some of our members cough cough Americans let's go with YYYY-MM-DD.
-LofB
Results so far:
Date Format
dd mm yyyy: 3 votes.
mm dd yyyy: 0 votes.
yyyy mm dd: 4 votes.
Separators
Slash (/): 2 votes.
Dash (-): 3 vote.
Dot (.): 2 vote.
Space ( ): 0 votes.
If anybody wants to add or change their opinion, do it now please.
