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Currently dates are shown as MMM DD YY for eg. jun 11 12. This is confusing, because it is not widely used.

Rather it would be better if dates are shown as DD MMM YY like 11 jun 12, which is used in large number of countries.

It's a small feature-request. Vote up or down as per your choice. Thanks.

EDIT: Cyan is the region where DD/MM is used , Magenta is the region where MM/DD is used.Image taken from Wikipedia.

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    I'd go for ISO8601 formatting (YYYY-MM-DD) instead, otherwise you'd never stop with the localized date formats..
    – Martijn Pieters
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:36
  • @MartijnPieters I knew someone would come up with that, but not so quickly.That isn't bad either, just that it's not so famous
    – Registered User
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:40
  • It's clear enough as it is. If it was only numbers, then this feature request would make more sense.
    – Qantas 94 Heavy
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:40
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    @AdityaPatil Famous or not, it's an ISO standard so you know it's the way to go.
    – michaelb958--GoFundMonica
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:40
  • Ok, should we go ISO way? I'm ready to change question.
    – Registered User
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:41
  • Do you have tangible evidence that DD MM YY is more widely used than MM DD YY (worldwide)?
    – Frédéric Hamidi
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:41
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    @FrédéricHamidi man strftime says %m/%d/%y. Yecch—for Americans only.Americans should note that in other countries %d/%m/%y is rather common. This means that in international context this format is ambiguous and should not be used.) (SU)
    – Registered User
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:43
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    @FrédéricHamidi Mostly Only US uses MM/DD.
    – Registered User
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:44
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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_format_by_country there's a map! I like maps.
    – nkjt
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:45
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    Got it, thanks :) I did not imagine the US were so isolated in doing that. Clearly that magenta should go :)
    – Frédéric Hamidi
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:46
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    If you change your question to ask for ISO format, it will be a duplicate of Can we have a user preference for ISO standard date format for all dates/times?
    – Stijn
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:53
  • Well, I honestly don't think this will give a big advantage for users. In fact, it may make regular users be confused with sudden change because they have already accustomed to current format. I'm abstaining with a tend to disagree.
    – Meta Andrew T.
    Apr 3, 2014 at 9:55
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    Note that the strftime manpage talks about a different format using only numbers; 06/11/12 is ambiguous, jun 11 2012 is not.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Apr 3, 2014 at 10:08
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    The point where it gets really ambiguous is when the year isn't shown for dates this year
    – Richard Tingle
    Apr 3, 2014 at 10:33
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    What Richard Tingle said. Mar 13 is incredibly ambiguous compared to 13 Mar when the year is omitted.
    – OGHaza
    Apr 3, 2014 at 12:01

1 Answer 1

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Suggestion

I would say; why choose. Now in 2020 internationalisation is old hat. So just show whatever date format the users browser says they want.

Implementation

My understanding is that Stack Exchange sites are build in C# ASP.net. ASP.net is very able to pull the users preferred language out of the data sent from the browser and C# is very able to format a date time in that cultures preferred data format.

Justification

The current date format regularly causes confusion, as seen in these posts:

Show the whole date, even for posts from the current year

Why inaccurate ''member for" info is shown in Stack Overflow

Don't use very old posts for audits

Allow users to set custom date formats

This would mean American users can continue to use their preferred date format of MMM DD 'YY and non American users would feel a little less unloved.

(The current behaviour of showing a UTC timestamp on hover is good, I'd suggest keeping that)

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