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For usability reasons, for example in RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags, the 'viewed' counter should show as Commas and excitement ...instead of... No commas and no excitement. It's much harder to decipher that there are a million views on the question just by looking at it.

Some people in the comments pointed out internationalization concerns with it. I do think that since there might be a problem with it, that spaces would probably be a better idea.

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  • There have been various proposals, some people want ., some want Space and others want ,. I doubt any will be implemented. – Tim Apr 25 '15 at 20:58
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    Commas should never happen due to internationalization concerns. The same goes with dots. The only "correct" option is following the ISO standard which calls for spaces. – psubsee2003 Apr 25 '15 at 21:02
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    @psubsee2003 Spaces would be fine I guess then. Just so it can be made easier to read. – Justin Krejcha Apr 25 '15 at 21:03
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    possible duplicate of Should the network use thousands separators in numbers? – psubsee2003 Apr 25 '15 at 21:04
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    While I see what's being meant, it's a feature-request, while that one is a discussion question. – Justin Krejcha Apr 25 '15 at 21:08
  • @Tim Clearly we should follow C++11 and use '. – Ixrec Apr 25 '15 at 23:54
  • @Ixrec The French use that I believe so still not truly international. – Tim Apr 26 '15 at 8:42
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    Bump - We have a answer with an accepted solution of spaces, any chance of getting this implemented? – Script47 Aug 19 '16 at 0:45
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    Please unaccept the answer, since the feature request is not done. I believe SE staff will ignore requests with accepted answers, thinking they're already resolved. – Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask Dec 19 '16 at 15:31
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    @Script47 actually having accepted answer is likely to lower the chances of this being done, as usually accepting an answer here means "this is resolved, no need for further action". – Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask Dec 19 '16 at 15:32
  • @ShadowWizard Done; I didn't realize that accepting an answer would do that. – Justin Krejcha Dec 20 '16 at 2:21
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    @Justin cheers, now let's hope it will be done... :) – Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask Dec 20 '16 at 6:41
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    +1. See also Related tags don't have thousands separators – Hugo Dec 20 '16 at 10:09
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Sidebar commas coming to you live... in the next production build.

Not taking locale into account at the moment since we don't pretty much anywhere else as far as I know, and consistency wins for the time being.

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6
+50

Agree with the comments, that we need something neutral.

Space

Space would do it, and while this is used by specific countries, others who use comma/dot/other separator should be able to adapt to spaces easily.

This should be fine wherever there is never going to be a decimal point. Otherwise the issue is still present where different folks will be familiar with different characters.

Or..

What about using a letter for numbers from 10,000 up, as a simple way to visually show million (M) or thousand (K)?
This should be enough to make it more clear at a glance.

e.g.:

1290302 M
129030 K
12903 K

EDIT
After thinking about it.

(1)
Anything under ten thousand is easily recognisable without requiring anything further (375, 1264, 5733), so can remove those from the equation completely.

(2)
5 chars is fairly easy to recognise:
12903
45934
87339

(3)
If we use K for "hundred thousands" only, and M for "millions" only, they both become instantly recognisable.

K = hundred thousands
M = millions

Even though the average Subitizing is only about 4, with the familiarity (3) introduces, and considering (1) is negated entirely, this combined "familiarity" makes recognising ten thousands (10000 to 99999) also naturally recognisable, because they are not "the others".

So all number ranges would have a quick to recognise attribute.

hmm... maybe I just need sleep...

Either way, M and K seems legit to me.

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  • K or M sounds good - but with the actual number in a tooltip on that (possibly with commas as well!) – ᔕᖺᘎᕊ Apr 27 '15 at 6:11
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    We don't need something “neutral” because this is an English-language site, so it makes sound sense to follow English-language formatting. It doesn’t matter that the French use commas where we use dots and vice versa, because we aren’t speaking French here. :) – tchrist Aug 19 '16 at 2:40
  • @tchrist I get your point, but this is numbers not written word, so why not make it neutral and cater for everyone? TBH, whether we use English decimal separation, spaces, or something else, we need something, as large numbers are hard to quickly recognise. – James Sep 24 '16 at 11:48
  • 1 290 302 is pretty ugly to me. – zixuan Nov 21 '19 at 22:59
3

Commas are already used as thousands separators elsewhere on these English-language websites.

  • Here's an example for reputation:

rep bar

  • And another:

profile reputation

  • And a third:

next to a question

  • And for question counts:

total questions asked

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