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This is our 2015 moderator election page over at CR.

The results box shows :

This election ended Jul 14 at 20:00.

Now, I appreciate that if you hang around any part of the network, you'll probably become confused by an ambiguous date like this relatively quickly and figure out that it's showing "mm / dd". But it shouldn't be necessary.

I suggest making the default format "MonthName dd yyyy" so as to avoid potential ambiguity, especially for new users.

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    you had better not suggest replacing MonthName with MonthNumber and open up all the issues with mm/dd vs dd/mm etc. Better to suggest adding a 4 digit year to the existing format.
    – Kate Gregory
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:19
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    Um... how does using numbers instead of month names "remove ambiguity"? Half of the world wouldn't be able to tell if 05/08/2015 was May 8th or August 5th...
    – Catija StaffMod
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:30
  • I didn't mean to suggest changing month to a number, just appending the year on the end. Edited question.
    – Kaz
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:31
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    If it's a year other than the current year, it appears to include the year... see an example here.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:32
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    While I occasionally get annoyed by the way SE handles dates sometimes, this is not one of the problematic cases. The year is added automatically if the date is not in the current year, and the election page has the year in the title anyway.
    – Mad Scientist
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:32
  • I get that, I'm just suggesting, from a UX point of view, that it's non-intuitive and hence could benefit from being made less ambiguous.
    – Kaz
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:34
  • How is it non-intuitive? The entire post is titled "Year Moderator Election".
    – Catija StaffMod
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:36
  • IT's non-intuitive because when I first saw it, I assumed the date was a typo that was meant to be Jul 15. And, based on anecdotal evidence, it's a reasonably common experience when new to the SE network.
    – Kaz
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:38
  • I agree, I simply cannot fathom the intense complexity of the current format.
    – James
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:49
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    Sarcasm aside, "I assumed the date was a typo that was meant to be Jul 15" I can see why this would be your first thought, fair enough. But surely your second thought was "hang on, where's the day then..." If the date is within the current year it doesn't show the year. i.e. if I put "Jan 12" it is currently 2015 so I mean 12th Jan 2015, otherwise I'd have put "12th Jan 2012". A lot of websites do this, it's fine and quite logical once you know about it ;)
    – James
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:53
  • I guess, I still feel that any format likely to cause end-user confusion is non-optimal. Especially when a simple formatting change of always including the year anyway would immediately solve any ambiguity.
    – Kaz
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:59
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    It makes it simpler for those who do not know, I agree. But it also removes a good feature for the rest of us too, including you now. There are a lot of things on Stack Exchange which are a learning curve, as with all other websites and the rest of the internet/life. And while I'm all for making things easier where possible, not when we lose a useful feature/function in the process. Not showing the year reduces reading clutter, adds screen space, and makes the areas with dates much cleaner. It's not hard to learn how it works.
    – James
    Aug 30, 2015 at 18:13
  • Good luck with this. I suggested a similar change the other day. The community seems to think the date is plenty obvious. Even though this suggestion has been posted many times.
    – jcollum
    Nov 12, 2020 at 23:55

2 Answers 2

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  • I know it's easy to get a full date, I'm just suggesting that, upon initial contact with the SE network, the current date format is non-intuitive for a lot of people, and could be made non-ambiguous.
    – Kaz
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:33
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    This is how dates appear nearly everywhere on the site, @Zak; I expect most people get used to them pretty quickly. Full dates are unambiguous, but also exceedingly verbose - using them when not necessary is just mental overhead for those reading. Now, if you want to pick on a date format, check out user profiles... If you poke around a bit, you'll find dates in this format that really need a year but don't get one for some reason.
    – Shog9
    Aug 31, 2015 at 3:58
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The elections do include the year... but not if it's for the current year:

Here's the one for Seasoned Advice from 2013:

SA election page

As you can see, it says "Feb 26 '13 at 20:00".

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  • This isn't about elections per se, I was just using it as an example of how the current date format can be ambiguous in certain circumstances.
    – Kaz
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:40
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    @Zak If it's not about elections, perhaps you should use additional examples in your question. I think that the system is pretty consistent... if it's this year, it's month and date only. If it's a previous year, it's month, date, year. The entire network follows these rules, as far as I can tell.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:43
  • I'm not saying it's not consistent, it's very consistent, I'm suggesting that the format itself is non-optimal from a UX point of view.
    – Kaz
    Aug 30, 2015 at 17:52

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