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I'd really like an option to show all dates as yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm. The existing multitude of various things based on the age is much less workable.

Probably, at least the three common formats for date are needed with a check box for 2/4 digit year and a character for the separator, including no character at all:

yy-mm-dd
dd-mm-yy
mm-dd-yy

along with the time formats:

HH:mm
HH:mm:ss
HH:mm xM
HH:mm:ss xM

(where the x is either A or P).

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    Commonly, this is called yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm
    – John Gietzen
    Jan 13, 2010 at 3:08
  • @Peter, yes I mean 8601.
    – Lawrence Dol
    Jan 14, 2010 at 18:53
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    Yes, please. To me, a date such as "Jan 14 '10" looks quite ugly. As has been remarked on related questions, most of the world does not use the illogical M/D/Y date display system. As we are all nerds, you'd think that the ISO 8601 standard would be favoured among us: alphabetical order equal numerical order equals chronological order. Please, at least make it possible for users to customize it as an option for displaying dates. Please, please, please.
    – Teemu Leisti
    Feb 18, 2013 at 9:15
  • If we regressed and now use a different format, please post a new bug report.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 4, 2014 at 1:56
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    @Anna: I am not sure I understand your if in "if we regressed", which makes me question whether the request is understood; clearly one can view any question or answer and the "asked" or "answered" date everywhere is the ugly and hard to read and very American style like "Jan 13 '10 at 3:01" style (I particularly abhor the '10. Contrary to Jeff's "answer" it does not and never has displayed the ISO format date/time for "for anything older than 2 days". I fear if I raise this again it will quickly be closed as a duplicate, which is why I ask that the status-completed be removed.
    – Lawrence Dol
    Feb 4, 2014 at 3:16
  • @SoftwareMonkey We don't remove "status-completed" from old bugs that may have reoccurred. The screenshots Jeff posted make it look like the tooltips at least are showing the correct format. I don't recall off-hand if the username box on posts did the same back in 2010 or not. It's best to post a new, more specific bug report that just addresses that part or a feature request that asks for the format to be changed. (For what it's worth, I don't find the current style harder to read than the ISO even when I wear my not-American hat, but we'll see where the community opinion lands on that one.)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 4, 2014 at 3:19
  • This question is 4 years old. The system has changed a lot since then, so editing this post is not the best way to go about it.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 4, 2014 at 3:21
  • @Anna: Jeffs answer states, and I quote, "for anything older than 2 days, show the ISO date" (not in the tooltip, but in the page body). This has never been true, so it's not a regression - Jeff wrongly marked this status-completed at the outset (and I complained to him about that at the time) as you can see in the comments.
    – Lawrence Dol
    Feb 4, 2014 at 3:22
  • I'm on your side here. :) My advice is to make a new request and let it be vetted by other users instead of reusing this old post.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Feb 4, 2014 at 3:25
  • @Anna: Done; wanna make friendly wager on how fast it's closed as a duplicate? :-)
    – Lawrence Dol
    Feb 4, 2014 at 3:28

2 Answers 2

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The current algorithm is

  • for anything newer than 2 days old, show relative time with the ISO tooltip (screenshot below)

  • for anything older than 2 days, show the ISO date

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/9750/datecursortooltiphover.png

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  • 4
    +1 for hand-drawn circles.
    – John Gietzen
    Jan 13, 2010 at 3:35
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    @Jeff Atwood: what has been changed? Where is the option to show all dates in ISO format? Or does it now always show in ISO format? Or isn't there any change?
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Jan 14, 2010 at 18:45
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    @Jeff: I don't want to have to hover to see a standard date/time format; I want a user option to always show it.
    – Lawrence Dol
    Jan 14, 2010 at 18:51
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    @Jeff: I am curious - why the (apparently) bull-headed resistance to this request? I am not the first user to object to the current date/time stamping - it seems a common complaint. Surely it can't be that hard to just give us yyyy-mm-dd HH:mm time stamps!
    – Lawrence Dol
    Feb 1, 2010 at 23:57
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    This question should be marked rejected, not completed - it wasn't completed, since what I asked for was to display the ISO date (without requiring hovering) instead of "today", etc, as a user option.
    – Lawrence Dol
    Sep 30, 2010 at 0:46
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    The image link seems to be broken.
    – This_is_NOT_a_forum
    Aug 3, 2016 at 18:25
2

If you're using Firefox there's also a GreaseMonkey script that does this.

Note: the script has two configuration options, you will have to edit them to get the behavior you want. It's documented on the question I linked above.

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