Years in dates will now display with all four digits

Question

We have released an update to the way in which we render dates in the UI across the network.

Up until now, whenever a date that included the year was rendered (which would typically be for dates earlier than the current calendar year), we would only show the last two digits of the year (for example: Jul 15 '09).

While the apostrophe-two-digit year format was originally put into place for the sake of brevity, we have found out through user research that this two-digit date format can be confusing to some users, especially to those who have learned English as a second language.

The change presented here is being put into place to address this, with the hope of making dates clearer to all users, without sacrificing significant space in the process (trading one apostrophe for two digits). So the date above is now presented as Jul 15 2009.

Nothing else has changed as part of this, including showing all dates in UTC, the format of date tooltips, or the way that we abbreviate months. Also, the date format has not been changed at all on the international sites.

We're happy to receive your feedback or address any questions/concerns about this change.

Answer 1

feature-request status-completed

Please add a comma before the year, I believe it will make reading the date easier.

So, from this:

To this instead:

Answer 2

status-declined

Display the date before the month in locales that use date‑month‑year dates

As you stated, the goal of the change is to make dates clearer for users who are rough in English.

A significant amount (most I think) of these users come from locales which list the day of the month before the month (European format), and would be confused if the month was listed before the day (American format).

As such, I recommend that, if the goal is to make dates less confusing, that the system only render dates in the current month‑date‑year format in locales where the American date format is used, and in others, use date‑month‑year format (e.g. "8 Feb 2022"). Or, if this answer is to be implemented, use the latter format everywhere.

Answer 3

status-completed

Chat still uses the old date formats

This doesn't seem to have been implemented in the chat sites. The old date format of displaying only the last two digits with an apostrophe is still being used in chat. Some examples:

• Oneboxed chat messages:

  

• Chat search results:

  

• Chat transcripts:

  

...and probably a bunch of other places.

I understand that old oneboxes cannot be updated to use the new format because the HTML for the onebox is rendered at the time the messages are posted, with the date format in effect at the time. However, please fix it for newer oneboxes, as well as for the other places in the chat system.

Answer 4

I'd rather this be reverted, preferably, since the UTC datetime was already available on hover.

If reversion won't be considered, please add delineation of some kind between the different date columns or reorder the columns. The lack of any kind of punctuation between the day of the month and the year now is confusing and hard to read.

Or better yet, show it as a UTC date (no time):

• 2009-07-15

It can show a full, localized/friendly date on hover instead (like "July 07, 2009" or "07 July 2009") since you're swapping the direction (e.g. previously it showed short friendly date on the page and showed UTC on hover).

If you don't like that, then here are some options:

• Jul 15, 2009 status-completed
• Jul-15-2009
• 15-Jul-2009

Or switch to DD MMM YYYY, even for US-based visitors:

• 15 Jul 2009

Any of the several options listed above would be better than the current change, in my opinion.