Format absolute timestamps based on locale or ISO 8601
t
two
started a topic
over 1 year ago
This is a pretty low-priority thing because the timestamps usually only appear for a few seconds while the page is loading before being converted to the relative ones. If it takes a while or gets stuck for whatever reason, though, it's a bit confusing as somebody not used to the US date system to work out what date they're referring to (and what time? I think it's in UTC but displaying that in 12-hour seems odd). It would be nice to have these formatted in a more familiar way based on the locale, or if this isn't possible for technical reasons (probably the case) using something like ISO 8601: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss . I think this format is more recognised internationally than the US format, and it's at least much harder to confuse with local formats that look similar but put the month and day in the other order. Using the international format would probably also help indicate for people in America that the timezone isn't any local one... though I can understand if Americans would prefer to keep their unique format.
two
This is a pretty low-priority thing because the timestamps usually only appear for a few seconds while the page is loading before being converted to the relative ones. If it takes a while or gets stuck for whatever reason, though, it's a bit confusing as somebody not used to the US date system to work out what date they're referring to (and what time? I think it's in UTC but displaying that in 12-hour seems odd). It would be nice to have these formatted in a more familiar way based on the locale, or if this isn't possible for technical reasons (probably the case) using something like ISO 8601: yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss . I think this format is more recognised internationally than the US format, and it's at least much harder to confuse with local formats that look similar but put the month and day in the other order. Using the international format would probably also help indicate for people in America that the timezone isn't any local one... though I can understand if Americans would prefer to keep their unique format.
4 people like this idea