3 ms·
30 years ago when most literature was either published recently (newspapers, magazines, etc), or the date of publication was mostly irrelevant (books), your arg
by wahern 6y ago
30 years ago when most literature was either published recently (newspapers, magazines, etc), or the date of publication was mostly irrelevant (books), your argument makes sense. If you cared at all, what mattered was usually the month and day.
For most of the literature people read in the 21st century, especially this past decade, the year is the most important part. People normally couldn't care less whether something was published 3 days ago or 3 months ago. But knowing whether it was published 3 years ago makes all the difference in the world to its relevancy.
- systemvoltage 6y agoI think I need to labor on my point a bit more. There are many use cases for dates. From publication date to planning vacation on a calendar. What is the most common use for a date? Calendar, I guess? The most frequently used dates we encounter are within +/- weeks from now. In a day to day use, YYYY is useless.
- wahern 6y agoA calendar is a great example because they usually emphasize the month, week, and day graphically, not typographically. Another common remaining example might be a bank statement. But what's interesting there is that the dates are in a column and the year disappears. It hardly matters whether the year comes first or last because you don't actually notice it at all unless the year is rolling over--conspicuous change in that column. But when I'm looking at something lacking implicit context regarding publication date, such as an online magazine article, a YouTube video, or a Tweet, the year is the first thing I'm searching for. Even on HN, the rule is that the year needs to be included in the title if it wasn't published in the current year. I guess for e-mail the day and month are most important (similar to bank statements), unless you're reading really old messages. But I use mutt with a default mailbox view that doesn't even show the year.
- anjbe 6y agoBy far the most common use I have for dates is filling out forms. In those cases the year is almost always essential. Speaking from personal experience, even an American can make an effort to use YYYY-MM-DD in any situation asking for a numeric date, and almost always succeed. The biggest exceptions are forms asking for MM/DD, and online payment forms asking for credit card expiration as MM/YY.