Random Poll of Nine Days Ago! (884)

[Callid]

Actually, their own standards as well. ISO 8601 is international, and therefore should be used for all international affairs (like the forum) at least. If you Americans write among yourselves, feel free to write however you want, but unless you are in some special restricted section, the internet is international and therefore the international format should be used.

And yet again, here you are making comments about how people should run their forums. Hey, I've got a crazy idea! If you want things to be done your way so much, go start your own forum, with your own rules, and your own freaking date set-up.

Stop trying to tell other people how things "should" be done.

First, I'm not making any comments on how the forums should be run. I actually don't think that enforcing rules on this would be a good idea. The forum timestamp is already customizable, so, as far is that is concerned, everything is more than perfect. I'm making suggestions for users, because we don't exactly write timestamps here.
These are, as I said, also mere suggestions - which is why I'm using the subjunctive (in the optative mood); do not confuse that with a rule (if I wanted to write those, I'd use the indicative mood, as just hoping that rules will be followed isn't exactly the thing to do, while I do simply hope they respect useful suggestions - the CCP is a good example of that ("The purpose of the CCP is ...", not "The purpose of the CCP should be ..."); in fact, "should" is never used in the laws of the CCP at all!¹).
Everyone is free to write in their own way, but they should (wish!) be prepared to, as I said, "face confusion and ridicule" if they use strange and unusual² formats. So, go ahead and use MMDDYY, just don't be surprised if people consider it necessary to tell you that the date you specified doesn't exist, or ask you why you gave several months as a deadline for orders. Or simply make fun of you for starting to count in the middle

Long story cut short:
1. This was directed to users, not the forum. The forum shouldn't enforce date format rules anyway.
2. When I use "should", I make suggestions. Orders/rules/laws I write never use "should".
3. If you don't care about being understood or taken serious, write however you want.

¹It is used twice in the introduction, both times - just like in that post - as a subjunctive ("If you should want to join...", "... if a leader should suddenly leave, ..."), but never in the actual laws.
²The only countries in the world that use MDY are the US, Belize and, partially, the Philippines. Canada and Saudi-Arabia use it for special occasions. The rest of the world doesn't use it at all.

P.S.:
Now that you mention it, it would be useful if the forum had some type of date-formatting, so one user can write a date, and everyone will see it in according to their date display settings. No idea how easy that is to implement, but it would effectively get rid of both the date-format and time-zone-confusion, which would be awesome

EDIT:
It seems that the usage of "should" in a subjunctive construction is more common in British English than American English, according to Wikipedia. That might be the reason you misunderstood what I wrote.

[Commi-Ninja]

So, there's this place, I think it's called Redneck Bar or something. Anyway, they're throwing an end-of-the-world party on December 21st.  I'm amused by this.  Definitely won't be there though.

[KainTheVampire]

So, there's this place, I think it's called Redneck Bar or something. Anyway, they're throwing an end-of-the-world party on December 21st.  I'm amused by this.  Definitely won't be there though.

o.O

[KangarooGirl]

FTR I think Kleene was just kidding and probably did not mean to start off the debate.

Also it's all a matter of habit for everyone. Americans are used to their way of writing and so is everyone else. For me, I just go with the saying when in Rome, do as Romans do. I got used to reading the dates in Mandarin on FF.net because they use the American way of dating things and it was the only way I could properly figure out when something was last updated. Since this is a mostly American based forum (I daresay most of the moderators and staff are from USA), I would expect it to conform to more American standards and I'm okay with that.

[Stopwatch]

Basically, the English language is stupid and not logical so accepting one more illogical thing when talking to Americans shouldn't be so hard...?
Still kinda annoying though and even if I'll (hopefully) be able to read those dates I'd probably still write it the way I'm used to with a note next it like I do for football/soccer (when I remember at least) :x.

[Callid]

FTR I think Kleene was just kidding and probably did not mean to start off the debate.

Also it's all a matter of habit for everyone. Americans are used to their way of writing and so is everyone else. For me, I just go with the saying when in Rome, do as Romans do. I got used to reading the dates in Mandarin on FF.net because they use the American way of dating things and it was the only way I could properly figure out when something was last updated. Since this is a mostly American based forum (I daresay most of the moderators and staff are from USA), I would expect it to conform to more American standards and I'm okay with that.

Hmm, kinda hard to say. Jd- is from the US; if I'm not mistaken, and I think GinRei is too. However, the moderator of this sub-forum, Conia, isn't. I'd rather say that this is an English forum - DCTP translated into English - which means the non-existant standard of the English language should apply, which again means all standards are fine (MDY in the US, DMY in the UK, YMD in South Africa).
One could also - perhaps more successfully - argue that it's an international forum, as no single nationality has an absolute majority (in that poll, it's even "North America", so US should be even less). However, considering that we have few people from China or Japan, the most common format for users is actually DMY (simply because nearly everyone outside the 30% US uses it), and it indeed has an absolute majority. So, shouldn't rather the MDY people, being a minority, adopt the more common DMY? :x

[Commi-Ninja]

Or, or!

We could all write it however we want, and everyone else can either deal with it or get over it!


Seriously, is this worth arguing over?

[Stopwatch]

Or, or!

We could all write it however we want, and everyone else can either deal with it or get over it!


Seriously, is this worth arguing over?

I'm kinda agreeing with Commi here. People can use whatever English they want to if they want, though explanations would be helpful in cases where you *know* it's different in other places, even if it's just something like "Meh, I wish more girls were allowed to play football (soccer for the Americans ) D:" or "So, I wrote down 04-01-12 (4th Jan, 2012) as my DoB 'cause I wasn't really paying much attention ". If you say they should conform on this, then what if someone argues that AE (American, not Australian ) is the most common internationally and that means that everyone should type in it? Yeah, I agree that YY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YY are much more logical, but like I said earlier a lot of stuff in English isn't particularly logical .

[mangaluva]

Me and my mates are going for Christmas dinner on the 21st... we'll need to go to someone's place after dinner and drink to celebrate the world not ending.

Although if it does, there are worse places to die than drinking with your best mates.

[Callid]

Or, or!

We could all write it however we want, and everyone else can either deal with it or get over it!


Seriously, is this worth arguing over?

3. If you don't care about being understood or taken serious, write however you want.

I'm kinda agreeing with Commi here. People can use whatever English they want to if they want, though explanations would be helpful in cases where you *know* it's different in other places, even if it's just something like "Meh, I wish more girls were allowed to play football (soccer for the Americans ) D:" or "So, I wrote down 04-01-12 (4th Jan, 2012) as my DoB 'cause I wasn't really paying much attention ".

That was exactly what I suggested; I even suggested a short version for it - if you mean MDY, use "/" as a separator, else use "-" for either DMY or YMD and "." for only DMY.

If you say they should conform on this, then what if someone argues that AE (American, not Australian ) is the most common internationally and that means that everyone should type in it? Yeah, I agree that YY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YY are much more logical, but like I said earlier a lot of stuff in English isn't particularly logical .

American is more common? I'd doubt that, considering pretty much the entire EU uses British English (in fact, if we wrote AE in school, it'd get marked and counted as a mistake). If there is a standard of English, it's probably the British one (more precisely, RP), not one of the American dialects, even though they are more common.

[Vylash]

this is the greatest conversation i've ever seen

[mangaluva]

American English is more common in media due to the high volume of TV and movies coming out of the US, but British English tends to be what's taught to students studying the language-- I recall the Americans on one Teaching English course that I was on being told that if they taught students to spell "colour" without a "u" they would be flayed alive by the company... Also, it would be more common in the EU, being as Britain is part of the EU and the US isn't

[Kleene Onigiri]

FTR I think Kleene was just kidding and probably did not mean to start off the debate.

Also it's all a matter of habit for everyone. Americans are used to their way of writing and so is everyone else. For me, I just go with the saying when in Rome, do as Romans do. I got used to reading the dates in Mandarin on FF.net because they use the American way of dating things and it was the only way I could properly figure out when something was last updated. Since this is a mostly American based forum (I daresay most of the moderators and staff are from USA), I would expect it to conform to more American standards and I'm okay with that.

Yeah, it's a bit hard on the forum nowadays. You make a harmless, obvious joke and suddenly, BAM, WWIII an argument breaks out.

American English is more common in media due to the high volume of TV and movies coming out of the US, but British English tends to be what's taught to students studying the language-- I recall the Americans on one Teaching English course that I was on being told that if they taught students to spell "colour" without a "u" they would be flayed alive by the company... Also, it would be more common in the EU, being as Britain is part of the EU and the US isn't

That's true.
Luckily, English teachers are usually satisfied when you keep to one format when you write an essay etc.
But the problem when you are a fresh English learner is, that you don't really know if some word is American English or British English D: Since you learn British English in school, but see/hear American English in movies/on the internet etc.
Sometimes there are strict teacher that just allow British English :/

[Akonyl]

I tried to find a gif to properly express my feelings for me

I decided to settle for this one

[mangaluva]

FTR I think Kleene was just kidding and probably did not mean to start off the debate.

Also it's all a matter of habit for everyone. Americans are used to their way of writing and so is everyone else. For me, I just go with the saying when in Rome, do as Romans do. I got used to reading the dates in Mandarin on FF.net because they use the American way of dating things and it was the only way I could properly figure out when something was last updated. Since this is a mostly American based forum (I daresay most of the moderators and staff are from USA), I would expect it to conform to more American standards and I'm okay with that.

Yeah, it's a bit hard on the forum nowadays. You make a harmless, obvious joke and suddenly, BAM, WWIII an argument breaks out.

American English is more common in media due to the high volume of TV and movies coming out of the US, but British English tends to be what's taught to students studying the language-- I recall the Americans on one Teaching English course that I was on being told that if they taught students to spell "colour" without a "u" they would be flayed alive by the company... Also, it would be more common in the EU, being as Britain is part of the EU and the US isn't

That's true.
Luckily, English teachers are usually satisfied when you keep to one format when you write an essay etc.
But the problem when you are a fresh English learner is, that you don't really know if some word is American English or British English D: Since you learn British English in school, but see/hear American English in movies/on the internet etc.
Sometimes there are strict teacher that just allow British English :/

It's a little funny, really, considering how British English is a lot more variable than American English, in terms of accents and dialects. I mean, there's RP, but nobody every speaks RP except on the BBC.

I did teach some slang lessons with my monks, predominantly based around words and phrases that they'd picked up in movies and wanted to know about. "Oh, we hear Will Smith say that in movie, now we understand!"