Suggestion Implement Date and Time Format Choices

[tsukasa]

As most countries around the world use the 24-hour time format, it would be beneficial for most non-US users to be able to have time formatted in 24-hour time format. This could be implemented as a simple toggle between 24-hour and 12-hour within the account preferences webpage. Seeing 12-hour time on this website since XenForo doesn't seem to respect web browser or operating system time formatting is a major pain point and causes lack of consistency.

Date format choice would also complement the time format choice; DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY, and YYYY-MM-DD options would be sufficient for most countries on the planet.

 

[cyx.]

i’m not sure how easy or hard it would be to change the format within the coding to include a 24 hour clock, but it seems like a lot of work around when the time and date format works just fine.

reading AM or PM is easy enough, and the date is something you get used to even outside of the US. i’m canadian and i grasped the concept of MM/DD/YY easily.

in my opinion, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

 

[tsukasa]

reading AM or PM is easy enough, and the date is something you get used to even outside of the US. i’m canadian and i grasped the concept of MM/DD/YY easily.

That's not the point. ISO 8601 is the international basis for pretty much every country, and most computer systems use it as it's the only way to chronologically order dates and times based on the Arabic numeral system. People outside of US shouldn't be forced to use date and time systems not in their locale, regardless.

It's shouldn't difficult to implement this, and XenForo should respect it by default. If there is one thing I've learned over years of programming, it's you never force something to override the operating system or web browser; that's left to user preference and locale, so it's consistent and uniform. If US citizens don't know how 24-hour time works, they can't expect other people to know how 12-hour time works, or use it even if they do understand it.

One of the main reasons I'm requesting this is the fact there are 2 of each number in the 12-hour time system, which makes it dangerous every time I go to bump my threads (an issue which doesn't occur with the 24-hour time system) and I'm tired of my system clock not matching what the website should be respecting. This is not a BMR issue, since it happens on every other XenForo website, too, but it should be dealt with out of respect for international users.

It is broken, so it should be fixed.

 

[cyx.]

it’s not broken; it’s not a website issue if you can’t keep track of a 23 hour period in my opinion.

secondly, as someone who’s not a US citizen, i’ve never had issues logging things with the system in place and i’ve never heard a complaint about it before now. it’s not that huge of a deal to simply look at the following AM/PM behind a time stamp’s numbers.

at the end of the day it isn’t my call, i just don’t see a need to make more work when the programming in place has been fine for over 10 years.

 

[Revelations]

Simply put I believe if this is going to be added/changed there are a number of other issues that will be addressed first.

 

[MidnightWanderer]

I vote we give tsukasa a clock that’s always five minutes behind.

 

[Fentanyl]

I'm almost certain that it's possible as is, but it's a Xenforo global setting and you can't add a user preference for it without either making a specific code for it or paying a third party client to develop the code for it - if possible at all. Because it's a US based website/server, I think it's reasonable to understand that by default it will be a 12 hour format.

It's not broken just because you said it is, the information is the exact same. 9:13PM is 2113 is 0213 GMT.

Good morning
Guten morgen
Buenos dias

All three of those sentences have the same information in a different format, none of them are broken, and they are customary in their home regions.

If it's possible, it would be a cool QOL improvement. I've used a 24-hour clock my entire adult career, my PC is in a 24-hour format and so is my cell phone. I agree that it's more natural and easier but knowing the difference between AM/PM is a such a drastically easier concept than coding a user preference time format. In a perfect world, I think you'd have a leg to stand on, but we're limited by Xenforo itself and what coding ability we have available needs to be dedicated to far more pressing matters.

 

[Staine]

If US citizens don't know how 24-hour time works, they can't expect other people to know how 12-hour time works, or use it even if they do understand it.

This seems like pure sophistry to me if I'm being honest. It sounds like it's correct in theory but the fact is that even in countries that use the 24 hour format, we understand when 7pm and 8pm for example are perfectly fine, in fact I can't think of a single person I know that says "nineteen hundred hours" or "twenty hundred/two zero hundred hours" to refer to these times. We use the 24 hour clock in the UK but everybody I know says the time as 7 or 8 in those cases, myself included.

America doesn't use the 24 hour format and it's inherently harder to understand for them at first glance than it is for us to understand the 12 hour format because we still say it all the time. It's certainly not broken in any way since it is perfectly understandable and not once have I gotten times mixed up and bumped early because of a difference in clock format. I'm surprised to hear it's an issue for anybody and would love to hear from a few more with the same issue to know it's not just a personal thing. My only advice would be to use caution when bumping, it's a lot more forgiving than it used to be anyway with the 23 instead of 24 hour bump rule and should be pretty simple to track your own. If you're confusing yourself into bumping 12 hours earlier than you should, well that's wild to me.

 

[Dr Bellwright]

Although the ISO standard is valuable, its application is limited to industrial and professional domains.

We use the 24 hour clock in the UK but everybody I know says the time as 7 or 8 in those cases, myself included.

Indeed. I feel like the 24-hour format is used in the UK only in certain contexts. I only see it when I review documents or in airports; otherwise, it's AM/PM. In fact, I don't remember a single country that uses the 24-hour clock exclusively. 99.9% of watch faces are still 12-hour.

 

[Sync]

I tend to use 24hr format when writing because I've previously done contract work for both the military and emergency services - they use it as a matter of professional clarity, and the habit stuck with me.

In everyday use, I use 12hr format.

I can tell the difference between them.

 

[Violet or Vi]

This thread has a heavy "Tell me you live in an English speaking country without telling me you live in an English speaking country." vibe.

 

[reverie.]

i live in a country where we use 24h clock exclusively and yet i have never had any issues telling am and pm apart or using a 12h clock.

12 am > midnight
1 am - 11 am > after midnight, before noon
12 pm > noon
1 pm - 11 pm > after noon, before midnight

the date format can be a bit confusing, but not rly once you know it’s the opposite of what you normally use.

 

[Origami]

i live in a country where we use 24h clock exclusively and yet i have never had any issues telling am and pm apart or using a 12h clock.



the date format can be a bit confusing, but not rly once you know it’s the opposite of what you normally use.

Thank you rev, you just sorted my confusion about using pm/am at noon and midnight, since I’m also in an exclusive 24h clock country. At least one good thing came from this thread Appreciate the heck out of you!

 

[reverie.]

Thank you rev, you just sorted my confusion about using pm/am at noon and midnight, since I’m also in an exclusive 24h clock country. At least one good thing came from this thread Appreciate the heck out of you!

awhhh, you’re welcome!! took me some time to figure it out back in the day, but once you know, you know!

 

[Faceless King]

If you have a browser in your locale and you don't care much about the whole "Today at ..." thingy, you can run this in your console:

[...document.querySelectorAll('time')].forEach(timeEl => timeEl.innerText = new Date(timeEl.getAttribute('datetime')).toLocaleString())

Or add an userscript (via Tampermonkey, Violentmonkey or similar):

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Set local time
// @namespace   BMR
// @match       https://bluemoonroleplaying.com/community/*
// @grant       none
// @version     1.0
// @author      -
// @description Convert time from AM/PM to local
// @run-at      document-idle
// ==/UserScript==

[...document.querySelectorAll('time')].forEach(timeEl => timeEl.innerText = new Date(timeEl.getAttribute('datetime')).toLocaleString())

 

[zoarster]

That's not the point. ISO 8601 is the international basis for pretty much every country, and most computer systems use it as it's the only way to chronologically order dates and times based on the Arabic numeral system. People outside of US shouldn't be forced to use date and time systems not in their locale, regardless.

Wait... quoting ISO standards to try to dictate the way a free roleplaying website is run? That's certainly one way to blow what would have been (if made politely rather than demanded) a reasonable QOL request way out of proportion. ISO and NIST have a lot of standards, and it's more than a little presumptuous to use ISO standards as a cudgel to prove you're right and try to bully a volunteer staff to cater to your personal preferences.

Perhaps you'll next demand an independent SOC2 audit next, in accordance with ISO data security standards? Not every site needs to be perfectly aligned to industrial standards, particularly not recreational and hobbyist sites like this one.

tl;dr -- make this a request for your personal convenience if you'd like, but don't go throwing around standards to support a tantrum because management doesn't agree with your perspective.