Global Confusion and Numbered Dates

Question

When one creates a citation to a web site, it's important to add the date accessed into the citation.  The reason?  Because web sites can disappear or change overnight.  So I do it.  That way you know I'm referring to the page as it was on a certain date -- which may be different than it is  today.  (After all, every time we press "save" on a WikiTree page, we're changing what people see on it.)

So I've just been reminded by a friend that despite my best efforts, my American habits have shown through.  "Accessed 1/6/2020."  Clear isn't it?  January 6th, 2020.  Or could it be 1st June, 2020?  I've been doing this for years and leaving a string of confusing dates all over WikiTree!  And worst of all, I initial it so people know who it was who linked to that source.

So now I'll try to change it to Jan 6 2020 or 6 Jan 2020 -- the style doesn't matter as long as the meaning is clear.

And here I thought I was so clever, knowing when to say "hood and trunk" and when to say "bonnet and boot".  And when a "tractor-trailer" was an "articulated lorry."  

Mea culpa.

Answer 1

Why don't you use the date format we have to use for the date fields? It is the least confusing version. And just your example is the best example why "only number dates" when you have only a month (like 01/2020 for Jan 2020) should not be allowed.

Answer 2

Coming from a coding background, i've always tried to be careful with dates. i'm dd/mmm/yyyy pretty consistently. I may make mistakes but i'm always trying for that format.

If in the future we are trying to extract information, using some sort of program, then a standard date format will be VERY helpful. As Jelena said, we should use the format already in place for the date fields, even when we are typing in the dates in text.

Comments

My routine date usage drives my fellow Americans sorta nuts.  In any written-out version, unless the medium forces otherwise, it's always [numeric date] [alpha month, either fully written or 3-letter abbreviation] [full numeric year]. I get kidded all the time about writing "6 Jan 2020" rather than "1/6/2020."

With non-displayed code and in document naming conventions, I always use year-month-day, as in either 2020-01-06 or the numeric-only version 20200106: largest element first, second largest second, smallest last, all in consistent positions in a field. Because that way computers, when alpha-sorting, always place the items in correct ascending chronological order, to the day. I appreciate that some companies like Family Tree DNA use the same convention, [KitNumber]_SNPs_20200106.csv.

Drives me nuts that things like the Apache web server software saves log files by the default something.com-Jan-2020...all the same months are grouped together in alphabetical order and you have to go hunting for the correct year.

Answer 3

You can enter the ~~~~ which will convert to date and your name?

Comments

I was just going to suggest the same and then remembered that the tilde code doesn't always work. Unfortunately, inside <ref> codes is one of those places.

Answer 4

Jack, it was WikiTree that converted me to ddmmyyyy. I use it in the text portions of profiles. (And now that is how I use it in dating stuff outside of WikiTree.) Seems to me since that is how the dates automatically convert here, that should be the format used elsewhere on profiles.