Consistency and the Order of Time

Perfectly brilliant. In the creation process of this blog, there are already shown reasons of why this blog was to be born.

It all begins with consistency.

Case in point...

Here are the choices for formatting dates of the "Date Header Format":

Notice first of all that all of the selections are a bit scattered. By this I mean that there is a lack of order.

Second, get rid of the duplicate entries: "Saturday, June 14, 2008" (third and fifth items from top) and "June 14, 2008" (second and fourteenth items from top). Leaving 14 of 16 original items.

Third criticism is to avoid non-referential dating formats. Those being the plain "Saturday" and "Saturday, June 14". For the latter, how many times have you looked for an article on the Internet to find the date "Monday," or "November 11," or "Thursday March 3"? What year is that article supposed to be? As for just placing the day, as in "Wednesday"...day number? month? year? Leaving 12 of 16 original items. So, with that, these will be omitted from the following re-ordering of the list selection of date formats.

After elimination of the duplicates and non-referential dates, the original list results in 12 items:
Jun 14, 2008
June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
6/14/08
6/14/2008
6.14.2008
20080614
2008/06/14
2008-06-14
14.6.08
14 June 2008
14 June, 2008

Now on to the beginning of making orderly sense of selecting an item from the list of different date formats.

One means of creating order would be from short (top) to long (bottom):
6/14/08
14.6.08
6/14/2008
6.14.2008
20080614
2008/06/14
2008-06-14
Jun 14, 2008
June 14, 2008
14 June 2008
14 June, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008

Another would be from a common usage order, which is partially followed by the example shown. Here is my interpretation from common (within the United States of America) to more unconventional (more international):
Jun 14, 2008
June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
6/14/08
6/14/2008
6.14.2008
20080614
2008/06/14
2008-06-14
14.6.08
14 June 2008
14 June, 2008

Notice that the above list is what Blogger represents the closest, with slight exception on 1st item.

But, then some people may become confused by date formatting uncommon to them, as presented above. So, here is an attempt at keeping all the different dating formats together:
Jun 14, 2008
June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
6/14/08
6/14/2008
6.14.2008
20080614
2008/06/14
2008-06-14
14.6.08
14 June 2008
14 June, 2008

Another useful element to add is a separator in the pull-down menu making an quicker selection, along with descriptions of groupings in [square brackets]:
Jun 14, 2008 [month day year with words]
June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
— [Disputable whether this would be included or not. For the example of clarity, included.]
6/14/08 [month day year with only numbers]
6/14/2008
6.14.2008
—
20080614 [year month day]
2008/06/14
2008-06-14
—
14.6.08 [day month year]
14 June 2008
14 June, 2008

Well, to make matters even more confusing Blogger has this more extensive list for its "Comments Timestamp Format":

Saturday, June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM PDT
June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM PDT
June 14, 2008 6:10 PM
June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM
6:10:37 PM
6:10 PM
6/14/08 6:10 PM
6/14/2008 6:10 PM
6/14/2008 6:10:37 PM
6/14/2008
6:10 PM
6:10 PM PDT
6:10 PM, June 14, 2008
6:10:37 PM
18:10
June 14, 2008
June 14, 2008 6:10 PM
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM PDT
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM 2008
14.06.08
14/6/08
14/6/08 18:10
14/6/08 6:10 PM
Saturday, 14 June, 2008
14 June, 2008 18:10
14 June, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008

Again, there are duplicates, reducing the original count of 30 down to 26:
Saturday, June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM PDT
June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM PDT
June 14, 2008 6:10 PM
June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM
6:10:37 PM
6:10 PM
6/14/08 6:10 PM
6/14/2008 6:10 PM
6/14/2008 6:10:37 PM
6/14/2008
6:10 PM PDT
6:10 PM, June 14, 2008
18:10
June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM PDT
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM 2008
14.06.08
14/6/08
14/6/08 18:10
14/6/08 6:10 PM
Saturday, 14 June, 2008
14 June, 2008 18:10
14 June, 2008

Thing is with duplicates. It is generally termed as messy or sloppy programming, it also slows the server down since it has to process more information and then send it out over the Internet to your browser.

A note about servers: the more it has to process, the longer it will take for the next batch of information processed. When this is, say, a million (1,000,000) times repeated even 1 millisecond (.001 second) results (1,000,000 * .001) in 1,000 seconds (or 16.66 minutes). Thus, saving processing time is invaluable.

What tends to be disturbing is that there are items on both lists ("Date Header Format" and "Comments Timestamp Format") that are not contained in the other. Consistency.

Before lengthening this blog post, a mention of why I prefer this date format:
2008-06-14 18:10
2008-06-14 Saturday 18:10
2008-06-14 18:10:37
2008-06-14 Saturday 18:10:37
It just makes sense, pure and simple. Begin (from left-to-right) with the item that encapsulates all the other details. You can describe seconds in a year (seconds * minutes * hours * days * months), but not years in a second unless you want to describe a really long fraction that probably only mathematicians will appreciate. Another way to describe the order: year has months and in turn days within hours encompassing minutes and finally seconds. Here's the numerical format description:
year-month-day (day) hour:minute:second

Another benefit to this particular formatting, is that it can be easily sorted (by a computer). It is also consistent by always using 2 numerical digits for the month and hour. The other thing that most people from the U.S.A. will complain about is the use of 24 hours in the hour. Really, what time is it when you say, "It's 9"? Is it 9am, or 9pm? Or without explanation: It is 21:00. You can tell the day is near end since it is approaching 24:00/00:00, as in 24 hours in a day.

Personally, most of the other formats are just confusing.

Finally, combining the "Date Header Format" and "Comments Timestamp Format" duplicate trimmed lists, non-referential dating formats, and adding the newly mentioned formats produces our comprehensive list:
6:10 PM, June 14, 2008 [time month day year]
—
6/14/08 [month day year with only numbers time]
6/14/08 6:10 PM
6/14/2008
6/14/2008 6:10 PM
6/14/2008 6:10:37 PM
6.14.2008
—
June 14, 2008 [month day year with words time]
June 14, 2008 6:10 PM
June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM
June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM PDT
—
Saturday, June 14, 2008 [day month day year with words time]
Saturday, June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM
Saturday, June 14, 2008 6:10:37 PM PDT
—
14/6/08 [day month year with only numbers time]
14/6/08 18:10
14/6/08 6:10 PM
14.06.08
—
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM [day month day with abbreviated words time]
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM PDT
Sat Jun 14, 06:10:37 PM 2008
—
14 June 2008 [(day) day month year with words]
14 June, 2008
14 June, 2008 18:10
Saturday, 14 June, 2008
—
20080614 [year month day (day) time]
2008/06/14
2008-06-14
2008-06-14 18:10
2008-06-14 Saturday 18:10
2008-06-14 18:10:37
2008-06-14 Saturday 18:10:37