{"action":"opened","issue":{"url":"https://api.github.com/repos/voat/voat/issues/687","labels_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/voat/voat/issues/687/labels{/name}","comments_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/voat/voat/issues/687/comments","events_url":"https://api.github.com/repos/voat/voat/issues/687/events","html_url":"https://github.com/voat/voat/issues/687","id":97461175,"number":687,"title":"Improve datetime display for humans and machines","user":{"login":"jksg","id":4161981,"avatar_url":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/4161981?v=3","gravatar_id":"","url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg","html_url":"https://github.com/jksg","followers_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/followers","following_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/following{/other_user}","gists_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/gists{/gist_id}","starred_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/starred{/owner}{/repo}","subscriptions_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/subscriptions","organizations_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/orgs","repos_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/repos","events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/events{/privacy}","received_events_url":"https://api.github.com/users/jksg/received_events","type":"User","site_admin":false},"labels":[],"state":"open","locked":false,"assignee":null,"milestone":null,"comments":0,"created_at":"2015-07-27T13:20:02Z","updated_at":"2015-07-27T13:20:02Z","closed_at":null,"body":"It seems all datetimes are currently formatted using the user’s browser’s language. This should only be the case for dates meant for humans, while machine-readable dates should be standardised.\r\n\r\n**Current example:**\r\n\r\n~~~ html\r\n<time title=\"27/07/2015 11:16:51\" datetime=\"27/07/2015 11:16:51\">27/07/2015 11:16:51</time>\r\n~~~\r\n\r\n- all datetimes are in server local time (Swiss);\r\n- no timezone information;\r\n- all datetimes formatted for my browser locale (en-GB).\r\n\r\n**Suggested changes:**\r\n\r\n~~~ html\r\n<time title=\"27/07/2015 15:16:51+06:00\" datetime=\"2015-07-27 09:16:51Z\">27/07/2015 15:16:51+06:00</time>\r\n~~~\r\n\r\n- use the user’s timezone (+06 in the above example);\r\n- include timezone for all times (or show it only for long formats, hiding it for short formats and assume the user knows it is local time);\r\n- HTML `datetime` attribute and any other machine-readable datetimes should conform to ISO 8601 by way of [RFC 3339](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339#section-5.6);\r\n- use UTC for machine-readable datetimes for ease of automation, and avoiding ambiguity with situations like DST changes.\r\n\r\nHTML text and other human-readable datetimes can continue to be formatted per browser locale since some users like that, although personally I prefer to read ISO 8601 dates.\r\n\r\n**Possible further enhancements:**\r\n\r\n- allow users to set custom date format string\r\n\r\n---\r\n\r\nBased on [this /v/ideasforvoat post](https://voat.co/v/ideasforvoat/comments/347639)."}}