# Date in digest emails are not localised
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646
**Category:** Feature
**Tags:** activity-summary
**Created:** [2015年三月23日 01:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646 "2015-03-23T01:38:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@huon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/huon)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 01:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/1 "2015-03-23T01:38:08Z")
The dates are formatted MM-DD-YYYY (e.g. the most recent digest for this instance had subject `[Discourse Meta] Digest for 03-21-2015`), which isn’t correct everywhere. I guess it may be particularly jarring on a non-English-language instance where there’s little connection to the US and its date format.
One solution would be [https://meta.discourse.org/t/remove-the-date-bit-from-the-digest-emails-subject-line/22410](https://meta.discourse.org/t/remove-the-date-bit-from-the-digest-emails-subject-line/22410) .
(I personally think this is fairly minor (even as someone from outside the US), but others may find it more annoying.)
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### Author:  [@Mittineague](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Mittineague)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 02:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/2 "2015-03-23T02:32:43Z")
My being in the US I am used to seeing mm-dd-yyyy
But because I’m familiar with code, I actually prefer yyyy-mm-dd
Using that format on a dev forum has not caused any misunderstanding that I know of, but that is likely due to it being a dev forum more than it’s being easily recognizable.
In any case, might it be better to have the format come from a translation file (if possible) instead of removing it entirely?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 02:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/3 "2015-03-23T02:45:54Z")
This particular issue is really impossible to solve without introducing a concept of “user locale”, cause dates should always look diff in the US vs Australia and Rust forums may have users in both spots.
Its kind of edge casey but I sort of support removing the postfix from that email.
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### Author:  [@huon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/huon)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 04:09 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/4 "2015-03-23T04:09:06Z")
To be clear, this isn’t particularly related to the Rust instances, just something I noticed incidentally (we haven’t had users complain or anything). 🙂
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### Author:  [@eviltrout](https://meta.discourse.org/u/eviltrout)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 15:11 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/5 "2015-03-23T15:11:20Z")
I know we’ve been against user locales up until this point, but allowing a user to choose their Time Zone and date format is a very reasonable request that I think should be done.
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### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 16:45 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/6 "2015-03-23T16:45:00Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> introducing a concept of “user locale”
… don’t we already have user locale?
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### Author:  [@eviltrout](https://meta.discourse.org/u/eviltrout)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 17:09 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/7 "2015-03-23T17:09:38Z")
Right but that’s only if user locales are enabled, which they aren’t by default. The party line is “don’t let your users change that, a forum is meant to be in one language”
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### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 17:26 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/8 "2015-03-23T17:26:04Z")
> [@Mittineague](#):
>
> But because I’m familiar with code, I actually prefer yyyy-mm-dd
One would hope that defaults would follow some kind of international standard, such as …
> **[ISO 8601 | Calendar dates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#Calendar_dates)**
>
> Calendar date representations are in the form shown in the adjacent box. \[YYYY\] indicates a four-digit year, 0000 through 9999. \[MM\] indicates a two-digit month of the year, 01 through 12. \[DD\] indicates a two-digit day of that month, 01 through 31. For example, "5 April 1981" may be represented as either "1981-04-05" in the extended format or "19810405" in the basic format.
> The standard also allows for calendar dates to be written with reduced precision. For example, one may write "1981-04" to ...
😄
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 20:55 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/9 "2015-03-23T20:55:22Z")
Further more we don’t allow users to specify “EN-US” or “EN-Canada” and so on if that setting is on.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 20:56 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/10 "2015-03-23T20:56:57Z")
@codinghorror let’s remove the postfix here, in Australia 2/6/2015 is the second of June, the dates here look ultra odd to me.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 21:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/11 "2015-03-23T21:54:52Z")
Probably fine to just make it yyyy-dd-mm for now, I think some form of the date has to be in the title otherwise all the mails group as
> [forum] digest for last week
since they’d have the same title. That is the other alternative..
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### Author:  [@Moter8](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Moter8)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 21:59 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/12 "2015-03-23T21:59:53Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Probably fine to just make it yyyy-dd-mm for now
I hope you meant `yyyy-mm-dd`, putting the days in the middle makes even less sense.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 22:11 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/13 "2015-03-23T22:11:15Z")
Yeah, whatever the correct format is.
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 22:37 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/14 "2015-03-23T22:37:28Z")
Another option is the much friendlier:
[My Community] Digest for June 12th
Twitter goes for:
“Sam Saffron, check out your week on Twitter”
* * *
`2015-03-25` feels very very computery to me.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2015年三月23日 23:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/15 "2015-03-23T23:24:48Z")
That also seems fine – your choice, make it so!
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### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [2015年三月24日 04:41 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/16 "2015-03-24T04:41:55Z")
Skirting the off-topic line … just a reminder that the word “digest” does not accurately describe what’s sent, especially for people coming from mailing lists who are used to list digests (which include **all** messages not just highlights). 🙂
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2015年三月24日 04:47 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/17 "2015-03-24T04:47:38Z")
Google says
> Digest
>
> 1. a compilation or summary of material or information.
> “a digest of their findings”
Seems correct to me.
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### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [2015年三月24日 04:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/18 "2015-03-24T04:49:38Z")
The [LISTSERV manual](http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/16.0/htmlhelp/list%20subscribers/WorkingwithMailingLists.html#2347696) says
> **Digest** – You receive a large message containing many individual posts bundled together into one, at regular intervals, usually once a day. Some very active lists will produce several digests a day. Receiving the digested version of a large active list will limit the number of messages you get during the day.
Seems what mailing list users will expect to me.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2015年四月1日 07:29 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/19 "2015-04-01T07:29:04Z")
This is one of those cases where I think the existence of the question implies deeper problems.
Omit Needless Words, right? So I am changing it to:
```
subject_template: "[%{site_name}] Digest"
```
Simpler, and no more date localization problem..
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2015年四月3日 07:29 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/date-in-digest-emails-are-not-localised/26646/20 "2015-04-03T07:29:43Z")
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