On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 1:32 PM, K. Peachey p858snake@yahoo.com.au wrote:
What is frustrating is the demands from some chauvinists that American dates be used in non-American articles. France uses International format dates (14 July 1789),
But were not all american so they shouldn't be used, there should be a global accessibable standard.
The only real standard for dates is the ISO one: 2008-12-25.
Some countries, notably Asian ones where written text is in characters not suited to an English language wiki, use year-month-day. But we aren't going to use that standard, because it looks odd in English text. Sigmund Jones married Mary Smith on 2008-12-25. Their son, Solaris, was born a week later on 2009-01-01.
It's easy enough to find out what format a country or a region or a culture uses - just go to the preferences screen for your computer and select the appropriate area to see an example. Surprise, surprise, surprise. Very few countries use the American month-day-year format.
So. Are we an international project, paying appropriate attention to internationalising our product, or are we a battleground of cultural imperialism?
My preference is to use U.S. formats, measurements, currency for U.S. articles, and take it from there: use the forms appropriate to the subject. If there's no obvious default, then leave it alone, following the BC/BCE wars that spawned the Arbcoms's Jguk decision.