In the past, 03/02/2001 has meant either March 2nd in the US, or 3rd February in Europe. In an online situation there is too much room for confusion. The International Standard is to write 2001-02-03 so that it cannot be confused with either one [ISO 8601], reflected in National Standards such as [ US: ANSI X3.30-1985(R1991), NIST FIPS 4-1 and 4-2 = CA: CSA Z234.5:1989 = EU: EN 28601:1991 = UK: BS EN 28601:1992 = PL: PN-90/N-01204 = JA: JIS X 0301-1992 = TH: TIS 1111-2535 = CN: GB/T 7408-94 = TW: CNS 7648 = KR: KS A 5401-1972, KS C 5610-1992 = IN: IS 7900:1976 = AU: AS 3802:1997 = ZA: ARP 010:1989 ] and now in the Internet Standard [RFC 3339].
Resource Zone uses YY/MM/DD which retains the US style MM/DD ordering, whilst moving the Year to the front, as per the International style. I personally wish RZ used a 4-digit year for clarity. The Y-M-D format makes for logical Left-to-Right reading; meaning when you are looking at posting dates the Day number and the Hour are in adjacent columns. Usage of the month in words or as an abbreviation would mean extra work as the month would have to be translated in each foreign language board here. Additionally, since RZ is driven by SQL, this date format represents the minimum translation required, as SQL often uses the ISO 8601 based YYYY-MM-DD date format internally.
Is RZ likely to give users the option for the 24-hour format time? That's also in the International Standard. I haven't ever used AM and PM before, and I find it confusing that 11 am is followed by 12 pm then 1 pm.
The thread stretch problem is easily solved if posters take the time to edit their post after submitting it. When you edit your post you will see stuff like: [ url=resource-zone.com/ ] http: //resource-zone.com/ [ /url ] but without any spaces in it.
If you modify this to say something like [ url = resource-zone.com/ ] Resource Zone [ /url ] making sure there are no spaces in the source code, then you will change a link from this style:
http://resource-zone.com/ to this
Resource Zone . In the latter case it does not matter how long the actual URL really is as it is hidden behind the clickable word.