Resolved Date format (Userscript in OP)

See, if it's in the setting, it's not a design change. It's a customization option, where people will pick what they like better. Benefit all around. But let nu gods do what they want. I don't disagree with that policy as any change always bring a wave of unhappy people

 

I too struggle to find a way to make certain changes like this make sense for implementation. The struggle with this kind of setting dependant change is that only a minimum number of people will actually see the change, making the time spent implementing the setting control and the change to the date time format worth almost nothing. However anything more than a setting change will be far more work... It's truly a conundrum.

 

I don't think that the argument "only a few people will see it" holds any value. One - you actually don't know, unless you run a poll for every change. And even that people need to visit nuf to vote. Some people just read novels and are not on nuf, but are looking for these settings. Plus, even if you make some small percentage of your users happier... its a win imo.
As for the setting implementation - it depends on the setting itself. Something like a date format change is trivial and can be done in several ways. There are other things that seem simple, but actually monumentally difficult because they go against the original design of the page. Those are what should be thought of more before implementing them.

 

I suppose I don't have any data behind my statement, just the idea that people are generally lazy and won't fiddle through settings menus when it's optional. I suppose I'll run a test, and make a poll asking how many people use the dark mode of the sight, because they didn't know about it. Of course, any poll would only be checking those who have accounts, and are willing to click on the forums in the first place... Baised results are hard to avoid...

 

I am pretty sure I've seen a thread about using dark vs light theme. What I know from experience - people who actually care and want to change the theme will definitely browse through the settings and see if they can.
As about this current thread - you can tell that in this thread alone there are already several people who want the date in a different format. There is also at least one more thread about the same issue. And here is a food for thought: the date format used on NU is what is used in the US. In a large portion of the world, the date format is different - it's dd/mm/yyyy. I don't know how many people on NU are from different countries and how much they care, but even if they might not care much now, they still might go and change the date format if they find out they can.
And as far as "poking around trying to find the setting" - it's honestly been pissing me off for some time that the settings button is hidden god knows where (on the nu). Even when you go to your profile, it's not noticeable because it's out of the way. Make the settings easily accessible, darn it.

 

Any rebuttal @Tony?

 

IIRC, from like... last year or something, around 30% to 40% was US?

 

Then I would say implementing a setting for different date format is a must when the majority of the users are not using it

 

so, mm, I just went ahead and did it because I had nothing better to do... tested in Chrome, so any Chrome-based browsers should work. Didn't test in Firefox, but it should work too.
1) install Tampermonkey chrome plugin
2) Go to NU main page
3) Click on Tampermonkey icon and select "create a new script"
4) Paste this inside and save:

Code:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         ChangeNUDateFormat
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      0.1
// @description  Changes the date format in the NU release list to dd/mm/yyyy
// @author       sgrey
// @match        https://www.novelupdates.com/series/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

    /*
    * Change month: '2-digit' to month: 'numeric'
    * to remove mandatory 0 in front of 1-digit months
    */
    var options = {year: 'numeric', month: '2-digit', day: '2-digit' };
    var table = document.getElementById("myTable");

    for (var i = 1, row; row = table.rows[i]; i++) {
       var date = Date.parse(row.cells[0].innerHTML);
       row.cells[0].innerHTML = new Date(date).toLocaleDateString('en-GB', options);
    };
})();

Done, now dates in the series list should be in dd/mm/yyyy format
If it suddenly breaks, it's probably Tony's fault

 

Pretty sure the date in series has always been mm/dd/yyyy format... >.>

 

yes, the script swaps month and day, the description is wrong, but the script is correct. I will fix it

 

Thank you, my dude.

 

no problem although I got used to the backward date format, I still use this scrip too

 

Oh, good job then~