@Dannii right now:
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I think either it’s back to its old ways, or there are further site settings to adjust. The date on the small scrollable timeline does have the full year, but dates beside individual posts are still confusing.
I came back to this topic after reading an old topic which was described as Nov 18 and I had to click to check whether this was 18 Nov 2022 (it was) or Nov 2018 (it wasn’t: I think that would have been Nov '18).
I think the difference @Warrigal noted above is relevant here. For Americans, Nov 18 probably looks instinctively like “Nov the 18th” but for the rest of us we think instinctively that it must be “Nov 2018”.
The screenshot below shows Dec 4 which probably is not the best example for me to use, as it’s not confusing…
I was happy to change to 4 digit years because the difference between Nov 18 and Nov '18 is very slight. But I don’t think any further changes are needed, it’s probably only a few years where that would be confusing.
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I’ve just checked – If it had been November 2018 it would have said Nov 2018 – which is part of the changes you made. I hadn’t realised it had changed for replies too. Knowing that reduces the confusion (on any date that could be a year, so 10th to 23rd inclusive of every month).
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If I could make one more change, it would be to have the full year on every post. I keep getting brought up short by a date like Feb 26 and going “Was that yesterday? Oh wait, no, it was a whole year ago…”
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If the post says it’s “1h” old, you can click that to see the date.
If it doesn’t show a year, it means this year. It should append the year when it is different than the current year.
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What it seems to do is append the year when the post is more than a year old, whether or not it’s from the current calendar year. That’s where the confusion comes in.
Here’s a link to a 364-day-old post: Z8 Memory Overflow - #6 by Zed
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Right, within the last 12 months. I do find this a little confusing sometimes. I think it would be better if that was only 6 months or so, but I can’t see a setting for that. I’ll investigate.
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I have an ongoing project to create a mechanical clock capable of varying how many revolutions of the minute hand will cause the hour hand to make one revolution. A practical use of this is to do 24 hours in one revolution of the hour hand instead of two. It could also do metric time with some escapement adjustment. Suppose you want a clock that can display thirteen-o-clock? It can do that too!
Yeah, it can be done trivially with a microcontroller and some sort of digital display, but this is a lot more fun.
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So, you’re building some form of speedometer (kind of) coupled with some gearing. Why would you need a digital display? Just connect some servo on that micro controller, right?
One time, I designed a decoration that is hung up on string that moves up and down according to time, but I decided not to pursue that. It’s cool that you’re pursuing something similar. Please post pics once finished.
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No. This is strictly mechanical. Just how to accomplish this is still up in the air. So far it’s some form of traditional manual car transmission or a continuously variable transmission (CVT).
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2 different sized wheels connected with a rubber belt should make a serviceable CVT. Now, I’m really interested in your project! 
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It’s definitely possible to treat the beginning of the calendar year as what changes the date format. Here it is on the Discourse Meta forum:
They also use the less confusing (worldwide) and more consistent day, month, year order 
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I’m an American, and I’m in favor of day/month order! Well, at least if we won’t use the sane option: ISO 8601.
Edit: or maybe we could just jump straight to Unix time? Hey everyone, happy 1677433481! (Or thereabouts)
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We’re mostly using the default settings (aside from changing '22 to 2022 as was originally requested.) Odd that the Discourse Meta isn’t using the defaults…
We could easily change to 22 Dec if that would help. Then it would be clear - either 22 Dec, or Dec 2022.
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Maybe it’s not a setting at all, and will just change when the forum software is upgraded. (I mean the 12 months vs calendar year discrepancy.)
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No, these are settings. Maybe they decided they don’t like the default settings, but figured changing the defaults wouldn’t be appropriate when other forums are already using them? Or they could’ve changed the defaults for new forums, but not older ones like ours.
In any case, I’ve changed it to D MMM.
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Thank you, @Dannii . I know these sort of things can seem pedantic, but they really are appreciated.
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I’ll post somewhere else when I get farther on this. Now I’m getting far off topic.
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I added a bit in brackets to clarify that the thing which maybe isn’t a setting is the discrepancy between calendar year vs 12 months. Though if you find a setting, that would be good 
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