When I search for something I would expect the search results to show the newest to oldest but that is not what is happening and wtih the poor date format it is hard to tell what even is the return listing order.
Can you
Thanks
@Joe, what do you think about it? There’s an option called “Search default sort order” that we could change to show the newest topics at the top. It makes sense most of the time since we basically moderate each post.
Which two different things?
August 2020
20th of August
I don’t understand what you’re confused about here!?
in the search results that are in no apparent order when you see aug 20 you cannot work out if it was a recent (2025-08-20) post or one from years back (2020-08) so you have to waste time opening the result to find out.
Also with how the Americans do dates that adds another spanner in the works.
I disagree on this one. Discourse handles it perfectly with relative dates—it clearly shows either “Aug 2020” or “Aug 20”, so there’s no way to confuse them.
Plus, if you hover over the date for a moment, the full date and time appear anyway.
clearly shows either “Aug 2020” or “Aug 20”,
Plus, if you hover over the date for a moment, the full date and time appear anyway.
who is going to do that 
, if i hover here in one of the ten results for a moment or 2 it will show me the date if this feature exists and is enabled.
It’s easy once you understood.
Aug 20 means 20th of August. Is used for all posts and replies within the current year.
Aug 2020 means August 2020. Is used for all posts and replies from the previous years.
thats the point, unless you know the rules they can be the same.
Use full date format of 2025-08-13 just fixes everything and is compatible with American and UK date formats, and other countries.
Aug 20 is shorthand for Aug 2020 in the UK.
In the UK we using the following format where there is a logical pattern of time increments day/month/year, so the item to the right is always larger.
So I cannot tell if it is the shorthand version of the date is being used, or the American date version is being used.
Are different date formats for the different regions being used?
Yeah, I think defaulting to newest first is sensible. I think that’s usually what I want when I’m searching…in a forum that has posts dating back 20 years, there’s a lot of irrelevant/wrong old stuff here, and it’s easy to end up with out-of-date advice. Virtualmin evolves slowly and cautiously, but not that slowly.
Great! I fixed that! It’s much better now!
There’s just no option for this to begin with. To do what you’re asking, we would have to create a plugin—I’m sorry, but I’m not doing it.
It doesn’t worth it. And, I agree with Steini that once you understood how it works, you won’t mix it up.
Now the dates are in descending order on the search there is context and they are a lot more usable eg:
Still I prefer YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sTZD as this is logically perfect. 
but obviously I am happy with the fix and I am not asking for this format to be used.
thanks
I find the date repesentation inconsistency kind of annoying, actually. But, I also agree we shouldn’t write code to try to solve it. Sometimes we just have to trust the Discourse devs thought things through, did some research, and landed on a good compromise.
What exactly is inconsistent though? Aug 2025 can’t really be mistaken for Aug 25. Sure, at first glance Aug 25 might look like August 2025, but once you hover over it and see the full date, or see Aug 2025 elsewhere, it becomes completely clear which one it is.
It’s indeed logically perfect for listing files, yes! I’m just not so sure it works as well for the forum UI.
We don’t all live in America. We concatenate Aug 2025 to Aug 25 and both referer to August in the year 2025. Aug 25 format is used everywhere.
Our dating system allows for it so this is used everywhere in the UK.
Aug 25th is how we write 25’th day of August, we add the th on the end. or 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th,… to signify it is a day.
Geez, just go with the flow… You know now how it works and the search results were updated to show the latest on top, all good now.
I think you missed part of the thread. I said I was happy with the change and that it made sense now because of context.
I was having a discussion about the date format because I think that @Ilia does like to hear how things look from around the world, and we Brits did invent time 
If we always go with the flow, opportunitys for improvement are missed and makes feedback on a forum pointless.
My contributions are always positive and I leave the final decisions to the developers as it is their project. It is nice that they listen, irrelevant of the outcome.
I hear you. Just wondering what this thread could become if other nationalities chime in as well demanding their local format of date and time.
