Proposals for change: date formats

Standard
1

Hi all

We have three proposals for changes to the Standard and the schema relating to the three different kinds of dates that the 360 Giving Data Standard supports:

  1. An explicit date-time format for ‘Last Modified’
  2. Explicit date or date-time formats for known date fields
  3. Explicite date or date-time formats for uncertain dates

You can also see these issues here https://github.com/ThreeSixtyGiving/standard/projects/5

Each of these have specific proposals, but they each relate to how dates are to be formatted in published data, impacting on the schema and documentation. It will also require some changes to the data validation tool to warn users of incorrectly-formatted dates.

For the most part, they provide clarity for publishers about acceptable formats, and assurances for users that dates/date-times will be consistent across published datasets.

They also provide consistency between the guidance in the documentation, and what the schema allows. We think that impacts on publishers should be limited, as most are already publishing to the proposed formats. It also provides some reassurance that for uncertain dates, it is fine to use a year or a year-month, rather than having a specific date.

2

There’s a version for Standard documentation which covers all of these changes here: http://standard.threesixtygiving.org/en/date-validation

Note in particular the new section which gives guidance on using dates and how to apply in the various cases http://standard.threesixtygiving.org/en/date-validation/reference/#field-guidance

3

Really like the tips for using excel included in the field guidance.