Use full dates; don’t make me guess

I was looking for pictures of Bangkok’s newest Suvarnabhumi Airport. Naturally the airport’s website was a good start.

The homepage is severely out of date. Though it took a moment to confirm this given the lack of years in the copy.

The language use indicates that the airport has just opened. But the first date a reader encounters is March 25th 2007, which is related to a completely different airport. All of the remain dates on the page either do not have the year (therefore the reader initially reads the current year which is 2008), or were marked 2006. The reader thus guesses that the airport must have opened sometime around September 2006.

The reader should not have to guess. Websites belonging to such a large international institution should not be 2 years out of date. Can we trust any of the other information on the site?

This copy was probably written for a media release - which would have a short lifespan and thus not showing the year did not matter as much. On the web, documents may be available for years, whether intentionally or otherwise as sites like Google and indeed this one continue to link to it.

It is not that hard to always include the year with all dates on websites. It provides valuable context!

3 comments on “Use full dates; don’t make me guess”

1. Kris Rao said:
   

   Interesting. Hmmmm…. They have google AdWords on the web page.

   
   8 January 2008 at 10:30 pm
2. 'Pong said:
   

   I was intrigued with the AdWords comment so I checked it out. Apparently, it is not the official web page.
   http://www2.airportthai.co.th/airportnew/sun/index.asp

   
   25 January 2008 at 2:34 pm
3. Zern said:
   

   How interesting… It does/did come across like the official page.

   
   25 January 2008 at 8:41 pm

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