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Asking for a date of birth (2013)

designnotes.blog.gov.uk

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Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#91

Post by anitil »

rapind wrote: post #89
nishs wrote: post #27

I've seen some US government forms use [01] [Jan] [1970] where [01]: one- or two-digit day, typed manually [Jan]: three-letter month, picked from a dropdown [1970]: four-digit year, typed manually I think this is a good (the best?) presentation. By using a manual day entry instead of providing a dropdown, as the programmer you can avoid requiring client-side logic to restrict the number of days displayed in the dropd…

DOB should always be a typed input, all numeric. People know exactly what to enter (the number of their month), have done it before many times (DMV etc.), and will knock it out faster than some ridiculous drop down over complicating the process. For other dates though maybe, since most wouldn't have all month numbers memorized, but I’d still say typed, only with a variation on month name (you should be able to parse…

Or the dropdown that needlessly starts in 1900 or today's date so you have to scroll waaaaaay down to find a reasonable birth year

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#92

Post by jfoster »

vinaypai wrote: post #82
jfoster wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a small revenge I always use an absurdly old birth date on these forms. This way if they are collecting this data, my input will be discarded or pollute their datasets. Or the micro-frauds get detected, linked to your credit card & email address, your identity, and credit rating. Before you know it, your transactions are failing fraud checks, you can't get loans, and BigTechs unilaterally cancel your accounts. I…

Literally no part of this makes sense. You can fear anything you want, but this scenario only exists in your imagination.

You don't think online businesses will treat a customer who enters a different date of birth each time as less trustworthy?

You don't think BigTech ever cancel accounts being used by regular people?

You don't think companies ever share data with each other to make decisions about whether a transaction might be fraudulent?

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#93

Post by evanb »

BFay wrote: post #46
silveira wrote: post #42

What really bothers me is that most of time when the date of birth is asked it is done as a way to determine some age criteria. The same could be achieved simply asking "are you older than N years old? [Yes] or [No]". For example, I want to buy Quake on the Nintendo eShop. The website wants to know my age in order to show me a age restricted game. So it will always ask me the age same question even if I have already…

I also enter an absurdly old date, and usually I'll try setting an impossible day/month combo like February 31st... sometimes it actually works!

In Sweden in 1712 there was a February 30th. But never a 31st.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-standard_dates

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#94

Post by throwaway378037 »

silveira wrote: post #42

What really bothers me is that most of time when the date of birth is asked it is done as a way to determine some age criteria. The same could be achieved simply asking "are you older than N years old? [Yes] or [No]". For example, I want to buy Quake on the Nintendo eShop. The website wants to know my age in order to show me a age restricted game. So it will always ask me the age same question even if I have already…

Ah, a fellow 1/1/1900 kid!

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#96

Post by [deleted] »

rapind wrote: post #89
nishs wrote: post #27

I've seen some US government forms use [01] [Jan] [1970] where [01]: one- or two-digit day, typed manually [Jan]: three-letter month, picked from a dropdown [1970]: four-digit year, typed manually I think this is a good (the best?) presentation. By using a manual day entry instead of providing a dropdown, as the programmer you can avoid requiring client-side logic to restrict the number of days displayed in the dropd…

DOB should always be a typed input, all numeric. People know exactly what to enter (the number of their month), have done it before many times (DMV etc.), and will knock it out faster than some ridiculous drop down over complicating the process. For other dates though maybe, since most wouldn't have all month numbers memorized, but I’d still say typed, only with a variation on month name (you should be able to parse…

[deleted]

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#97

Post by nishs »

function_seven wrote: post #73
corrral wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confession: I'm nearly 40 damn years old, and I still second-guess month numbers enough that I usually just count starting from January, ticking them off on my fingers, and going through them one by one, to reach the one I need.

Same here, but only for July and August! I don't know why, but I can easily map 1-6 to Jan-Jun. And I can easily map 9-12 with Sep-Dec. But July and August always trip me up.

For me, it's Sep, Oct, (and sometimes Nov) that confuse me.
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