In the ACP, the administrator can give a pattern to produce date strings (on the model of PHP date function). In the UCP, the user can override this option to customise the display at his/her taste. Fine.
Those date strings are used in different places, and here begins the problem.
Let's say that i take
d M Y H:i:s
. This is fine for a post or a topic, because I can use some precision just to know whether the post is one hour old or one day old.On the other hand, this same string is used for the registration date. And this is time it is clearly overkill, since the date dd:MM:YYYY can be of interest, but surely not the time of the day (and surely not the day of the week).
Therefore, I think there should be two strings to be defined in the ACP/UCP, on short and one long date.