I am neither for nor against showing the thread date. There are times when I've wanted to know if the thread is new or old but there was little lost when I discovered that I've already read-the-thread.

I have argued in the past for standardized date format simply because this side of the pond formats dates differently from the format used on the other side of the pond.

That got me nowhere. But, perhaps the solution is to enhance the date and time options in User CP so that we can each choose our own format. ISO 8601 and 24 hour clock for me - I know that 8601 provides for datetime representation (2007-02-18T09:08) but that is not as easily read as 2007-02-18 09:08.