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So dd-mm-yyyy is once again a proven fix - as suggested on March 14.
Still, we got there in the end.

2004-05-03 is May 3 in iso date format

3/5/2004 is May 3 in d/m/y format

03/05/2004 is also May 3 in d/m/y format.

You may be right and the computer may be wrong but sometimes computers just cannot change so we need to be a little flexible because they are poor dumb machines and they need us to be kind to them. Like a dog. Sometimes it can only be a dog.

The essential part ElmersTrueLove missed was the separator.
Despite the displayed instructions it should be "-" as per the working format given above and earlier in this thread.

So:

03-05-2004 is May 3 in dd-mm-yyyy format.

Which can look "wrong" to those more more familiar with mm-dd-yyyy, but computers are not very smart and have to be coddled sometimes.

The leading "0" for month and day can also look odd to many people are more used to humans who write dates, not computers who write dates.

Yep.

Well, not really - it's just the way this particular application was coded and worse, mis-explained on the account page.

Dogs have a choice; computers - eh, not so much...

No offense intended to any martini glass toting dogs.

Spend some time trying to teach a child something. Then spend some time trying to teach the same thing to a computer. I have made a career out of the second category.

As did I, on the second category. There's no way I'll be attempting the first category.

From my experiences computers are coded to operate in a certain way and in this instance are therefore unable, by design, to learn anything at all. After all, it's just a forum application intended to operate in a defined manner, not an experiment in AI.

Now, whether that operation (accept a valid birthdate) performs as expected or more to the point, is properly explained on the account page, is another matter - I'd say it succeeds on the first requirement and fails on the second.
Hence the existence of this (and other) threads explaining the required format for the birthdate.

Mostly I am just trying to engage in perspective taking. I am aware that the behavior of computers is what it is and why. But I am also aware that not everyone else is. If you have ever seen someone yelling at their car . . . it is a bit like that. Or at a traffic light. A birthday is a personal kind of thing, and swapping a 5 with a 3 may not seem like a big thing to some, but to someone else it may seem like saying you have to change "your birthday" to "not your birthday" and that just feels wrong. And the "Zeros" thing is just weird. So that is what it seems to me ElmersTrueLove was trying to say. So I was kind of trying to reply to that part of things. I was trying to say it wasn't about ETL being wrong so much as needing to help out a poor dumb computer that cannot understand ETL even though a person would probably get it and be able to adjust, like a bank clerk or someone at a supermarket would be able to have a conversation with ETL and figure it out. Computers aren't really people, but in some ways they act like people, and then people react to them as if they are: like getting offended by them, or feeling less-than.

"The trouble with computers, of course, is that they're very sophisticated idiots. They do exactly what you tell them at amazing speed" - The Doctor in Doctor Who

A number of times ElmersTrueLove missed, for whatever reason, the explanations of the separator required. I'm not trying to assign blame here, these things happen - but not using the correct separators will render the birthdate input invalid, as was explained.

But anyway, this particular computer was coded to expect a birthdate as dd-mm-yyyy and I disagree that in doing so it was a "sophisticated idiot".
Yes, it was doing exactly what was asked - but how could any of it work if it just wandered off and did something unexpected and irrelevant instead?

Aspects of the formatting expected, like leading zeroes, is weird and somehow not human-like?
But surely, having a simple, regimented and logical input format is the best way of ensuring expected results.
Again, we're off into the realms of AI if such a basic, simple process should allow "human" inputs like "May 3rd, Nineteen-ninteyfive, about tea-time", or "May 3 twenty-five years ago", or "5th May, 1995", or "Wednesday May 3rd '95" - and the numerous variations.

This convoluted range of possible human-like inputs and the impossibility of handling them to the satisfaction of anyone and everyone is exactly why a regimented, logical input format is used instead.
That doesn't seem much of an ask, especially as it would normally be done just once - or maybe twice to correct a typo.

Cornflake. I am sorry if anything I said offended you. That was not my intention. You do a great job of supporting this computerized system and making it and yourself available to the users of Wrongplanet.net.

Offended? Moi? Nah, of course not.
'sall good.