It seems that each module has its own formatting style, and with many modules it starts to be a little confusing.
To see an example of what I'm saying, go to the online Magnolia demo, and you'll see:

• In Website panel dates are like "09-02-02, 11:43"
• In Data Module panel -> type are "12/5/07 5:40 PM"
• In Data Module panel -> config are "09-04-02, 12:13"
• In Inbox panel are "5/20/09 1:11 AM"
• In Security are "2007-04-19, 10:20"

And so on, with differences inside the same module. And this is just with the english default locale, I don't know if changing system locale or user language will get thing even worse.

There should be a single point in which should be possible to set the formatting style. A good candidate in the config repository would be the server/i18n/system/languages path, in which we can set the appropriate format for each language.

It was also suggested that AbstractTreeConfiguration should provide convenience method for date formating so that all the extending classes can just use it and use one format only instead of each of them doing it differently.