andrew

While @candied_orange makes a fair point, this does seem to be at least part of the answer (of why this convention was introduced) - i.e. creating a new convention (YYYYMMDD) to avoid the ambiguity of two existing conventions (MMDDYY vs DDMMYY). Obviously the YYYYMMDD convention relies on there not existing any conflicting conventions such as YYYYDDMM, which unfortunately isn't the case - apparently Kazakhstan uses YYYYDDMM.