Comment 18 for bug 406438

Here's another vote for keeping the date by default. On Windows, this is different because the task bar doesn't have space to spare (personally I always removed every non-essential tray icon, to make space for task buttons). But the Gnome top panel doesn't have space problems; so I don't see the need to remove the date.

And in fact it's useful to see this information at a glance. At work I don't have the date displayed in tray due to space reasons, and as result usually look at the date that is permanently displayed on the desk phone - that's faster than using the clock tooltip.