The decision to make localize=False the default value for all widgets
was quite deliberate. There are plenty of edge cases where
localization *isn't* acceptable, even when USE_L10N is enabled. For
example, if you have stored a year as an integer, it shouldn't be
localized -- this year is 2011, not 2,011. Similar problems exist with
postcodes, phone numbers, and so on.
contrib.admin is an autogenerated interface, and as such, needs to
"work by default" -- turning on a single setting shouldn't cause
widgets to suddenly display broken values for some (but not all)
widgets. Hence, the admin doesn't do anything with the USE_L10N
setting, and localization is treated as a completely opt-in behavior.
Now -- there is certainly room for improvement here. It should be a
lot easier to turn on localization for specific widgets (or,
alternatively, to turn it on for all widgets, and off for specific
widgets). I don't believe there is a specific ticket describing this
problem, but it is a known problem, and one that I'm not opposed to
fixing. However, the fix *isn't* to use USE_L10N as the behavior
switch.
Yours,
Russ Magee %-)