Full date stamp request for posts

May 7, 2008 5:05 PM

Small request: would it be possible to have the year included alongside the date on individual posts? For example, 8:22 on May 7th, 2008 instead of just 8:22 on May 7th.

Some of the fun of MetaFilter is the interrelated history of things that happen over a series of years, with accompanying links where relevant to past conversation. I'll often follow references to old conversations, and there's no way to know the full date of post, except to scroll all the way to the top of the page. It'll feel initially that I'm reading a comment or conversation that could have happened last week, but it ends up it was from 2004. A full date stamp would allow the full time-context of particular comment to be apparent, when gotten to by following other links.

'Tis a small thing, but I thought I would ask.

posted by SpacemanStix to feature requests at 5:05 PM (46 comments total)

I get bit by the same thing occasionally when I go spelunking through the archives, so I hear you—but cases where this is an issue represent such a tiny fraction of overall browsing behavior that adding it to the default posted-by footprint of all comments seems to me like not justified.

I think the last time this came up, there was an argument for maybe appending the year to any comment from other than the current calendar year, or for threads more than a year or x months old, which strikes me as less objectionable personally, but I don't remember what Matt's take on it was or whether there were any annoying implementation details aside from the general Do We Want To question.
posted by cortex at 5:09 PM on May 7, 2008

You mean comments, not posts, right? Because every post has the year on it in the date stamp.

I'd consider this for old comments if they were posted in a year previous to this one (so it won't say 2008 on posts made today, but an old thread in the archives will say the full year between 1999 and 2007). It may be necessary on very old threads, if you're popping into them from links on the web to single comments located in the middle of old threads, but otherwise in general I view it as datajunk for current posts to have to repeat something hundreds of times on a page.
posted by mathowie at 5:13 PM on May 7, 2008

When I asked for this Matt you indicated that it should be possible for archived threads only; which is about perfect, anything not archived is from the last year.
posted by Mitheral at 5:46 PM on May 7, 2008

Or to sum up: This drives me batty, can we please have this pony.
posted by Mitheral at 5:48 PM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I Approve of this suggestion.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 5:56 PM on May 7, 2008

I approve your approval.
posted by randomstriker at 6:04 PM on May 7, 2008

...the default posted-by footprint...
...seems to me like not justified...
...strikes me as less objectionable personally...
...annoying implementation details...
...the general Do We Want To question.

beans, plate, overthink.
posted by quonsar at 6:12 PM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

words, big, overuse
posted by jonmc at 6:15 PM on May 7, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

You mean comments, not posts, right?

Ah right, that's correct.

Mitheral: When I asked for this Matt you indicated that it should be possible for archived threads only; which is about perfect, anything not archived is from the last year.

mathowie: I'd consider this for old comments if they were posted in a year previous to this one (so it won't say 2008 on posts made today, but an old thread in the archives will say the full year between 1999 and 2007). It may be necessary on very old threads, if you're popping into them from links on the web to single comments located in the middle of old threads, but otherwise in general I view it as datajunk for current posts to have to repeat something hundreds of times on a page.

If it was determined to be worth the time to implement, that would be perfect, and exactly along the lines of what I was thinking.
posted by SpacemanStix at 6:33 PM on May 7, 2008

This would be nice. I can't count the number of times I've been reading old comment threads and wondering what year they're from. Finding out requires a trip to the top of the page, losing my place in the process.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:34 PM on May 7, 2008

Losing your place? Click a timestamp, hit home, look at the year, click back, & you're at the same place.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:51 PM on May 7, 2008

Let me throw a 'me too' into this one - I think it would be very nice to see.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 7:05 PM on May 7, 2008

Meh, it's displayed prominently at the top of every post, which is the first place the page goes before it fully loads on long threads anyway (the ones that would make scrolling up meaningfully inconvenient). Besides if you just hit the button next to the url bar it will bounce back down to your comment.

Adding a date to every single comment would be visually messy, distracting, and really not that helpful.
posted by dgaicun at 8:17 PM on May 7, 2008

I support the idea of having years listed in archived threads. (And MeFi Music threads, maybe, since those appear to not ever be archived.)
posted by danb at 8:20 PM on May 7, 2008

Music comments already have the year listed if they weren't made in the current year because the threads stay open forever. But yeah, we could do this across all sites too.
posted by pb at 8:29 PM on May 7, 2008

This issue has long vex'd me, indeed.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:32 PM on May 7, 2008

What about '05 '06 '07 etc if you are worried about year footprints. Most of us can guess the century.
posted by Deathalicious at 8:47 PM on May 7, 2008

Me too. I was just wishing for this feature today, actually.
posted by jayder at 9:01 PM on May 7, 2008

fish, pants, blort
posted by cortex at 10:17 PM on May 7, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I prefer to keep the text clutter as low as possible, and I am also in favour only including the year if it is not the current year. But this isn't necessary for comments, since in MetaFilter's case the comments are closed after 30 days, it's never the case that someone will come back 2 years from when a post is made and leave a comment with a confusing month / day timestamp.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:22 PM on May 7, 2008

That's not where the confusion comes up. It's when you follow a link to an archived thread from 4 years ago without realizing it. It can lead to some real WTF? moments until one twigs to what happened.
posted by Mitheral at 11:02 PM on May 7, 2008

As a compromise, you could make the year the mouseover text for the timestamp. Or something.
posted by 15 step at 1:18 AM on May 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

in general I view it as datajunk for current posts to have to repeat something hundreds of times on a page

Like "posted by"/"at"/"on" and "[more inside]"?
posted by yz at 6:49 AM on May 8, 2008

Like "posted by"/"at"/"on" and "[more inside]"?

Why would that be datajunk? Those things can't be construed as extraneous, unless you don't care about who posted, or what they said.
posted by SpacemanStix at 7:24 AM on May 8, 2008

Deathalicious : What about '05 '06 '07 etc if you are worried about year footprints. Most of us can guess the century.

Oh sure, but in ninety-three years, when our kid's kid's kid's kid is reading MeFi, he's going to see that '01 and think "Wait, when did the puritanical Irish start drinking? I thought it was a dry country..."

It's a recipe for confusion. It'll be like Y2K all over again. Only real.
posted by quin at 7:45 AM on May 8, 2008

Well, to make a weak defense of yz's argument:

While the "[more inside]" isn't invariant—not every post/question has more inside, and indicating which do is useful—you could argue that since every single comment and post is posted by x at y, including the strings "posted by" and "at" instead of wee delimiters or just a little whitespace is visual clutter.

I don't really agree in that case—I think the explicit priming of the byline is a good thing, and useful for helping new readers acquaint themselves with the visual flow and existing readers move more easily from comment to comment. But I don't think the point is completely bonkers, anyway.
posted by cortex at 7:51 AM on May 8, 2008

mathowie: I'd consider this for old comments if they were posted in a year previous to this one

If this were based on a simple difference in year, then on January 1st you'd have posts from the previous day displaying archived behavior. Using X number of months/days gets around that problem.
posted by Jeff Howard at 8:13 AM on May 8, 2008

It's certainly not bonkers and I don't think that it's a particularly weak defense: a felicitous page design could implicitly denote such information. The right design need not trouble new or existing readers. No one is suggesting that the information itself be completely removed. But this might be derailing the thread a little.
posted by yz at 8:14 AM on May 8, 2008

Damn; I probably didn't really mean "denote"; it would place the information in context—as cortex said, "prime" the data.
posted by yz at 8:19 AM on May 8, 2008

In the case where you have a very long-standing visual device—in this case, "comment footers begin with "posted by" in small, greyed type"—stripping it out isn't something that can be waved off with "the right design need not trouble new or existing readers".

New folks, maybe, sure: people have used all kinds of slimmed down (and bulked-up) bylines on various sites over the years, so it's not a question of whether it can work in principle for folks coming for the first time to mefi.

But for the tens of thousands (and this is just logged-in folks) who are already regulars, who recognize "posted by" as a fixture of the layout of the thread, we're talking about a sudden and significant shift in the layout of the familiar byline, and not just that but a shift in how it starts. Pulling the rug out from under how they likely scan comments for an EOF, as it were.
posted by cortex at 8:22 AM on May 8, 2008

But I don't think the point is completely bonkers, anyway.

Right on, I see what yz was saying now. Hence the use of quotes, which I missed the first time.
posted by SpacemanStix at 8:24 AM on May 8, 2008

I would find this useful as well.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:03 AM on May 8, 2008

Add my "yes, please" to the requests.
posted by redfisch at 9:46 AM on May 8, 2008

I, too, would love to see this implemented.
posted by vytae at 9:55 AM on May 8, 2008

i would also find this useful and have wanted for it many times.
posted by misanthropicsarah at 9:58 AM on May 8, 2008

ok, the year is included in comment dates across the sites now if the comment was made in the previous year. Also, the year only shows up 30 days after the year changes to avoid the New Year's day problem Jeff Howard mentioned.
posted by pb at 11:20 AM on May 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

pb, that is just great. Thanks so much for the quick response. And thanks to all the administration who cares enough to listen about little things like this.
posted by SpacemanStix at 11:22 AM on May 8, 2008

I was perambulating along to my vocational premises, when I came upon the most unlikely contraption situated between the wescut and lugholes of some young oik. It consisted of a small metal tin (cigarillo?) which was attached to his rather natty breeches. Out of this tin came a slim, flexible reed of bleached gutta percha. This cord ran for about the length of a (tied) bow-tie, before bifurcating into two thinner cords that wended their way to this gentlemen's auricular cavities, in which sat two pale nublike objects which resembled nothing more than Mr Jones' extraordinary strong mint pastiles. As I strolled past this foppish lad, I noted he was displaying an odd gait, which upon further investigation, seemed to have a rhythmic quality akin to a waltz that had been accelerated beyond all rhyme or reason.

Having never seen such an oddity, I vowed to find out what this infernal device was, and what its purpose was in driving the younger breed to minor convulsions on the streets of my fair city.

I went to my teletype and entered a question to be sent along the steam-pneumatic tubes to my favourite coterie of triviahounds. I waited the customary quarter-hour and a reply came. It read

No such device exists in this day and age.
posted by Cortex at 9:03 AM on May 8, '08.

I was most relieved to hear that it was merely myself, and not the early twentieth century, that had succumbed to a momentary glitch of madness.
posted by lalochezia at 11:32 AM on May 8, 2008 [5 favorites has favorites]

P.S. - I can't believe I got the first pony I ever asked for.
posted by SpacemanStix at 11:47 AM on May 8, 2008

Yay new pony!
posted by WalterMitty at 1:48 PM on May 8, 2008

Thanks!
posted by leahwrenn at 3:18 PM on May 8, 2008

Wouldn't this be simpler if we just deleted anything older than 1 year?
posted by blue_beetle at 3:58 PM on May 8, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Hurray! Thanks!
posted by trip and a half at 4:15 PM on May 8, 2008

Thanks pb.
posted by Mitheral at 4:53 PM on May 8, 2008

Awesome!
posted by danb at 7:22 PM on May 8, 2008

Three thumbs up! oh wait, that's not a thumb
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:42 AM on May 9, 2008