Comments on: Full date stamp request for posts

Full date stamp request for posts

SpacemanStix — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:05:45 -0800

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.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:09:41 -0800

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.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:13:12 -0800

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.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:46:55 -0800

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.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:48:38 -0800

Or to sum up: This drives me batty, can we please have this pony.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:56:13 -0800

I Approve of this suggestion.

By: randomstriker

randomstriker — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:04:29 -0800

I approve your approval.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:12:31 -0800

...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.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:15:15 -0800

words, big, overuse

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:33:23 -0800

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.

By: Rhaomi

Rhaomi — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:34:36 -0800

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.

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:51:40 -0800

Losing your place? Click a timestamp, hit home, look at the year, click back, & you're at the same place.

By: John Kenneth Fisher

John Kenneth Fisher — Wed, 07 May 2008 19:05:25 -0800

Let me throw a 'me too' into this one - I think it would be very nice to see.

By: dgaicun

dgaicun — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:17:27 -0800

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.

By: danb

danb — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:20:53 -0800

I support the idea of having years listed in archived threads. (And MeFi Music threads, maybe, since those appear to not ever be archived.)

By: pb

pb — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:29:00 -0800

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.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:32:20 -0800

This issue has long vex'd me, indeed.

By: Deathalicious

Deathalicious — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:47:06 -0800

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

By: jayder

jayder — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:01:56 -0800

Me too. I was just wishing for this feature today, actually.

By: cortex

cortex — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:17:13 -0800

fish, pants, blort

By: Space Coyote

Space Coyote — Wed, 07 May 2008 22:22:07 -0800

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.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:02:03 -0800

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.

By: 15 step

15 step — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:18:19 -0800

As a compromise, you could make the year the mouseover text for the timestamp. Or something.

By: yz

yz — Thu, 08 May 2008 06:49:36 -0800

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]"?

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:24:42 -0800

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.

By: quin

quin — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:45:21 -0800

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.

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 08 May 2008 07:51:53 -0800

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.

By: Jeff Howard

Jeff Howard — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:13:10 -0800

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.

By: yz

yz — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:14:29 -0800

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.

By: yz

yz — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:19:12 -0800

Damn; I probably didn't really mean "denote"; it would place the information in context—as cortex said, "prime" the data.

By: cortex

cortex — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:22:40 -0800

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.

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:24:01 -0800

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.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:03:42 -0800

I would find this useful as well.

By: redfisch

redfisch — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:46:13 -0800

Add my "yes, please" to the requests.

By: vytae

vytae — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:55:01 -0800

I, too, would love to see this implemented.

By: misanthropicsarah

misanthropicsarah — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:58:44 -0800

i would also find this useful and have wanted for it many times.

By: pb

pb — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:20:50 -0800

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.

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:22:57 -0800

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.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:32:14 -0800

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.

By: SpacemanStix

SpacemanStix — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:47:44 -0800

P.S. - I can't believe I got the first pony I ever asked for.

By: WalterMitty

WalterMitty — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:48:52 -0800

Yay new pony!

By: leahwrenn

leahwrenn — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:18:13 -0800

Thanks!

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:58:35 -0800

Wouldn't this be simpler if we just deleted anything older than 1 year?

By: trip and a half

trip and a half — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:15:47 -0800

Hurray! Thanks!

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:53:36 -0800

Thanks pb.

By: danb

danb — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:22:06 -0800

Awesome!

By: BrotherCaine

BrotherCaine — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:42:31 -0800

Three thumbs up! oh wait, that's not a thumb