Sitewide option for relative dating? (THIS IS NOT INCEST-RELATED, LIVEJOURNAL PEOPLE)

May 31, 2007 7:42 PM

I find the "7 minutes ago" style of dating found on the "My Activity" to be far easier to parse than the normal way it is listed in threads. Any chance of a profile switch to enable that site-wide with the detail time available on a hover or something?
posted by John Kenneth Fisher to Feature Requests at 7:42 PM (42 comments total)

Not everyone reads MetaFilter logged in. "X minutes ago" doesn't work without a cookie and a timezone. The "My Activity" page you refer to exists because your logged in and have a cookie.

I'm squishing your head. I'm squishing your head!"
posted by loquacious at 8:00 PM on May 31, 2007

Well, true, but if it were a profile option, it would only be called for if someone was already logged in anyway.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 8:03 PM on May 31, 2007

Also, the very idea of it hurts. x minutes ago, x hours ago, x days ago, x months ago, x years ago.

It's very cumbersome and unwieldy for what is meant to be a static thread. The "My Activity/Comments" interface is dynamic and time-domain in nature.
posted by loquacious at 8:03 PM on May 31, 2007

It's very cumbersome and unwieldy

Yeah? so's your FACE.

Anyway, yeah, it would be a bit odd for looking at very old threads, (it would probably just round them all to the same "2 years ago" or some such,) but I for threads from the last day or two, which are 90% of the ones I, and probably most users, read in a normal day, I would still find it more useful than the current display.

I'm not saying it's brilliant and is better in all situations -- it isn't. But I am saying that if the option existed, I personally, would happily use it.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 8:12 PM on May 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

Not everyone reads MetaFilter logged in. "X minutes ago" doesn't work without a cookie and a timezone. The "My Activity" page you refer to exists because your logged in and have a cookie.

No, it works fine for people who aren't logged. 7 minutes ago is always 7 minutes ago, regardless of what the user is calling this particular minute.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 8:14 PM on May 31, 2007

Yeah, I was going to say, 7 minutes is 7 minutes EVEN IN ICELAND!

Flickr does it this way and I've always liked it. We could abolish timezones completely by going this route.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:19 PM on May 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

The bit I find (mildly I'll admit) annoying is that when I look at the activity page and it says something happened an hour ago and then I look at the precise page and then I see a date/time that I don't know. Actually, this also comes up when you press preview. Personally I don't realllly care what timezone gets used here but when it goes from mine to an unknown one then I get (mildly I'll admit) confused. I guess I would love for all timezones to be abolished and just use whatever Matt's on or Greenwich Mean Time but have it stay as that across the board.
posted by peacay at 8:35 PM on May 31, 2007

If you keep track of threads via My Comments you already have this.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:48 PM on May 31, 2007

Just as a data point, we did this on my site at work and the protest was loud and long. Quite a few people absolutely loathed it. Some people liked it, some people didn't mind it, but a pretty large core group of people hated it.

It'd probably be less of a problem on MeFi because the discussion isn't threaded, but it's worth considering before you make a site wide change--a lot of people may well hate it.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:54 PM on May 31, 2007

I was going to keep my mouth shut because it was only requested as an option, but now that Matt's responded so positively, I want to express a strong preference for keeping the current way available. I like my humidity relative and my timestamps absolute.
posted by Partial Law at 9:22 PM on May 31, 2007 [1 favorite]

More options is always better*, I realize I am likely in the minority here, which is why I definitely think people should be able to choose.

(*unless you're Matt and have to code the damn thing.)
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 9:30 PM on May 31, 2007

Yeah, I think people either love it or hate it, with little in between, so it'd have to be an option.

I remember a friend freaking out because I turned off my default mac menubar clock and replaced it with FuzzyTime so it'd say "quarter after 7". They kept asking how in the hell I knew what time it was.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 9:44 PM on May 31, 2007

I don't like the x minutes ago thing and it's the one thing I'm finding very off putting about twitter. Probably because my sense of time is utterly crap. Two hours ago could have been any time, I could have been doing anything, but 12.30pm is always lunchtime. I can peg my brain on that and navigate accordingly. (unless I got hungry and ate lunch early at my desk of course)

But then the timezones don't work for half the year either. Apparently we're so far into the future that metafilter can't cope, that option isn't available. I was going to write a metatalk post complaining about it once but found a several years old one bringing up the same thing with no resolution, so figured it was a lost cause.
posted by shelleycat at 11:51 PM on May 31, 2007

Hmm. Except I'm using +19 now and it goes up to +20, indicating that I can make it work in summer. I probably still can't make it work on the bits where summertime overlap is weird (we do daylight savings longer than most other places, although the recent changes in the US might have realigned this a bit), but obviously the problem isn't 'half the year' like I assumed.
posted by shelleycat at 11:54 PM on May 31, 2007

I probably still can't make it work on the bits where summertime overlap is weird

You can, you just have to go in there manually on the appropriate dates and soothe adjust the beast.
posted by chrismear at 1:34 AM on June 1, 2007

I cant if I need to be +21 hours from the server because the options only go to +20. I know this was a problem at one point since I joined mefi, but dont check often enough to know if its all summer or something that only happens a few weeks out of the year. Which indicates that its not really a big deal. Its not like I ever know what time of day it is anyway.

Gah, stoopid apostrophes making weird things open at the bottom of the screen so I cant type them in the comment box. I dont know why this happens sometimes, but its always annoying.
posted by shelleycat at 2:12 AM on June 1, 2007

I don't like the x minutes ago thing and it's the one thing I'm finding very off putting about twitter

The one thing? Well, OK, but seeing as how Twitter is the throbbing gristly heart of modern internet evil, timestamps are probably the least of our sociologos worries 'round these parts. Or any other parts. Or my swimsuit area summertime overlap parts, for that matter.

Sorry, what were we talking about again?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:51 AM on June 1, 2007

I cant if I need to be +21 hours from the server because the options only go to +20.

Oh, whoops, missed that. I wonder why it only goes up to twenty.
posted by chrismear at 3:44 AM on June 1, 2007

mathowie: "Flickr does it this way and I've always liked it. We could abolish timezones completely by going this route."

It's really nice when it's "7 seconds ago" or "3 ³/₁₉ minutes ago", but as soon as you check out some ancient thread and every comment was posted "31 months ago", it's just meaningless noise. A fallback to the less-readable but consistently-resolutioned current method after a day or something is probably a good thing.
posted by Plutor at 4:41 AM on June 1, 2007 [4 favorites]

mathowie: "We could abolish timezones completely by going this route."


Make sure you ask Malor before making any major changes.
posted by micayetoca at 5:41 AM on June 1, 2007

I can add +21, 22, etc to the timezone offset list. It would take two seconds.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 6:54 AM on June 1, 2007

I'm in league with the foot-draggers on this one. As an option—specifically opt-in, for logged-in members only—it sounds fine, but there's a sort of comforting austerity to a literal time stamp.

"x minutes/hours/days/weeks ago" strikes me as more or less demoting anything other than the recent. Aesthetic hangup, I suppose, but I don't like the way that it ages everything in it's basic presentation. Fine for My Comments—I'm looking usually to see what's new in some sense—but for the canonical thread view I don't want to know how long ago it was said, I want to know when it was said. I can do the math myself.

Yeah? so's your FACE.

Ha!
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:08 AM on June 1, 2007

I absolutely *hate* that style of time measurement, because you can't see any relative time signature. It's all "posted 1 month ago". Whatever.
posted by delmoi at 7:14 AM on June 1, 2007

I too find the relative time stamps work well for recent stuff, but they are less useful when someone referes back to a thread.

Here's a suggestion: for unclosed threads allow relative time stamps. When a thread gets closed, use absolute time stamps.

And if I can hook my little pony onto this wagon train: I'd really, really appreciate it if the timestamps in old threads included the year. When someone references an old comment, it can be a little disorienting until you scroll to the title of the post to find out just when it was posted (July 6 great, but which year?).
posted by bonehead at 7:20 AM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

I wouldn't mind it as if it said "posted 1 month, 13 days, 6 hours, and 45 minutes ago" But you can see how that would be pretty cumbersome. I guess I can see that for some people its easier, but I hate the fact that it's just foisted on everyone all over the place.
posted by delmoi at 7:22 AM on June 1, 2007

And if I can hook my little pony onto this wagon train: I'd really, really appreciate it if the timestamps in old threads included the year. When someone references an old comment, it can be a little disorienting until you scroll to the title of the post to find out just when it was posted (July 6 great, but which year?).

Not only that, but it used to be that threads would stay open forever, so comments could span multiple years.
posted by delmoi at 7:23 AM on June 1, 2007

I'm not saying it's brilliant

I am. This is a great idea. Obviously, it would be good if it could be an option, and I think it would be good to make closed threads go to absolute automatically. Also I would like to get the year into that absolute stamp for closed threads.
posted by Rock Steady at 7:41 AM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

Relevant(-ish) question: Is there some scientifically determined point at which we stop thinking intuitively in relative terms ("an hour ago") vs. absolute ("10:00 am"). I have to believe that's been studied within an inch of its existence, either as recently as 3 hours ago or as far back as June 12, 1979.
posted by mkultra at 7:57 AM on June 1, 2007

I too find the relative time stamps work well for recent stuff, but they are less useful when someone referes back to a thread.

But the thing is, six months or two years after a thread is posted, does it really matter when the exact time comments were posted? Aside from maybe the 9/11 thread, it doesn't really matter, since stuff is still posted in the order it was submitted.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:20 AM on June 1, 2007

Actually, for older comments, year and maybe month is all I care about. Day is only useful if tying to a specific event.
posted by bonehead at 8:25 AM on June 1, 2007

But the thing is, six months or two years after a thread is posted, does it really matter when the exact time comments were posted?

Not always, but it has before. For instance, sometimes I'll find myself really engrossed in an old MeTa thread with an accompanying MeFi thread (or, in rarer cases, multiple MeTa threads covering the same issue or featuring the same players). If the discussion is proceeding in simultaneous parallel threads, I will occasionally find myself checking timestamps to figure out which comment happened first, to see if that helps explain other responses.

It's not common, and maybe I'm a little obsessive, but I doubt I'm the only one who's ever made use of years-old timestamps in this way.
posted by Partial Law at 8:59 AM on June 1, 2007

But the thing is, six months or two years after a thread is posted, does it really matter when the exact time comments were posted?

It matters to me. Call me a weirdo, call me an armchair archivist, but for one thing the micro-scale pacing of a thread makes a difference in how I read the cascade of comments.

10 heated comments over three hours comes with a different set of implications than 10 heated comments in three minutes. A comment that drops into a pre-thread-closure-era thread three months after the last comment is a lot different from one five minutes after. References to "jinxes" or to specific dates or other temporal elements in comments sudden lose their footing if that detail disappears.

Anyway, what I don't see is the value in globally nicing-up those old thread time stamps to vague chrono terms as the default presentation. As an option, sure, cool, but please let's not do this to the public-facing metafilter archive.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:00 AM on June 1, 2007

This would only be acceptable if the time-stamps were dynamically updated. Otherwise, imagine the chaos. You would load a page, and after a minute ALL OF THE TIME STAMPS WOULD BE WRONG! If there's a long thread that took ten minutes to read, then by the time you got to the bottom, the last comment might say "posted one minute(s) ago" but that would be an error of ONE THOUSAND PERCENT! This change would mean that the time stamp of EVERY comment on the page would be a LIE! MADNESS.!1! (except, like, on older pages where every timestamp on every comment would be the same and therefore useless)
If this pony is implemented, Mr Haughey, then my right hand will be in the mail.
posted by nowonmai at 9:01 AM on June 1, 2007 [1 favorite]

does it really matter when the exact time comments were posted?

The exact time, seldom if ever matters. How far apart they came, though, can change the way one reads a thread.

Or, y'know, what cortex said.
posted by dersins at 9:06 AM on June 1, 2007

I'm with cortex and dersins on this one. The Blogger default for comments is just the time without the date, which makes a post's comments a muddle: take a comment at 2:15 and another at 3:12; is that an hour later or a day later or two weeks later? Depending on the content of the comment it can matter a great deal, but switching to relative timestamps on older threads would remove all that information. Everything would be simply "one year ago," as if specifics don't matter any more, and the discussion would lose much of its tenor as a result.
posted by Tuwa at 9:16 AM on June 1, 2007

The comments should simply be spaced out on a vertical timeline. Say, 1 pixel per 5 seconds? This thread, now 14 hours old, would be 10k pixels tall. Maybe some sort of logarithmic scale?
posted by Plutor at 9:18 AM on June 1, 2007

The comments should simply be spaced out on a vertical timeline. Say, 1 pixel per 5 seconds?

And if you've got a lot to say, you'd damned well wait till it's been quiet a while.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:20 AM on June 1, 2007

That's a feature.
posted by Plutor at 11:18 AM on June 1, 2007

By the way, are "fresh" and "just posted" and "moments ago" currently used interchangeably? I've noticed that when I obsessively refresh my "recent activity," comments often cycle between those three "time" stamps with no apparent pattern.
posted by dersins at 2:18 PM on June 1, 2007

I'm with bonehead on the year inclusion on old threads. That should be a small nicety that doesn't affect the site in any way that would cause an uproar. If the comment wasn't made this year, include the year in the date stamp. Older threads that hardly anyone looks at would have a slightly longer, but more useful byline. Sounds like a winner.
posted by team lowkey at 3:16 PM on June 1, 2007

DO NOT WANT.

It only sort of works on Flickr, and it sure as fuck will not work here. NO WAY. I use FuzzyClock too, Matt. I like the relative timestamps on the Activity pages. But don't fucking put it in the threads. Unless the page is currently refreshed, all of the timestamps will be way the fuck off. Anything more than a month old gets rounded off into meaninglessness unless you get retardedly verbose. Do not do this.

Please do add the year to closed threads.
posted by blasdelf at 6:36 PM on June 1, 2007

I can add +21, 22, etc to the timezone offset list. It would take two seconds.

Ooo, yes please! +21 is all we need. I think it's because NZ changes at a different time to most other places, so while USA is jumping one way Australia jumps the other, and NZ already jumped some weeks ago. Timezones make my head spin. It's hard enough working out when it is here without factoring in over there as well.
posted by shelleycat at 7:18 PM on June 1, 2007