I was going to post this earlier but didn’t in case it was just me. But then someone just bumped a thread by mistake from 2014 because they read “April '14” as “April 14”. Would it be hard to change it to a format like “April 2014” when it is more than a year old so that it is harder to make this mistake? I know I always have to look close for the apostrophe and now I know I am not alone in this.
I don’t see why the whole date and the time along with it can’t be posted.
Times would definitely be helpful. Right now, when I see that a thread was last posted to “14 hours ago”, I have to stop and think: Was that before or after 7 AM, when I was last on the board? Or when I walk away from the board for a while, and come back: Was that “14 hours ago” from the time when the page was loaded (when was that?), or from now?
I made the same point several months ago.
Mine shows the full date and year-P_M’s last post shows “Sep 20, 2020 10:29am” when I hover my mouse over the time field in a given post. Are you all looking at a different part of the thread or something?
Which is less than intuitive when the whole rest of the world simply displays the information.
We’d rather not have to hover to see the date. Just display it.
There is also no hovering when viewed on a mobile device.
I’m on a smartphone. No mouse, no hover.
Edit: What eyebrows said.
My God!
It was 21 years ago that I was working 10-12 hour days, trying to fix decades-old COBOL programs to use a 4-digit year in dates, so they would work properly after Dec 31, 1999. Couldn’t even really celebrate that New Year’s Eve much, because I was on call, and might have to drive in to work if problems occurred.
And now these young punk designers are making the same kind of mistake, and don’t even have the justification of the extreme high cost of storage for every extra character?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Displaying the year date as anything other than 4 digit is just plain stupid.
A 4-digit year is unambiguous. A 2-digit number can be year, or a month, or a day of month. Or even an hour or minute or seconds display!
But as for the “14 hours ago”… that is very handy, because we live on a world with many timezones, and showing time as an absolute becomes meaningless without also knowing what timezone it refers to. And is that timezone subject to daylight saving adjustment or not?
I’m sure the full date and time is stored. It’s just a matter of how it’s displayed.
Handling timezones is pretty basic. I can’t think of any forum software that doesn’t. You can ask the user where they are, or for their timezone, which is what vBulletin did. You can also probably use other info nowadays, like your GPS/location info, or just geolocating an IP address–just let the user override it.
Discourse has the info–I see correct times relative to me when I hover over the text. It would seem to only be a theme issue that it isn’t displayed.
I can’t say I find either one all that useful in day-to-day posting. But I would marginally say that the actual time is more useful. Where I find it most useful, though, is in going back and looking at a historical thread, like the 9/11 one. But that’s where the software uses month/year, which isn’t really useful for each post, as most threads don’t span multiple months.
Tap on the number/hours/date for a pop-up with the exact datetime to appear
Never mind. [/EmilyLitella]
You can also tap there to get the full date on mobile, as noted above.
That’s correct! You can view source to see yourself, if you’re curious.
Can you make it so it’s displayed by default, as we keep asking in this thread??
I don’t know if I posted in one of the earlier threads about this but I want to add that for me too, it would be very nice if this change could be made. I do not like this time display system. I’d rather see the actual time and date–whether the post is from 3 days ago or 3 years ago. Can’t get more unambiguous than that.
I’m not a fan of purposely and unnecessarily introducing ambiguity into a system. That’s bad design, IMO.
Exactly. Just because we can find out the exact date doesn’t mean that it isn’t more confusing and time consuming than displaying the full timestamp. Especially when the only difference can be a little tick mark next to the date/year.
If TPTB insist on this modern stylish “user friendly” form of relative and approximate dates then simply display the years on the old ones in all 4 digits. i.e. a three+ year old post should not say '17 instead it should say 2017.
Nobody is going to think 2017 represents the day number in a recent month.
If this is stylable it’d be easy enough for somebody who knows Discourse theming to tweak it up for those who want it. Reading the page source makes me think the translation to relative / short date is not themable.
If that’s true then this is either an existing configuration switch TPTB could flip or it’d have to be a code change by Discourse people to the core Discourse engine itself. Two chances of that latter change: slim and fat.