I posted this reply at 10:25am CDT 03 Sep 14

 

Looks like here in CST…Cave Standard Time…the timestamps are mostly in the FUTURE!

No wonder I have trouble keeping up with you guys!

- terryR

They are working on a solution.

 

^not complaining at all…I'm a retired RN and computer programmer…am used to dealing with un-expected problems all day long.

Now I live on a Farm…talk about un-expected problems…

 

It looks like the best solution is going to be to remove the "today" feature and simply have every post display the date and time.

 

Testing time.

 

Testing time.

That works!

 

LOOKS GOOD!

I'm glad "TODAY" & "Yesterday" are gone….

Now we don't have to wonder what they were! LOL … we will KNOW! LOL

Just curious, Cricket… Are you storing The TIME as GMT and converting from there Based on individual Time Zones?

I still say… we know what Century we're in… the "20" is not required… LOL

Thank you very much!

Great Job…

 

Not to be contrary, but I like the old method much better. With the way it was, it was easy to see which were the new and which were the old postings.
Why fix something that ain't broke?
As long as you are into changing the date, how about adding a button to order the listing in time order with the newest posting (not comment) first???
Just my 2 cents.

 

I think showing an actual date is a terrific improvement.

It makes a lot more sense to show that a project was posted 05-15-2008 10:22 PM than 2302 days ago.

 

What The Dane said…

 

I disagree, much easier to take a glance and see that a comment was made 6 hours ago instead of checking the time then having to calculate it.
Maybe comparing a date to 2302 days ago is more appropriate, but mostly for me, when I'm following comments they are usually within hours or a few days.
Just My Opinion though, I go with whatever is done, just glad I can give my opinion on what suits me best.

 

I disagree, much easier to take a glance and see that a comment was made 6 hours ago instead of checking the time then having to calculate it.
Maybe comparing a date to 2302 days ago is more appropriate, but mostly for me, when I m following comments they are usually within hours or a few days.
Just My Opinion though, I go with whatever is done, just glad I can give my opinion on what suits me best.

- Iwud4u

+1

I like the old format much better also.

Now when I sign on it shows the time stamp 4 hours ahead. Hit the forms tab and the time corrects itself for my time zone.

 

I can do a quick Time to Time difference faster than I can equate days to Date calculation in my head…

A days - days… and minutes - minutes… is much easier in my head than Days-Ago to When Date/Time…

Date / Time is much much better than Days Ago….

How are you going to get minutes from Days ago?

 

How are you going to get minutes from Days ago?

- Joe Lyddon

At that point it's REALLY not that important is it? lol

 

I disagree, much easier to take a glance and see that a comment was made 6 hours ago instead of checking the time then having to calculate it.
Maybe comparing a date to 2302 days ago is more appropriate, but mostly for me, when I m following comments they are usually within hours or a few days.
Just My Opinion though, I go with whatever is done, just glad I can give my opinion on what suits me best.

- Iwud4u

+1

I like the old format much better also.

Now when I sign on it shows the time stamp 4 hours ahead. Hit the forms tab and the time corrects itself for my time zone.

- RRBOU

+1. Maybe in the minority but the new system makes it harder.

 

Seeing as how the programmers have cracked this open, and are working on it, I'd like to make the following observations/suggestions…

1)
The problem with "delta dates" is only a problem when those numbers are large.
"45 days ago" means more to me than 23-7-2014 - I can instantly relate to something being 45 days ago. When I see that as a date I have to mentally do a subtraction to see how old that is - "ah, 45 days"
However, I cannot instantly relate to the age of something "1275 days ago" - once time gets "large", an absolute date - 23-7-2011 means more than the delta date.

To resurrect my suggestion from march, 2012 - here - ...

if (postTimeAndDate is more than one week ago) then display in "absolute date/time" format
else display in "delta time" format

As of today, I'd probably favour "more than a month", or even "more than 90 days"

2)
As someone mentioned - date formats are not international - here in Portugal there seems to be no standard - when I see 01-12-2014 I really have no idea whether that's a january, or a december, date - thus that's useless to me. I know this is a mostly American website, or, at least, populated mostly with Americans, but there are quite a lot of Non-Americans out here in lumberland.
Can we not use the 3 character abbreviation for months? It's one more character than the 2 digit thing you're currently using.
01-jan-2014 is instantly understandable to anyone able to do anything on this site - even non-native american speakers - and just that one character longer.

3)
Someone mentioned time zones. Forget that "problem" - I really don't care whether a posting was made on the 2nd or the 3rd of january 3 years ago - really I don't. For posts over, say, 3 months old, I'd even be happy just to see "january 2012".
Time zone is, though, very much an issue for things posted very recently - the post above mine says it was posted at "03:35 AM". I really have no idea when that was - perhaps it's being displayed in my time zone and it was 5 hours ago. If you were to implement what I suggest in note 1 above - it would be displayed "delta time" - "6 hours ago" - which is instantly meaningful to me.

Just my ideas to do with as you will.

 

+1 with knicknack
especially point 2)

 

+1 for each of KnickKnack's points.
Thank you for taking the time to share your very thoughtful insight.
The way it is now (timestamp) IS UGLY and LESS MEANINGFUL - I need to repeat that.

But that's nothing compared to the possible negative impact it can have on posting behavior.

Just a quick poll: How many of you post on LJs during working time from eg. your office computer? And how many of you want LJs to show the evidence?
I personally don't. That pretty much keeps me away from posting.
For the record, I posted this one from my iPhone…

 

Maybe in the future some of the posting-time preferences could be settable in the user profile This could include "time since post" vs "date/time of post" and date format.

 

After a much further review of the change, I'm in favor of the our old system. For me, I now have to stop and think to relate to when it was actually posted. Change is good but in this case I think not.

 

Business time is NOT personal time & should NOT be done… IMHO, the business is being robbed if personal posting is done during business Time…

LJ should NOT be part of covering up the real time of when postings were made.

If postings were done during Breaks & Lunch time, NOT business time, it would tend to prove that postings were NOT done on Business time… better than being falsely accused…

To me, it's not hard to mentally calculate approx number of days have elapsed since previous post…

To complicate things further, perhaps the Name of the Day: Sun, Mon,Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, should be ADDED? LOL

The New way stands true & better IMHO…

 

Unless the response is a one-liner, it looks like there should be room under the poster's avatar to include BOTH:

• "#47 posted 09/04/2014 11:53am"
  AND
• "posted xxx days ago"

Just a thought…

 

Unless the response is a one-liner, it looks like there should be room under the poster s avatar to include BOTH:
"#47 posted 09/04/2014 11:53am"
AND
"posted xxx days ago"
- HorizontalMike

Fair point, with a couple of provisos…
1) 09/04/2014 still doesn't mean much to many of us - is that september, or april? "4 Sep 2014" or some such has my vote by a long long way - if I had a vote, of course.
2) I went to your home page - the "Latest Activity" now includes the "new" format, and there isn't room on there for an extra line - it's twice the size it was before now already. And, reiterating - it used to be easy to look at those pages and see how "active" someone had been recently, or at a page such as this and see if the things above were "recent" - now I have to actually examine each date to make that determination.

I think "accessible" is the appropriate word here - "4 days ago" is an easy read and instantly understandable (until you get to "1027 days ago" - now I have to work out how many years that is) without requiring any brain processing - "04-Sep-2014" requires a little more brain cycles - "09-04-2014" requires a lot of power to relate that to the time now.

 

Good idea... BUT, the word 'posted' can be removed because the whole series starts with "posted"... LOL

#48 posted 09-04-2014 10:09 AM 1 day ago

This is opening one Big Can of Worms…

We could also added a little more to the string…
#48 posted 09-04-2014 10:09 AM Today 5 min. ago.

#4n posted 09-nn-2014 10:09 AM [nn days,] [nn hrs.,] [nn min.,] [nn secs] ago.

This might be pushing it a little… a tad… too far… LOL

 

Unless the response is a one-liner, it looks like there should be room under the poster s avatar to include BOTH:
"#47 posted 09/04/2014 11:53am"
AND
"posted xxx days ago"

Just a thought…

- HorizontalMike

Concerns about how it is… I have been on the forum today, and it is harder for me to spot the 'Older' threads. 326 days ago is pretty straight forward, and I will gloss past it. I will generally miss looking for the year stamp. My 2 cents