Ask HN: '2 weeks ago' vs 'July 12, 2013 1:46pm'

snowfox · 2013-07-26T17:47:24.000Z

When you see postings or comments with a timestamp, would you prefer to see xx seconds/minutes/days/weeks/etc ago or the exact time stamp? Why?

MattBearman 12 years ago |

I prefer an actual date, simply because when looking at a screenshot 'X days ago' becomes meaningless unless you know when the screenshot was taken.

snowfox 12 years ago | |

That's a good point. 'X days ago' becomes meaningless once the page is stale.

keefe 12 years ago |

I prefer to see absolute time - if I'm commenting somewhere online, I'm probably not in tip-top cognitive shape and I usually check only every so often.

minimaxir 12 years ago |

It depends on context of information and amount of design space available. There's no one right answer.

tokenadult 12 years ago |

Is it hard to implement showing both? I like seeing both.

snowfox 12 years ago | |

Both are not hard to implement. But exact timestamp has a timezone problem, while 'xx ago' is universal.

dragonwriter 12 years ago | | |

> Both are not hard to implement. But exact timestamp has a timezone problem

Specify a timezone in the timestamp. UTC is probably fine, especially if you are doing both, in which case, the main value of timestamps (AFAICT) is to compare the relative times of other posts that are hard to determine from the prose descriptions.

benologist 12 years ago | | |

Make the timestamp relative to the viewer?

seiji 12 years ago | | |

(serious question) How?

ElongatedTowel 12 years ago | | |

Moment.js is pretty useful if you do it client side.

seiji 12 years ago | | |

Brilliant! I've been using timeago (http://timeago.yarp.com), but Moment.js (especially with its timezone support) may solve some of my problems better.

malandrew 12 years ago | |

Set it up so the date is clickable and clicking it toggles the mode. Also save the current mode to a preferences json object in localstorage for persistence.

chc 12 years ago | |

Obviously it isn't difficult to implement, but it does make the date take up a potentially unreasonable amount of design real estate.