11 Hours Ago

jmucchiello · Jan 28, 2005

I absolutely hate, hate, hate the times of posts and stuff saying 11 Hours ago or 15 minutes ago or any other relative time. I sometimes walk away from the computer with ENWorld up and if the page was loaded 10 hours ago and it says the post was 15 minutes ago, guess what? The screen is wrong. When it says posted January 27, 2005 8:27 PM, that is actually when it happened.

And when "news" is happening, it can be very important to know when a post was posted. Is this going to be a switch in the accounts or do I just have to gripe about it more?

Truth Seeker · Jan 28, 2005

Okay, I will take a stab at this.

Just a small stab, and the Tech Mod can correct me...the way it looks, by the time, a post is being written and finished, the differences between your PC time and the server time is all together not the same.

A page is opened by a said writer of thread, the server clock is still going, while the writer is taking the time for corrections, and so forth...the writing is finished, the server shows how long ago it was formed to open and finished...thats it.

It doesn't effect me...not the least.

msd · Jan 28, 2005

jmucchiello said:
I absolutely hate, hate, hate the times of posts and stuff saying 11 Hours ago or 15 minutes ago or any other relative time...

Yeah, I agree. Things seemed a little easier and more straightforward when there was a simple timestamp.

One guy's opinion...

Matt

Greylock · Jan 28, 2005

Agreed. I prefer the plain old time stamp. The new system makes sense to me, but I hate having to "do the math" on same day posts.

Piratecat · Jan 28, 2005

We welcome more input on this change.

jmucchiello · Jan 28, 2005

Truth Seeker said:
Just a small stab, and the Tech Mod can correct me...the way it looks, by the time, a post is being written and finished, the differences between your PC time and the server time is all together not the same.

No, I just want to know when the post was posted. That is the time that should display. It is the time when the poster thought to himself. "This is what I wish to say at this time! <click>" (I know. Not that everyone is so exacting in their thinking.)

1 hour ago is imprecise and I have to know when I clicked on the page to know when it is one hour from. If it takes me a hour between the time I load the page and the time I get around to reading the last post on the page, then the timestamp "2 hours ago" is far from accurate. It is in fact WRONG.

Also, I find it easier to see 5:37 PM and know that since the poster is in England (and I'm in New Jersey) that the poster posted at 10:37 PM local time. Sometimes that is important to know too. "3 hours ago" requires two translations to figure out.

Crothian · Jan 28, 2005

I find that if I have En world up on one page for a while, hitting refresh resets the time. With the speedy new servers it works really fast. I like the X time ago becasue I'm not always aware what time it is, but I do know how long ago a post was made.

Starman · Jan 28, 2005

I prefer the timestamp myself.

Starman

Gez · Jan 28, 2005

I like the relative time better. Notably because despite me saying in the User CP that I'm in a GMT+1 timezone, the timestamp was off.

hong · Jan 28, 2005

Gez said:
I like the relative time better. Notably because despite me saying in the User CP that I'm in a GMT+1 timezone, the timestamp was off.

Ditto. And besides, I can't imagine why you'd walk away from your browser, come back hours later, and NOT refresh the screen anyway. Accurate time stamps don't help not having any posts made after you left.