Always use absolute date/time stamping for posts

endorphin

I don't like the use of relative and absolute timestamping for posts especially as there are at least 4 different ways a timestamp is presented., it's not intuitive and takes longer to process the information. For example:

has various timestamps such as:

21 Aug (absolute and precise to a day)
A month later (relative and precise to a few days)
6 days ago (relative and precise to a day)
19 hours ago (relative and precise to an hour)

So rather than having this mix of timestamps can we not have the easier to understand and consistent HH:MM DD-MMM-YY and this presentation only?

z201205

endorphin HH:MM DD-MMM-YY

My preference is using ISO date format: yyyy-mm-dd HH:MM. Perhaps it should be an option.

extreme_one

Hmmmm I think the relative timestamps offer a bit a of personality.

endorphin

extreme_one I much prefer consistency and ease of assimilating information to personality, especially for a help forum.

i_am_sy

I don't mind the times being relative if it's in the last few minutes, upto perhaps "30 minutes ago" beyond that though I absolutely agree that having the exact time is just better.

By the time it gets to "a month ago" I've no idea if that's 4 weeks or 7.

Seems to be displayed like that by the HumanTime helper, if I recall @mrjeeves might have said something about a script for that, one that just displays it in real time instead.

endorphin

i_am_sy Seems to be displayed by that by the HumanTime helper

It definitely doesn't help me! I prefer to be precise whenever I can rather than vague. 😉

mrjeeves

i_am_sy endorphin

Yes, I made a script which tries its best to fix this: https://github.com/davwheat/giffgaff-flarum-better-post-dates

It only changes timestamps up to 2 days ago ~~but I can easily make a second version~~.

I've made a second version!

endorphin

mrjeeves nice one!

UPDATE: Er, I installed tampermonkey but only your "original" script works, the "alternative" script doesn't appear to do anything?!

Perhaps I've done something wrong but it's odd that one script works but the other doesn't!?

mrjeeves

endorphin

I hadn't tested the alternative and just kind of hoped it worked... I'll look into it...

@endorphin Fixed it! I had removed the creation of a variable but forgot to remove where it was used.

Original

Alternative

endorphin

mrjeeves Fixed it

Great it works now. I've played around with the date/time format locally to get something to my liking:

$(el).html(`${d.toLocaleDateString([],{day:'numeric',month: 'short',year: '2-digit'})}, ${d.toLocaleTimeString([],{hour: '2-digit', minute:'2-digit'})}

I would prefer "23-Sep-19" to "23 Sep 19" but adding the hyphens looks like a bit more effort!

mrjeeves

endorphin You should be able to do that using a date format string like DD-MMM-YY, HH:MM.

There's a function for it somewhere.

endorphin

mrjeeves too much work just for a couple of hyphens! I prefer simple, short code. 🙂

guy_ow

endorphin Just a quick one (if you know already then no worries) - have you clicked on the time stamp itself? (should work from both mobile and desktop).

endorphin

guy_ow have you clicked on the time stamp itself?

Yes and it does show the full date and time and a link to the post which can be copied. However that's an extra unnecessary step, in my view, to determine when the post was made.

guy_ow

endorphin That's fair enough 🙂 just wanted to check you knew about that. I suppose what would help would be knowing what you yourself uses the time stamps for, as this will give some background as to why it could be good to change them.

endorphin

guy_ow I like to see how old certain posts are in the thread. But apart from that I find the current various methods of specifying the timestamp rather quaint, unintuitive and difficult to assimilate.

I haven't seen those methods of specifying timestamps used in other support sites, which makes giffgaff's site stand out, for better or worse!

mrjeeves

endorphin The 'human-readable' timestamps are quite common in modern forums.

I don't mind seeing it in normal text but 'one hour ago' is annoying compared to 'one hour and fifteen minutes ago', for example.

endorphin

mrjeeves the worst ones are those that say something like 13 hours ago and you're reading it at 0920. What time was that posted? Quickly now!

mrjeeves

endorphin

Erm! Well... Erm... Yesterday? 😂

extreme_one

endorphin mrjeeves the worst ones are those that say something like 13 hours ago and you're reading it at 0920. What time was that posted? Quickly now!

I do take your point but can't help finding it amusing to wonder why it matters exactly when a post was created. 🤣

13 hours ago is perfectly adequate for me, whether it was posted at precisely 20:20 or 21:20 or 22:44 isn't really going to give me much pause for thought.

Anyway, each to their own.

Keep up the good work. 😉

endorphin

extreme_one I...wonder why it matters exactly when a post was created

That's just the technician in me - I used to work in software where preciseness was key. Like spelling 'giffgaff' correctly all the time. 😉

mrjeeves

extreme_one Just preference, I guess!