34 years ago, really?

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AI-generated summary

A user, patrickemin, noticed a bizarre system banner stating a user’s last post was “34 years ago”—despite the user having registered only 3 months prior. The notice, visible to admins and TL2+ users depending on settings like returning user notice tl JammyDodger, sparked confusion. ludwikc suggested a possible translation error (e.g., “days” misrendered as “years”), while RGJ uncovered the truth: the user had posted before—patrickemin had manually altered the post date of a topic in “Histoire” to 34 years ago, triggering the misleading notice. David_Ghost warned that changing post dates can harm SEO, citing Google’s stance on content dating. patrickemin clarified the post was unpublished and dated retroactively, so SEO impact was negligible—and suggested adding a feature to set topic dates before publishing. The mystery was resolved, and the notice was traced to a manual date edit, not a bug or translation glitch.

1

Hi, funny thing, one of my user who never posted but was registered something like 3 months ago posted today, and the system put a banner (visible only to the admin I guess):

It’s been a while since we last saw braudpatrice. His last message was 34 years ago.

Really , 34 years ago? :crazy_face:

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2

That notice will be visible to TL2+ depending on what you have set for returning user notice tl

Weird that it’s got 34 years written in it though. :thinking:

3

Thanks, did not know about this setting.

4

Just as a bonus, there’s a companion one for the new user notice as well - new user notice tl

You can also remove those post notices too using the post wrench if you need to. :+1:

5

Have you tried changing the language version? Maybe this is a translation error, like if days where translated to ans.

6

This is the text string I can adapt in French, the {time} variable is used, I do not know by what it is replaced:

It has been a while since we last saw %{user}. Their last message was %{time} ago.

7

I googled for the username and found this

The image displays a screenshot of a webpage in French, with a highlighted link to an article titled "L'opérateur Dao et la machine à café". (Captioned by AI)
The image displays a screenshot of a webpage in French, with a highlighted link to an article titled "L'opérateur Dao et la machine à café". (Captioned by AI)855×302 53.2 KB

So that is incorrect… they did post,

and I think you might have been editing the post date of all topics in “Histoire”.

8

Oh thanks so much, that’s right, I did change that topic date (and others). Mystery solved :smiley:

9

Hey Patrick,

I know this is not the subject of the thread, but changing the date of posts is dangerous for SEO, if you care about that. Be cautious

10

Thanks for the links, in my case I posted the topic then changed the date, seconds after the topic was published, for a very much older date, 34 years before ! So because the topic was not on Google index and because the date is not newer but much older, I think I don’t fall under the uses cases discussed in the articles you mention. BTW, I think having the ability to set a topic date before posting would be a bonus. I don’t think it’s possible ?