We should highlight large time gaps between posts, with a relative indicator like so
Except, we should use the word later. So in a long discussion you’d see the gaps
3 weeks later
6 months later
1 year later
Called out so it is clearer when the “resurrections” were, and you can respond appropriately, follow the discussion’s evolution over time more easily, etc.
Sounds like it would fit well with this old idea:
At what point does a gap become large? 1 week? 2 days? Site setting?
Probably site setting but I think a default of 4 days might be a good start.
Well if you use some sort of heat map approach, it is large when it is much bigger than other gaps in similar topics. What would be a similar topic? My first guess would be something in the same category with about the same number of posts before the gap. This would accommodate television show topics which would likely spike weekly separately from say full moon topics which would spike monthly(ish).
4 days would work for existing communities converting to Discourse, but seems low for a a brand new forum that hasn’t gotten the ball rolling yet. Seeing a bunch of tumbleweeds is unlikely to motivate people to stick around. There should perhaps be a hint next to the setting to guide people in the right direction.
I’ve implemented this feature.
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/42bd9b61998743a38cd4bd299bb0716ebccd3a02
Unfortunately tests seem to be randomly failing now so it’s not deployed to meta yet. It will be out once we sort that out though 
Ok this is now in, but may need some styling. I generally like the way it looks, but unfortunately it also looks a bit too much like a button…
Also one minor bug: when posting in an old topic, you see the “1 year later” pop up and then it is consumed by the re-rendered post.
Perhaps just swap background-color for a background with a linear-gradient blending top and bottom out to transparent.
Here is (left to right) the original, short blend to alpha top and bottom, larger blend:
You might need to click the image to zoom to really see what it will look like.
I just messed around with styling a bit
see it in action here 
https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-is-the-most-awesome-plugin-for-discourse-that-does-not-yet-exist/31/218
Let’s try it for size and see how we feel about it.
Ooh, I like the clock!
I missed it out of there with a css rule, we need to come up with a sane style there …
Probably just the text no glyph on mobile. Or a very small glyph to the left.
OK, I just committed this:
I think it looks fine
I noticed this yesterday but forgot to fix it before I pushed:
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/00572c4f1134f2d717dee41c4d75e5d32afed534
FYI, I love this feature! Seeing it on Meta first hand, I completely see it as beneficial.
