Postmortem on the 'ago' debate

[riking (Kane York)]

The ‘ago’ debate is dead, and it has been since June of last year. However, I think I have some outside insight on why it was ever a problem.

Observe:

@RGJ

And RGJ, May 24 could mean ’ I’m RGJ and I joined this forum the 24th of May’ (RGJ, 2 hours could also mean that I’m a newbie, in case another newbie reads that).

@FichteFoll

Now, in order to get real “out of context”:

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undefined

Edit: wow, this reads like codinghorror is undefined. Cool. …

@lookingsideways

In fact one of my first posts here was specifically about this, it took a significant amount of time for me to realise that the statement of time under the avatar was actually how long ago the post was created, not how much time that user has been active.

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Compare these to the image in this thread: http://discuss.howtogeek.com/t/style-op-name-differently/1413

The join date is below the avatar as one of the flair pieces, while the post time is above the avatar as part of the post data.

What do we have right now?

The post date is nowhere near the avatar.

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Maybe I’m just reading too much into this. Or maybe I am totally right. I’m not sure.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

I am not sure I am following any of this, but … awesome picture

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

The most useful observation is that the debate was not ultimately about the use of the word “ago” but the incorrect positioning of the timestamp which made the timestamp unnecessarily ambiguous. E.g. the problem was a bit higher level and deeper than the proposed fix.

Definitely agree the new positioning of the timestamp is better – and as you pointed out, titles go where the timestamp used to be, which makes a lot more sense as a title is strongly associated with the user, and the timestamp is strongly associated with the post. So the discussion had a good, positive outcome.

(And we still don’t repeat “ago” on every post, for which I am very happy. I really dislike repeated text unless it is utterly essential.)

[riking (Kane York)]

@codinghorror

The most useful observation is that the debate was not ultimately about the use of the word “ago” but the incorrect positioning of the timestamp which made the timestamp unnecessarily ambiguous.

Yes, this is what I was trying to get at @sam

Maybe I was overly pictoral in my post, obfuscating the intent.

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

For me it was about the word “ago” as well. Half a sentence bothered me.

We have 10h now … which is fine … “10 hours” would drive me nuts. That said, the new placement is way better imo.