4 ms·

(All of the comments on this post say they are from 10-15 minutes ago, but I remember reading them hours ago, and Algolia shows they were made days ago. <- For

by saurik 8y ago

(All of the comments on this post say they are from 10-15 minutes ago, but I remember reading them hours ago, and Algolia shows they were made days ago. <- For potential future reference, my/this comment was posted at 3:42pm US/Pacific on April 28th of 2019.)

laingc 8y ago
Same issue here.
rachelbythebay 8y ago
View the same comments from the profile page of their authors and they’re days old. This feels like some zombie post resurrection trickery with the time stamps. dang?
- dang 8y ago
  "Zombie post resurrection trickery with timestamps" is on the nose. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and my answer to saurik above.
saagarjha 8y ago
The comments might have been folded/combined with another thread's in a way that reset their timestamps.
dang 8y ago
Sorry for the confusion. It's because when moderators or story reviewers re-up a post, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380, the timestamp is adjusted to be the re-up time, on the front page and the thread page (/item). Well, not precisely the re-up time—rather the timestamp that answers the question, "when would a submission with this many points have been posted in order to have this rank on the front page". Of the three variables—points, timestamp, rank— rank is normally the dependent one, but on re-upping, timestamp becomes a dependent variable since the software is setting a rank (randomly, but usually around #20). We started doing this because it turned out that if you lob a story onto the front page with an old (say "2 days ago") timestamp, the thread will turn into "how is this story on the front page when it was posted 2 days ago". If you ever see a timestamp inconsistency on HN, this is likely why. You can always tell which post is the earlier one by comparing the IDs in their URLs. The timestamps converge after a day or two, so the confusion is at least temporary. The original timestamp is always visible on other pages, such as /from?site=domain.com and /submitted?id=username, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=chkuendig https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=chkuendig and https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dailydot.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dailydot.com for the current article.

by saurik 8y ago

laingc 8y ago

Same issue here.

rachelbythebay 8y ago

View the same comments from the profile page of their authors and they’re days old. This feels like some zombie post resurrection trickery with the time stamps. dang?

dang 8y ago
"Zombie post resurrection trickery with timestamps" is on the nose. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 and my answer to saurik above.

saagarjha 8y ago

The comments might have been folded/combined with another thread's in a way that reset their timestamps.

dang 8y ago

Sorry for the confusion. It's because when moderators or story reviewers re-up a post, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380, the timestamp is adjusted to be the re-up time, on the front page and the thread page (/item). Well, not precisely the re-up time—rather the timestamp that answers the question, "when would a submission with this many points have been posted in order to have this rank on the front page". Of the three variables—points, timestamp, rank— rank is normally the dependent one, but on re-upping, timestamp becomes a dependent variable since the software is setting a rank (randomly, but usually around #20). We started doing this because it turned out that if you lob a story onto the front page with an old (say "2 days ago") timestamp, the thread will turn into "how is this story on the front page when it was posted 2 days ago". If you ever see a timestamp inconsistency on HN, this is likely why. You can always tell which post is the earlier one by comparing the IDs in their URLs. The timestamps converge after a day or two, so the confusion is at least temporary. The original timestamp is always visible on other pages, such as /from?site=domain.com and /submitted?id=username, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=chkuendig https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=chkuendig and https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dailydot.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=dailydot.com for the current article.