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Ask PG: Timestamps on posts and comments?
I often bookmark the HN thread itself for an article (as I am sure many others do) because of the information content in the comments.
When I go back to a post that was made sometime ago, sometimes I feel it may be helpful to know the specific date it was posted, rather than just "n days ago".
I am sure this has been considered before and discussed, but what is the reason for one format over another?
- JoshCole 16y agoI find it far easier to parse the current implementation as a reader. I have a bit more trouble parsing it when I'm writing a script that scrapes Hacker News. Speaking of which, if anyone wants some Clojure code that converts a Hacker New's timestamp into a date, let me know.
- jacquesm 16y agoI have the opposite on most other sites and actually really like this format, which suggests a preference in the user settings. The reason why I like the current format is because I always find myself doing mental arithmetic to figure out how old a post is when I see a timestamp. It also makes scanning for 'new' stuff much quicker, they have 'minute(s)' or 'hour(s)' in their headers.