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We'll I'd much rather see "posted last week" where precision isn't needed over having to look up the date in the calendar. Where precision is needed (maybe fin

by ctxc 3y ago

We'll I'd much rather see "posted last week" where precision isn't needed over having to look up the date in the calendar. Where precision is needed (maybe finegrained transactions?) date and time might be better.

jstanley 3y ago
The problem is that on Monday morning "posted last week" could mean it was posted less than 12 hours ago, or almost an entire week ago.
- DixieDev 3y ago
  Where have you seen a service describing something posted less than 12 hours ago as being "posted last week" rather than "posted yesterday"/"posted today"?
  - idbehold 3y ago
    The point is that both are technically correct. At 12:00am on January 1 that happens to fall on a Monday something that occurred 1 second ago can be considered to have taken place: last week (depending on when you consider weeks to start/end), last month, last year, yesterday, etc.
    - mynameisvlad 3y ago
      Sure, they’re both technically correct, but that wasn’t the question. The question was > Where have you seen a service describing something posted less than 12 hours ago as being "posted last week" rather than "posted yesterday"/"posted today"? Every single time display library I have seen will do as the poster explained, and show more granular information the closer it is (generally starting at “X seconds ago”). Your technicality is certainly true, but a strawman.
      - JdeBP 3y ago
        Actually, it's that question that is the straw man. jstanley's point is that to the reader "posted last week" could mean almost no time at all ago. It's not about the display library choosing to label recent things as this. It's about humans reading such a label and not receiving the intended information, because humans don't cut off what they understand "last week" to mean at some arbitrary 12-hours-ago mark.
        mynameisvlad 3y ago
        Except they do get the intended information. The label doesn’t exist in a vacuum; the user would have seen other examples showing the specificity at intervals other than “last week” which sensitizes them to the cutoff points. This is literally a non-problem. If a library behaved in the way the parent commenter makes them seem like, then, sure, they have a point. But they don’t. Something that occurred a second ago would say “a second ago”. Something that occurred 5 minutes and 43 seconds ago would say “6 minutes ago”, etc. There is no library in the world which takes a timestamp a second ago and outputs “a week ago” and pretending like there is is, literally, a strawman.
        jstanley 3y ago
        > the user would have seen other examples Yeah, I've seen enough examples to know that no 2 websites implement the same logic so I shouldn't try to second-guess anything more than what the text literally says.
      - mvdtnz 3y ago
        If the user needs to know the details of your "time display library" to disambiguate "last week" then you've already lost. It's bad UX. Stop doing it.
        mynameisvlad 3y ago
        But… users don’t. Literally no library out there does what the parent commenter claims they could do. They all use sensible cutovers for relative dates.
- kube-system 3y ago
  Most of the date libraries that do relative time formatting like this would use hours if it were hours ago.
variants 3y ago
Why would you need to look up lasts week date on a calendar
makeitdouble 3y ago
At the "last week" level, assuming we don't keep track of today's date, wouldn't it be good enough to see in the date if it's in the same month or not, and eventually see if it'rougly at the beginning, muddle or end of it ? If you were told something was uploaded on 2023-10-02, with just the average feeling that we're currently around the middle of the month we'd know the video is roughly a week or two in the past.
yosito 3y ago
If it's December 25th and something says "December 20th", so you really have to look at a calendar to know when it was, relative to today?
mvdtnz 3y ago
How do you know where precision is needed?
mathijs 3y ago
Exactly. A video on YouTube posted '1 month ago' is not the latest episode I'm looking for. Much quicker to interpret than a timestamp. Sometimes a fuzzy date is enough. Especially being from Europe: it is never clear if 10/04/23 means October 4th or April 11th unless you know which date format is being used.
- crgi 3y ago
  Agree. I also like the relative dates. E.g. on Github where it’s useful to get an intuition very fast of when files in folders/projects were last updated. I don‘t care about the actual dates in this moment, the fuzziness of the relative date is the approximation I‘m looking for.
- funcDropShadow 3y ago
  So instead of preferring actually locale-aware date formatting you would prefer fuzziness?
dolni 3y ago
If precision isn't needed, why do you need to know it was last week? Why can't the precise date be displayed for those who need it?

by ctxc 3y ago

jstanley 3y ago

The problem is that on Monday morning "posted last week" could mean it was posted less than 12 hours ago, or almost an entire week ago.

DixieDev 3y ago
Where have you seen a service describing something posted less than 12 hours ago as being "posted last week" rather than "posted yesterday"/"posted today"?
- idbehold 3y ago
  The point is that both are technically correct. At 12:00am on January 1 that happens to fall on a Monday something that occurred 1 second ago can be considered to have taken place: last week (depending on when you consider weeks to start/end), last month, last year, yesterday, etc.
  - mynameisvlad 3y ago
    Sure, they’re both technically correct, but that wasn’t the question. The question was > Where have you seen a service describing something posted less than 12 hours ago as being "posted last week" rather than "posted yesterday"/"posted today"? Every single time display library I have seen will do as the poster explained, and show more granular information the closer it is (generally starting at “X seconds ago”). Your technicality is certainly true, but a strawman.
    - JdeBP 3y ago
      Actually, it's that question that is the straw man. jstanley's point is that to the reader "posted last week" could mean almost no time at all ago. It's not about the display library choosing to label recent things as this. It's about humans reading such a label and not receiving the intended information, because humans don't cut off what they understand "last week" to mean at some arbitrary 12-hours-ago mark.
      - mynameisvlad 3y ago
        Except they do get the intended information. The label doesn’t exist in a vacuum; the user would have seen other examples showing the specificity at intervals other than “last week” which sensitizes them to the cutoff points. This is literally a non-problem. If a library behaved in the way the parent commenter makes them seem like, then, sure, they have a point. But they don’t. Something that occurred a second ago would say “a second ago”. Something that occurred 5 minutes and 43 seconds ago would say “6 minutes ago”, etc. There is no library in the world which takes a timestamp a second ago and outputs “a week ago” and pretending like there is is, literally, a strawman.
        jstanley 3y ago
        > the user would have seen other examples Yeah, I've seen enough examples to know that no 2 websites implement the same logic so I shouldn't try to second-guess anything more than what the text literally says.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      If the user needs to know the details of your "time display library" to disambiguate "last week" then you've already lost. It's bad UX. Stop doing it.
      - mynameisvlad 3y ago
        But… users don’t. Literally no library out there does what the parent commenter claims they could do. They all use sensible cutovers for relative dates.
kube-system 3y ago
Most of the date libraries that do relative time formatting like this would use hours if it were hours ago.

variants 3y ago

Why would you need to look up lasts week date on a calendar

makeitdouble 3y ago

At the "last week" level, assuming we don't keep track of today's date, wouldn't it be good enough to see in the date if it's in the same month or not, and eventually see if it'rougly at the beginning, muddle or end of it ? If you were told something was uploaded on 2023-10-02, with just the average feeling that we're currently around the middle of the month we'd know the video is roughly a week or two in the past.

yosito 3y ago

If it's December 25th and something says "December 20th", so you really have to look at a calendar to know when it was, relative to today?

mvdtnz 3y ago

How do you know where precision is needed?

mathijs 3y ago

Exactly. A video on YouTube posted '1 month ago' is not the latest episode I'm looking for. Much quicker to interpret than a timestamp. Sometimes a fuzzy date is enough. Especially being from Europe: it is never clear if 10/04/23 means October 4th or April 11th unless you know which date format is being used.

crgi 3y ago
Agree. I also like the relative dates. E.g. on Github where it’s useful to get an intuition very fast of when files in folders/projects were last updated. I don‘t care about the actual dates in this moment, the fuzziness of the relative date is the approximation I‘m looking for.
funcDropShadow 3y ago
So instead of preferring actually locale-aware date formatting you would prefer fuzziness?

dolni 3y ago

If precision isn't needed, why do you need to know it was last week? Why can't the precise date be displayed for those who need it?