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"More than one year ago" - Actual Facebook date. What does this mean? Is this picture older or newer than the other picture, also labeled "More than one year a
by run4yourlives 14y ago
"More than one year ago" - Actual Facebook date.
What does this mean? Is this picture older or newer than the other picture, also labeled "More than one year ago"?
- dbecker 14y agoThe problem you are describing isn't a problem with relative dates. It is simply imprecision. You can make relative dates that are precise (e.g. 783 days and 4 hours ago), and you can make absolute dates that are imprecise (e.g. 2010).
- run4yourlives 14y ago783 days and 4 hours ago is even worse! What is that, like two years ago, oh maybe just over 2 years, oh shit no just under... We have a standardized date system. It's been in use around the globe for years. It works. Please use it.
- Aaronontheweb 14y agoNow you're just being pedantic - displaying the number of days since a picture was taken is not worse than not being able to differentiate past 12 moths.
- polyfractal 14y agoNo, he isn't being pedantic. It's a real, valid usability issue. "783 days and 4 hours ago" really is worse. If I am browsing a photo and look at that, my first reaction is "That photo was taken a long time ago". If my buddy asks when that happened, I'll have to start doing some simple math in my head. "Uhh, around two years ago? So what, that's 2010?" Simply putting the date would have been a much friendly solution. You know immediately that it was "a long time ago" because everyone knows what the current year is. And you know what year immediately. Conversely, on short scales it's opposite. I don't really care if a post was on Monday or Tuesday (usually). I care that it was recent. Providing the exact timestamp doesn't help. Both have their uses.
- jtheory 14y agoAgreed, on this one. Think about the task of correlating online events with events from your memory. Suppose you see a quote from you, saying something rude that seems out of character. Knowing that it was however many hundreds of days ago is useless; see that it was July 27, 2011, at 4am, and you'll say "oh, yeah, somewhere in late July we had X and Y over drinking into the wee hours... those #%#$%s must have been futzing with my computer after I fell asleep, and somehow I never noticed". Most importantly -- you have to predict the reasons people will be looking at dates, and this varies. Gmail shows both because they can't guess; email can carry so much different stuff. HN post/comment timestamps beyond a few days ago can be notated in number of days as far as I'm concerned; I don't need to know what year, even -- just "this is old". The timestamp on a blood sugar reading should include time of day (and possibly day of week even) -- a full timestamp, minimum -- to be useful. Etc..
- briandear 14y agoI vote we switch to the Julian Calendar. Of course, I'm partial to the Chinese Lunar Calendar. We could always use Unix time as well.
- halefx 14y agoHanke-Henry calendar is the most logical. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/rational-calendar/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/rational-calendar/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jarek 14y agoMy HN profile was created 864 days ago. When was it created?
- saraid216 14y agoOoh, ooh, I bet it was a January.
- theorique 14y agoJust over two years ago. (730+ days) If I needed an exact date, I would do something like the following (python) >>> import datetime >>> datetime.date.today()-datetime.timedelta(864) datetime.date(2010, 4, 13)
- icebraining 14y agoThis is why I'd love to have knowledge engines like WolframAlpha integrated everywhere (or at the very least, as a CLI program). http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=864+days+ago http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=864+days+ago
- prawn 14y agoPut the actual datetime in a title attribute. Or have a sort by date option.
- chrisrogers 14y agoRelative dates are effective up to a point. People think relatively about events for perhaps a month or two. Past that it probably becomes more effective to use absolute dates.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jerf 14y agoWhenever I use relative dates, I usually draw the line at either one week or one month, after which I go to absolute dates. It can be cognitively challenging to see a date from two days ago and work out whether it was two days or one day, hey, today's Thursday right so that was Tuesday etc., whereas from 2012 a timestamp from 2009 isn't cognitively challenging to read as "years ago", and if you want the precision, it's there. Personally when I've done it I often also simply always have the absolute time: "Wednesday, August 22nd at 8:22PM (a day ago)", with the order of the two elements chosen depending on which makes more sense.
- _delirium 14y agoThat'd be an improvement in HN, imo. Times like "12 minutes ago" or "3 hours ago" or even "9 days ago" are fine, but "1612 days ago" requires me to mentally convert to figure out when that actually was.
- Ideka 14y agoThat is a problem with Facebook, not with relative dates.
- ecesena 14y ago+1. I'm not a fan of relative dates as a user (although I maybe a too "scientific" mind) but I can't see any other way to display dates if timezone matters. When timezone no longer matters, e.g. after a few days, then I would switch back to absolute dates exactly to avoid such incomparable expressions.
- badclient 14y agoTwo things: (a) relative dates are much less useful further they get from present date; Facebook should probably have a cut off after which exact date is shown (b) relative dates do not replace exact dates; you should still make it relatively easy to see the exact timestamps even if it requires an extra click
- lucian1900 14y agoThe problem is that Facebook doesn't include both.