date/timestamp on thread

[mauser]

I'd like to thank you guys for responding to the requests of some members and trying the other method. It shows that you are listening to your members and trying to do what's best. You did give it a good amount of time before you switched back. I respect your decision and have no complaints at all. You need it to suit your needs, which far outweigh the reasons for my preference.
It's that kind of commitment and attention that make this such a great site.
Keep up the good work!

[Zef_66]

ah well...it was nice while it lasted. Can't have my cake and eat it too.

[TFred]

I'm reluctant to resurrect such an old thread, especially since I am an infrequent poster here. I do stop by to catch up once in a while, and in doing so, I am one of those frustrated with the unusual time and date stamp format.

I frequent other vBulletin based forums, and this is the only one I know of that chooses to use the relative time and date stamp.

From a little bit of quick research, I discovered the options available to the forum administrators, which are described here.

Also, I found that there has been at least one really beneficial suggestion made on the vBulletin support forum which would be the 'best of both worlds', but the lack of reaction and support don't give me warm fuzzies that it will ever be implemented.

The perfect solution would be for the developers to move this setting down to the user setup area, so each can choose what they prefer.

Having said all that... I do support the "normal" option, because of what it is... a time stamp. Displaying the time of a post in terms that do not relay the intended information (what actual time the post was made) seems rather pointless, especially in such a high volume bulletin board.

Some solid examples of where the relative format does not do the job:

If you tend to leave a browser window open on a thread page, so that you can read through the messages as you have time throughout the day, it is impossible to keep track of the age of the messages you happen to be reading without constantly reloading the page. Forcing users to constantly reload in order for the times displayed to have correct meaning increases your hosting bandwidth requirements.

Also, sometimes messages are posted "in crossing", with one or more posters composing replies to messages at the same time. It is helpful to keep such threads in context if the actual post time is provided, especially if you are catching up on a thread hours later. If you only see that a group of several messages were all posted "4 hours ago", that prevents you from knowing that all the posters were replying to one another quickly and perhaps simultaneously, whereas if the actual post times were provided and only a minute or two apart, the nature of that communication is easily seen and better understood.

Finally, when posting messages about current events, it can be extremely important to know the time of a post. As threads age, "X days ago" hides whether or not a post was likely made with other information at hand, such as breaking news stories or information learned from other resources. Context is very important, and sometimes the exact time of a post is a big part of that.

In summary, it simply seems unwise to discard useful information in favor of a more pleasant format.

Anyway, just some thoughts from an infrequent poster, and occasional reader.

TFred

[ungawa]

I went back and forth with this when I was configuring the board, what I ultimately decided on is that in most cases '1 day ago' is more useful than an exact date which one would have to look at closer and calculate.

I'd be interested to hear people's opinions.

I still don't like it. Can't tell when people posted after a day or so. Also, can't tell when they edited a post. Could be right after they posted or could be a day later. Or a week later. No way to tell.

The lack of time sort of screws up the dynamic of a thread for me. After a couple weeks I can't tell if somebody replied to a post the next day or two weeks later.