

Ask PG: Timestamps on posts and comments? - ubasu

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.<p>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".<p>I am sure this has been considered before and discussed, but what is the reason for one format over another?
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jacquesm
I 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.

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JoshCole
I 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.

