

Ask HN: '2 weeks ago' vs 'July 12, 2013 1:46pm' - snowfox

When you see postings or comments with a timestamp, would you prefer to see xx seconds&#x2F;minutes&#x2F;days&#x2F;weeks&#x2F;etc ago or the exact time stamp?  Why?
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MattBearman
I prefer an actual date, simply because when looking at a screenshot 'X days
ago' becomes meaningless unless you know when the screenshot was taken.

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snowfox
That's a good point. 'X days ago' becomes meaningless once the page is stale.

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keefe
I prefer to see absolute time - if I'm commenting somewhere online, I'm
probably not in tip-top cognitive shape and I usually check only every so
often.

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minimaxir
It depends on context of information and amount of design space available.
There's no one right answer.

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tokenadult
Is it hard to implement showing both? I like seeing both.

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snowfox
Both are not hard to implement. But exact timestamp has a timezone problem,
while 'xx ago' is universal.

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benologist
Make the timestamp relative to the viewer?

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seiji
(serious question) How?

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ElongatedTowel
Moment.js is pretty useful if you do it client side.

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seiji
Brilliant! I've been using timeago
([http://timeago.yarp.com](http://timeago.yarp.com)), but Moment.js
(especially with its timezone support) may solve some of my problems better.

