Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jamesaguilar 5041 days ago
If you can recognize cases where timestamps are important, you should be able to recognize cases where they aren't, too. Why does it matter exactly when a Pinterest item was pinned? Answer: for the vast majority of cases, it simply doesn't.
2 comments
run4yourlives 5041 days ago
But the stupidity is that you are taking away something for no good reason. You already know the date of the pin. You figure it's important to show this, but then you make it completely useless instead of providing the already useful piece of information you actually had.
link
lucajona 5041 days ago
Providing perfect information isn't always as important as providing information that's quick and easy for people to process.

Take a piece of information like '12 Apr 2012 10:09 AM PST'--there's a fair bit of mental arithmetic required to work out how long ago that was, if 'how long ago' is important to you. And it's different arithmetic depending on whether you're looking at it on the 12th of April (time zone adjustments, crossing noon)or the 14th of June (how many days in April and March). Multiply this by the number of dates on a screen, and you might end up with a lot of information noise.

A lot of the time, a quick, rough idea of 'how long ago it was' is really helpful. I wouldn't be so quick to label relative dates as stupid. Information overload is a real problem for humans, not so much for computers. It really depends on the circumstances, but for most UIs designed to be read by people, relative dates can work really well.

link
jeltz 5040 days ago
I would say such calculations are made much easier if time stamps are expressed in ISO format where all parts of the date are in order and numeric.

2012-04-12 10:09 PST

Since it is August 2012 now it is roughly 4 months ago (and one rarely needs more precision than this).

link
jfrankamp 5040 days ago
So "roughly 4 months ago", I'll take this as a +1 for relative dates.
link
electic 5041 days ago
It really does matter because "a year ago" is VAGUE. Is that 1.5 years ago? 1.1 years ago? 1.6 years ago? And depending on the content, it is even more critical. Let's say it is a sporting event of Usain Bolt. Did that amazing shot of him running happen in the Olympics or at a meet? No. Idea.
link