Switch from relative to absolute timestamps after a relevant period
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	• jmatazzoni
	Mar 11 2016, 1:14 AM

Description

Notification timestamps are all in relative time -- 2s, 2m, 2h, 2d, 2mo, 2y, 3y... While it's useful to see that an event took place "yesterday", knowing that something occurred "3y" ago is the opposite of helpful, since the same timestamp might apply to notifications that arrived 364 days apart.

We can debate what the ideal interval is after which we should switch to absolute time. Mac Mail, for example, goes to dates after "yesterday," while Twitter trips to dates after "24h." We can also discuss the proper form notation should take. One thing worth noting is that as long as dates are within the current year, we can safely drop the year from notation. Whether "within the current year" means within the current calendar year or the current trailing 12-month can, again, be debated when the time comes.

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Status	Assigned	Task
		· · ·
Resolved	Esanders	T119374 Styling adjustments for the Notification Panel
Resolved	None	T114351 Better organisation for the Notification System
Duplicate	None	T129610 Switch from relative to absolute timestamps after a relevant period
		· · ·

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• jmatazzoni created this task.Mar 11 2016, 1:14 AM

Restricted Application added a subscriber: Aklapper. · View Herald TranscriptMar 11 2016, 1:14 AM

• jmatazzoni updated the task description. (Show Details)Mar 11 2016, 1:15 AM

Some considerations (some I mentioned when discussing it for Flow in T111596#1804185 ):

I totally agree with relative timestamps being useful in the "recent period". So keeping relative for a short term and absolute for a longer term makes total sense to me.
I also proposed to make the absolute times to be contextual, that is, not repeating the year if it is the current one. That helps these to be more compact but still read naturally.
In the specific case of notifications, absolute timestamps may just need the day reference and not the exact time. If we are using "2 days ago" for a recent notification I don't think we need to know that last years notification happened at 3:15pm, knowing that it was on "April 3, 2015" should be enough.

I would propose the "recent period" to be the current month. So an example list of timestamps could be:

3 min.
2 h
1 day
20 days
Feb 1
Nov 20, 2015

This keeps things consistent with the division by day we use in the Notification Page (i.e., you don't have several daily groups with notifications saying "1 month ago")

More timestamp format related discussions at T94648: Examine the use of Elapsed vs Exact timestamps in Flow

Pginer-WMF added a parent task: T119374: Styling adjustments for the Notification Panel.Mar 11 2016, 9:26 AM

Pginer-WMF mentioned this in T119374: Styling adjustments for the Notification Panel.Mar 11 2016, 9:29 AM

Pginer-WMF added a parent task: T114351: Better organisation for the Notification System.

Pginer-WMF mentioned this in T114351: Better organisation for the Notification System.

MGChecker subscribed.Mar 13 2016, 12:36 PM

Quiddity closed this task as a duplicate of T94648: Examine the use of Elapsed vs Exact timestamps in Flow.May 14 2016, 12:50 AM

Quiddity mentioned this in T94648: Examine the use of Elapsed vs Exact timestamps in Flow.