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Change timestamp to relative
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Description

Change the timestamps that appear within the review changes module from absolute time and date to a relative timestamp.

The goal of this change is twofold:

  • Make it clearer that the changes being presented are recent and therefore relevant.
  • Cut down unhelpful information (eg: We don't need to specify "Today" 5 times when showing a time, eg: No need to specify the year for things that happened this year).

Some examples:

BeforeAfter
14:32, Today3 mins ago
11:32, Today3 hours ago
30 March 2026Yesterday
20 March 20261 week ago
30 February 20261 month ago

I imagine/hope there are already translation strings within the wiki ecosystem for "short relative timestamps" already! Ideally we'll re-use those. If they don't exist, let's talk more about the definition of these values. Shortenings (eg: mins) would of course happen on a language-by-language basis.

Acceptance criteria

  • In the Review Changes module, the timestamp for each edit is a relative time frame, rather than a specific one.
  • The relative time uses the same format as the Active Discussions module

Event Timeline

Presumably we could use the same system we used in the Active Discussions module:

Screenshot 2026-03-31 at 14.12.36.png (916×1 px, 138 KB)

Scardenasmolinar changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Apr 3 2026, 6:53 PM
Scardenasmolinar claimed this task.
Scardenasmolinar moved this task from Ready to In Progress on the Moderator-Tools-Team (Kanban) board.

Change #1267919 had a related patch set uploaded (by Scardenasmolinar; author: Scardenasmolinar):

[mediawiki/extensions/PersonalDashboard@master] Risky Articles: Change timestamp to relative

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1267919

Change #1267919 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/PersonalDashboard@master] Risky Articles: Change timestamp to relative

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/1267919

Looking good on enwiki.