What definition of time is this forum using?

Arantor

I'm really confused by this forum's understanding of time. Since it's using a definition totally unrelated to any time system I am familiar with.

I saw a comment about blakeyrat leaving, so I went to his profile to see what was going on, and saw that he posted in the 'Discourse and our reaction to it' thread... and posted 1 day ago, according to users/blakeyrat/activity.

So I looked up the thread, his post was 23rd May. The last post in that thread was 6th June. Neither of these is '1 day ago'. Maybe there's some hidden post from a day ago I can't see but that shouldn't appear in the users->activity. And before anyone says 'PaulaBean rampage', we're talking about events from days ago not being updated.

Then, below that is @codinghorror mentioning blakeyrat in the 'Poll: How do you feel about Discourse on TDWTF' thread, which was a day ago. But somehow that's older than a post from 23rd May.

I've been trying to make sense of forum UI for years, even (to my shame) being part of the dev team of one of the OSS forum packages and yet they all have a sense of predictability about them that we simply don't have here. I should be able to make sense of the logic of things without having to look at the code behind it - and I can't here (and I'm really not about to go trawling the source to figure it out)

mikeTheLiar

@Arantor said:

I'm really confused by this forum's understanding of time.

Time is an illusion, ~~lunchtime~~ Discourse time doubly so.

Arantor

Have +1 internets, good sir.

Jaloopa

The most recent activity is a post of his being liked. If you click "Posts" on the left then you do get the last post as the 23rd of May.

error

Discourse is hosted on a server travelling near c, and as such is experiencing time dilation relative to your inertial reference frame.

Filed under: Listen: Discourse has come unstuck in time, Wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff

Arantor

Thank you for clarifying.

Every developer instinct in me says 'this is a bug' because the activity doesn't mention the post being liked. It says the topic was replied to and suggests it was done so a day ago. If it's basing that on when it was last liked, it should say so in the main activity log.

Hang on. Oh, wait, I see what's going on. Another example of awesome user interface design. Or how not to do it.

All the stuff where blakeyrat is being mentioned, it's 'x mentioned Bla key rat' and the time, as well as a synopsis of the post making the mention. So far so good.

If someone is making a post, again, so far so good, listing the post and the time.

But when it's someone liking the post, it displays it as if the person had made the post and the time of the like - but only showing the like under the post itself, giving a very false impression.

What it should do is display the avatar of the person doing the like, the topic, post synopsis and 'x liked y's post' with the time of the like because that would be clear, unambiguous and intuitive - unlike the current state of play.

Jaloopa

Yeah, it's pretty confusing and really looks like he posted that a day ago. On the upside, I felt super smart when I finally worked it out. Isn't that the point of a UI?

Arantor

That's the thing... something that I'd argue is so fundamental to the experience should not require this level of explanation.

The best UI is the one you don't have to explain. Or, for that one, one that makes you feel smart when you figure it out - because you shouldn't have to figure it out. That's the definition of being intuitive.

boomzilla

@Arantor said:

That's the thing... something that I'd argue is so fundamental to the experience should not require this level of explanation.

Well, when I look at my profile, and I'm on the "all" setting, each entry says something like, "You replied to #14," or "سمَـَّوُوُحخ ̷̴̐خ ̷̴̐خ ̷̴̐خ امارتيخ ̷̴̐خ replied to the topic." I guess the places where you liked something just say, "Posted by Arantor," and you have to see below where your avatar is next to the heart.

I think this is UX disaster in a similar way to nested quoting.

ben_lubar

@boomzilla said:

اما

lol

Maciejasjmj

@boomzilla said:

and you have to see below where your avatar is next to the heart.

Not to mention that those avatars apparently go away after one day. Or something like that. I haven't really figured it out, but most of the time there are less avatars than people who liked the post.

dhromed

@Maciejasjmj said:

most of the time there are less avatars than people who liked the post.

It tries to be smart.

And ends up being dumb.

I think.

I'm getting dumber every day so it's hard to tell.