I'd suggest adding the day/date/month for anything from the previous day (before the previous midnight in your given timezone), rather than the previous 24 hours. That said, time zones could make the difficult, I have no idea.

Actually, it says the weekday if the postbwas more than 24 hours ago.

@Draug: they are talking about the posts that occur in the previous day, but still within 24hrs.

Also, it's not just forum posts. It happens in timestamps across the website.

Look at the "will you be my friend" thread and you will see posts on "Sun 1PM" if you are in EDT.

Well how hard is it to realize that it's 1:30 so a post at 3:08PM must be from yesterday? Duh!

But simple solution is add the day stamp for anything over 12 hours old.

Obviously it's not a huge issue, but I find when I see just a time I assume it's from the same day. I don't like it how two posts from the same day could be written "Sunday 3pm" and directly after "4pm". Surely I'm not the onyl one who finds this system a little weird.

Yeh, that would sound reasonable to me.
I'd quite happily support adding the day for anything the previous day, but perhaps 12 hours would be more reasonable? Otherwise this would get particularly annoying for people who're around near midnight!

Don't mess with time; it'll play with your mind.

I'm planning on visiting australia soon just before Samoa jump forward a day so that I can win the Samoa Lottery - anybody want to help fund my trip, it's a dead cert we will win?

It seems that there are two options being considered:
1) Add the day for timestamps from the previous day (thus making the previous midnight the threshold).
2) Add the day for timestamps from more than 12 hours ago (moving the threshold from -24hrs to -12hrs).

Personally, I like option 1 more. Option 2 would result in situations where looking at the webpage in the evening would show the day on timestamps for posts from the morning, which could seem a bit odd.

I think people may be more accustomed to seeing the day break at midnight as opposed to an arbitrary 12hr interval. It may be a bit jarring to see the timestamps suddenly start showing the day at midnight, but perhaps that is more appropriate since it reflects an actual day transition and has the benefit of making people more aware that the day has changed.

Option 2 would also result in situations where viewing the website in the morning would show timestamps from the previous evening without the timestamps. This would be strange for people who would intuitively expect posts from the previous evening to be marked.

Of course, all of this is not a huge issue. It's unambiguous as it is now, however, it requires one to notice AM/PM and the current time. Adding the day label is just to make things more convenient and aesthetically pleasing.

Option 2 would be easier to code, modification wise as Option 1 requires checking the time zone as well as the time difference.

But, Option 2 could be coded in a similar manner by checking the timecode adjusted day of the post against the current time code adjusted day and displaying it if they are different.

...er... I meant Option 1 could be coded in a similar manner...

I don't think that "difficulty" of coding should be a huge factor here. They both seem pretty trivial. I'll download the source and take a look at it later today. Could someone point me to which file(s) I should look at it?

As you just said, option 1 simply requires "checking the timecode adjusted day of the post against the current time code adjusted day and displaying it if they are different"

Yeah, but option 2 requires changing a variant value or a constant from 24 to 12. However, neither is that difficult. Look for the javascript library. It should be just one routine used in all date time displays. At least if it was designed right it will be and Kestas is one pretty good designer so I'm sure it is.

Looks like it is this file
webdiplomacy/javascript5/timeHandler.js

Sounds like it. I don't have the code on my corporate machine...

Yeah, "webdiplomacy/javascript5/timeHandler.js" is the appropriate file. All that needed to be changed was the "dateToText" function.

Here is an implementation of Option 1:
http://pastebin.me/883abdacdb3feca6b4ed96541305c837
Edit the code at the bottom in order to play with different time values.

^^ I wonder if its worth writing up a little Greasemonkey script for it?
How many people would want it?

Note that this function is also used for the countdown timers. I think that option 1 is more appropriate than option 2 in this context, since option 2 as well as what the way the website is now results in deadlines that are on the next but within 12 hours (or 24 hours as it is now) to display only the time, which can be a little confusing.

So for times that aren't on the current day but with 4 days, only the hour and day of week is displayed.

Perhaps adding the minutes would be helpful? Or maybe just adding the minutes if within 24 hrs? What are people's thoughts?

This could be an issue near midnight, since once that boundary is crossed, the resolution of minutes disappears suddenly posts that just happened.

I think I'll also take a look at the "remainingText" function since I've noticed that sometimes the time remaining says funny stuff like "1 hour, 60 minutes" or "1 day, 24 hours". It must just be a rounding issue.

This is a separate issue independent of what he have been discussing so far.

^^ three posts ago:
"next but" should be "next day but"

^^ two posts ago:
"with 4 days" should be "within 4 days"
"suddenly posts" should be "suddenly for posts"

^^ previous post:
"of what he" should be "of what we"

I agree the countdown needs some work. I think anything less than a day should have minutes and anything less than an hour should have seconds.

As far as the midnight thing's concerned, I for one am used to all timestamps suddenly changing to *yesterday* as we hit midnight. I find it's not a problem. Obviously I'm voting option 1. :)

gigantor +1 - Honestly, if you're on at midnight, you kind of expect this to happen.

But is it ok to see timestamps suddenly go from "11:46 PM", "11:57 PM", etc to "Mon 11 PM", "Mon 11 PM", etc?

Well, adding minutes to that widens the display field significantly. Maybe an Option 3 would be to shift to Mon 11:46 PM until a full 2 hours have passed. So, at 2:00 AM, the Mon 11:46 PM would become Mon 11 PM.

Yeah, I had a similar thought as well. Basically add a trailing window where minutes are always displayed. So, there would just a be a small part of the day where one would see both minutes and day of week.

Or if the minutes is a serious issue, we could ditch the AM/PM and use a 24 hour display. But some people may not like that.

Or have a tooltip popup with the minutes when you hover over the time?

Ok, this version adds two lines (35,36)
http://pastebin.me/883abdacdb3feca6b4ed96541306b961
that implement a window that ensures that any time within 3 hours (both forward or backward) will always have the minutes even if it also displays the weekday due to the time being on a different day.

Another thing I noticed. The leading zero in front of a single digit hour is inconsistent. A leading zero is added to single digit PM hours, but not to single digit AM hours. Perhaps this wasn't intentional and just a bug. What are people's thoughts on this?

Sounds like a bug to me.

Yeah, I agree it seems like a bug. However it does raise a question

Style question: Should we use a leading zero for single digit hours?
e.g. 05:00pm, 09:15am OR 5:00pm, 9:15am

Personally, I vote for no leading zero for a single digit hour.

@gigantor: ideally a player would be able to choose that as an option. The javascript that I am editing is simply a function that converts the date object to a rendered time string. I could easily add an alternate function that displays time in a 24hr format, but working that feature into the website would require changes in the settings interface and user profile database (to store that option).

@draug: that is a nice idea. maybe the tooltip could display the full date/time string in the local time zone. implementing this would also be a bit beyond my scope, i think requiring some changes outside of this javascript file.

@figles: greasemonkey, that's a nice idea. however, it does require the user to using firefox plus that add-on. it would be nice if the site in general was more tailored for such scripts. speaking broadly, that could allow people to tweak many parts of the interface.

I would vote for having 24hour clock, and I think i'd get used to yesterday after a bit.

I'll put my hat in the ring for no leading zero. Well noticed, yebellz.

If only this were my greatest problem...

@tallfred: what do you mean? did you notice some other issues?

Don't you dare mock the seriousness of an inconsistant and slightly illogical timestamp on the publicly moderated forum of a website for a board game!

My humblest apologies, gigantor, yebellz and Dip Community at large. I lost perspective there for a moment. Please brainwash me once more, if indeed there is a brain to wash.