Anything longer ago than yesterday should just say the actual date (grumpy.website)

Article summary

The article discusses the issue with using relative dates such as 'yesterday' or 'a week ago' on websites, as they can be misleading and unclear. The author argues that these labels pretend to speak human language but actually don't, as humans understand 'yesterday' to mean the day before, not just any time within the last 24 hours. The article suggests that using specific dates would be more accurate and helpful. The author believes that using relative dates can lead to a lack of trust and make the information less useful.

Main themes

• relative dates
• ambiguity and clarity
• human understanding of time
• date libraries and implementations
• precision and imprecision
• context-dependent usefulness of relative dates

What commenters say

• Some commenters argue that relative dates are useful when precision is not needed, but others counter that it can be ambiguous and unclear.
• There is disagreement over whether humans use 'yesterday' to mean a specific 24-hour period or a more general concept of the previous day.
• A few commenters suggest that using specific dates would be more accurate and helpful, while others argue that relative dates can provide a useful approximation of when something occurred.
• Some commenters point out that different date libraries and implementations can calculate relative dates differently, leading to inconsistencies and confusion.
• Others argue that relative dates can be useful in certain contexts, such as on GitHub where it can provide a quick intuition of when files were last updated.
• A few commenters note that using relative dates can lead to imprecision, such as on YouTube where '1 year ago' can mean anywhere from 365 to 729 days.
• There is a suggestion that using locale-aware date formatting could be a better approach than relying on relative dates.