Lost in the archives... February 9, 2013 8:44 PM Subscribe
On the monthly archives pages it is much easier to find out the time of day a post was made than the date a post was made. I think time of day and date should be equally accessible by listing both on the "posted by" line.
Also, anchor links* at the top of the page to each day of the month would be nice. Previously, kinda.
*I think that's what they're called. The ones that have a # in them. You know what I mean.
Also, anchor links* at the top of the page to each day of the month would be nice. Previously, kinda.
*I think that's what they're called. The ones that have a # in them. You know what I mean.
I also have always thought that the byline should contain dates as well as times. Having only the time posted is nearly useless in many situations -- and sometimes worse than useless, by being actively confusing. Threads take place over more than one day, after all.
posted by Scientist at 11:20 PM on February 9, 2013
posted by Scientist at 11:20 PM on February 9, 2013
Also, navigating a website by manually altering the URL is sometimes a handy trick but is generally also a pretty kludgy hack and not the way that the web is meant to operate. It's nice when it works, but it shouldn't be the primary way to perform a task.
posted by Scientist at 11:24 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by Scientist at 11:24 PM on February 9, 2013 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure what clorox's use case is, so just suggested that in the event it might help them to do whatever it is they want to do. Since they mention anchor tags for dates, it seemed that they might also possibly interested in this way of getting to any specific date, and it's something they might not have been aware of.
Pb can comment about any possible UI changes, I'm just offering some info that might be useful.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:11 AM on February 10, 2013
Pb can comment about any possible UI changes, I'm just offering some info that might be useful.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:11 AM on February 10, 2013
http://www.metafilter.com/daily.mefi/01/11/2011 would take you to January 11, 2011.
But for me that reads as 1st November, it would be better if the URLs were ISO 8601 metafilter.com/daily.mefi/2011-01-11
posted by Lanark at 4:47 AM on February 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
But for me that reads as 1st November, it would be better if the URLs were ISO 8601 metafilter.com/daily.mefi/2011-01-11
posted by Lanark at 4:47 AM on February 10, 2013 [5 favorites]
The archive pages are formatted exactly like the front page. There's a date headline that tells you what day a group of posts were made. When there's a new date headline, that means the following posts were made on that new day.
When you click into an archive you know the month and year because that's the choice you made when you clicked an archive link. The days are separated with that date headline. So if you're browsing through the archives, but not reading the headlines, you can scroll back up to the most recent headline to find the date for that group.
...it would be better if the URLs were ISO 8601...
We can consider supporting more date formats there, but we don't intend people to hack their own URLs. The daily archive page was set up for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years ago. feature on the front page sidebar. You can click a number to see the posts from that day x years ago. So it was set up for a very specific purpose, and we expected people to click on the provided links. The street finds its own uses for technology so I understand hacking your own if you need a particular day, I'm just letting you know why the URLs are structured that way.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:54 AM on February 10, 2013
When you click into an archive you know the month and year because that's the choice you made when you clicked an archive link. The days are separated with that date headline. So if you're browsing through the archives, but not reading the headlines, you can scroll back up to the most recent headline to find the date for that group.
...it would be better if the URLs were ISO 8601...
We can consider supporting more date formats there, but we don't intend people to hack their own URLs. The daily archive page was set up for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 years ago. feature on the front page sidebar. You can click a number to see the posts from that day x years ago. So it was set up for a very specific purpose, and we expected people to click on the provided links. The street finds its own uses for technology so I understand hacking your own if you need a particular day, I'm just letting you know why the URLs are structured that way.
posted by pb (staff) at 7:54 AM on February 10, 2013
Yeah the date URLs are one thing we didn't rewrite when we tried to make most of the dates make sense to folks who used different date styles, something we've tried to do most places with good effect. So I'm not sure of the use cases here either but once you're inside an archival thread, there is a date in the byline, like here and the year gets added to any non-this-year byline. If I'm not understanding something here, please let me know.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:56 AM on February 10, 2013
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:56 AM on February 10, 2013
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
http://www.metafilter.com/daily.mefi/02/09/2013
So changing it to http://www.metafilter.com/daily.mefi/01/11/2011 would take you to January 11, 2011.
As far as adding the date to the posted-by line, I do know that there is an effort to keep it as minimal as possible to avoid that line wrapping / breaking.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:51 PM on February 9, 2013