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In the new comment layout experiment (2025), comments are being labelled with "Over a year ago" instead of the actual date. Why would you seek to hide this information? In my opinion it's just making the site harder to use.

Let's fix this by showing the actual date of comments instead of an unhelpful approximation.

Yes, I do realize that there is still an exact-date tooltip, but some others may not and frankly the tooltip is harder to use than just looking at the timestamp normally.

Here's a screenshot of an old comment of mine. You can see the tooltip saying that it's from 2017.

enter image description here

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  • hmm... all the comments i was able to quickly find older than a year contain the full date (i'm on the new comment layout that's being tested)
    – Kevin B
    Commented Jul 15 at 18:36
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    This is related to A/B testing in this experiment, right? If yes, you could consider moving this info to an answer there. Otherwise we might need a screenshot because I'm not seeing it and I tried to find posts with enough comments: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1907507
    – rene
    Commented Jul 15 at 18:36
  • I put a screenshot in the question for clarification.
    – nullromo
    Commented Jul 15 at 18:38
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    @rene Thanks for the pointer. Looks like this was pointed out before: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/434473/4476484
    – nullromo
    Commented Jul 15 at 18:41
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    Can we at least use the more Geek-appropriate, "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away[?]"
    – user4581301
    Commented Jul 15 at 19:28
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    Worse yet, in the new experiment layout, the datetime stamp is no longer a hyperlink. Regression!
    – TylerH
    Commented Jul 15 at 19:56
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    @TylerH yes, noticed that as well, very annoying, you can still get the link through the "…" menu with as many clicks (assuming you'd usually just "right click" → "copy link") that being said there really isn't a reason to not also have the date hyperlinked.
    – cafce25
    Commented Jul 15 at 20:32
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    Ahh yes, hide more stuff behind an area of the site that isn't accessible of touch devices... That's accessibility... Not to mention that is doesnt even respect the logic for other stuff. That "date stamp" shpuld at least say "Over 7 years ago"
    – Thom A
    Commented Jul 16 at 8:04
  • Is it really that terrible though? There are a lot of things to dislike about the new comment system, for me this is not one of them. Old comments tend to be best left alone or deleted. Perhaps flatly stating "yow. This comment is over a year old dude" will make people pay more attention and not give in to their "someone is wrong on the internet" urges? Dates are boring.
    – Gimby
    Commented Jul 16 at 9:20
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    Considering how old answers can, and are, updated frequently, and it's now impossible to tell if the comments are older than the revision at a glance (or all events are 1+ years ago), yes that is a problem, @Gimby . Dates might be "boring" to you, but they are far more informative. I, for one, don't give my date of birth as "more than 1 year", or the current year as "More than 1 year since the birth of Jesus", nor would I answer the qusetion "when did you join the company?" with "More than 1 year ago." It's not helpful information.
    – Thom A
    Commented Jul 16 at 11:52
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    @Gimby Maybe I'm too curious for my own good, but I'd rather know whether a comment was from 15 years ago or from last year. To me, at least, that can make a difference and I can easier spot comments to potentially flag. Maybe that's not how I'm supposed to be using the information - do let me know if I'm reading and interpreting information wrong, and how I can do it right. Note that I am often browsing without using my mouse, so if the correct way is "Just hover over everything", I'm even more wrong in how I use the internet and would have to adapt. Despite my wrist discomfort.
    – VLAZ
    Commented Jul 17 at 10:13
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    My duplicate question but with a concrete example of dates being useful: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/434534
    – Gassa
    Commented Jul 19 at 9:47

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