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What is the rationale behind "Over a year ago" when showing when a comment was made?

It seems worse in every way than just saying "X years ago".

e.g.: Comment showing "Over a year ago" with mouseover showing the actual date

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    I found several posts complaining about it, but nobody with anything to say in its defence... Commented Mar 27 at 9:18
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    It makes it seem like the conversation is more recent than it is. Commented Mar 27 at 9:18
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    @VLAZ: Falls apart pretty quick if you try to participate in that conversation.... Commented Mar 27 at 9:19
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    SE want engagement. Not real genuine engagement. As long as there is more interactions, that's what ticks off the metrics. Commented Mar 27 at 9:20
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    "but nobody with anything to say in its defence" because there's isn't one. The only reasoning I've seen (from staff) is because comments are ephemeral so would be deleted; that is true, many comments are deleted, but there are plenty that have value and aren't. It's a incredible naive perspective. Commented Mar 27 at 9:24
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    @NickBarnes I think your confusion stems from expecting the company to take logical and explainable decisions. However, they literally did say that comments ephemera and based on this expressed confusion why people would find value in a more accurate timestamp. Commented Mar 27 at 9:39
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    There are literally 0 benefits for the users, only drawbacks. Company does it to reach its own goals, regardless of the feedback. Yes, it is sad. You probably want to read this, this and this. Commented Mar 27 at 9:52
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    This is one of those things where I am an absolute contrarian. I do not care one bit what exact year something was posted in, I only care if something is recent or not because recent things are still alive. "Over a year ago" is perfect for me, it implies "do not waste time on this because you'd just be necro'ing". The exact opposite of what the company wanted to achieve, apparently :) But that's where the contrarian bit comes in again. Commented Mar 27 at 11:43
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    @Gimby: Having an opinion doesn't make you a contrarian :) I don't care about the exact year either, but I don't think 14 months and 14 years belong in the same bucket... Commented Mar 27 at 12:13
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    Is there any userscript or such to get rid of the "Over a year ago" nonsense? Whether a comment is 1 year old or 10 has a material impact on how that information is processed. A comment from 14 months ago is a lot more likely to still be valid than a comment from 14 years ago... Commented Mar 27 at 14:11
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    @QwertyChouskie at the moment the whole comment redesign is an "experiment", so opting out of experiments will restore the old and vastly better design, including sane timestamps. To do so, go to your profile, then to the settings tab, select "Preferences" under "Site Settings", and toggle the "Enable experiments" checkbox. If the expermient graduates in its current form, this will of course no longer have an effect. Commented Mar 27 at 15:18
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    @M.Justin: Ok done. I thought it was like this for everyone, but it turns out I'm probably being experimented on. Yes, I am old to SO but new to meta... Commented Mar 27 at 17:41
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    @VLAZ "ticks off the metrics" It ticks off the users also. Commented Mar 27 at 19:09
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    For what it's worth, replacing actual information with less accurate information should always be avoided. "14 years ago" provides temporal context to the actual year. "Over a year ago" - take your guess how many. It just leaves you shaking your head that somebody actually thought that was a good idea.... Really? It's not even April Fool's yet. Commented Mar 29 at 6:22
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    I just leave this here: time.s-user-card--time { font-size: 0 !important; } time.s-user-card--time:before { content: attr(title); font-size: var(--fs-caption); } Commented Mar 29 at 17:46

2 Answers 2

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This is in order to get more comments.

This post questioned why the "Over a year ago" was used and staff commented the following. I will collect the comments here for easier reading but see the comment thread for more context:

To give a bit of context - the hypothesis here is that users (especially newer users) might feel less inclined to reply to comments from, say, 2015. We just want to see if this makes a difference.

(link)

it's totally fine for new users to reply to old comments (e.g. to add more information). The hypothesis here is that showing an absolute date of 2015 might cause users to not bother contributing because the content is already old and out-of-date.

(link)

We're just looking to understand user behaviour. We might find that it has no effect. We might find that we get more comments, but they're not the comments that we want. We might find that we get great new contributions. We run experiments to see what happens, then we can make informed decisions.

(link)

Then on how the timestamp part of the experiment was controlled for:

50% of users see the "over a year ago" date and both of those groups contain evenly proportioned populations for other variables, so we can rule out other factors. We can even compare with variables to say for example "date makes more of a difference when there's a smaller font" (although with smaller groups like that it takes longer to reach statistical significance).

(link)

Later on when it was pointed out (again) that "Over a year ago" is misleading for older comments, staff responded with the following:

A lot of recent feedback has been that comments are ephemeral in nature, yet the feedback here seems to be about comments providing useful additional context to an answer. Can they be both?

(link)

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    ... staff misunderstanding here - because the content is already old and out-of-date - just because it is old doesn't mean it's out of date/irrelevant. The old ones are the best! One of the most useful features of SO was for those of us working with old technology. Commented Mar 30 at 6:38
  • @MT1 What do you mean by "staff misunderstanding"? It seems to me like it's new users who are misunderstanding this, and staff decided to not show the exact date to encourage new users to reply to old (but not out-of-date) comments. Commented Apr 1 at 9:57
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I was really confused by this new "feature"!

"Internet Explorer doesn't support this 'yet'? In 2025? Wait... this comment is from 10 years ago!"

I never post on Stack Overflow, but I use it all the time -- this really makes the site a lot harder to use and a lot less useful.

Hopefully me coming out of nowhere to leave this answer (sorry, I think I can't comment) will help make the case to the people in charge that this is not a change that benefits even non-posting users. This pretty much sucks, I'm sorry to have to be the one to say it!

You can delete this if you want as I realize it's not actually an answer to the question. But I had to come find this and post this to register my displeasure. Please change it back.

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    Upvoted because the observation is pertinent to the question, and if the company wants to sell the concept of human beings being more reliable and creative than AI they should listen to their users. Commented Apr 18 at 6:37

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