Dates in old threads

[ucbalumnus]

Seems that some threads with dates like “Dec '16” cause people to mistake them for recent threads.

It would be better if the full date were shown (e.g. “Dec 10, 2016” or “Dec 16, 2020”).

[RichInPitt]

There was a sort of response when previously posted - to the symptom, not the underlying problem

@RichInPitt

I’m getting kind of tired reading posts that are resurrected from 6-10 years ago.

There has to be a better way to show dates than “Dec 10” and “Dec '10” in very light blue font on a white background.

@CC_Mike

As for the old posts that keep getting resurrected, it is from folks editing old posts on threads that should be closed. We’re working on closing them all but won’t likely happen until early Jan. If you flag any you see, we can close them manually in the meantime. I closed the thread in question. Thanks for helping us keep things clean until we can sweep through!

[helpingmom40]

I asked about this a bit ago because I keep getting threads down below in the suggested topics that are old or should be inactive. Even right now, the ones I am seeing are 6-8 months old with no replies. I think users read something that interests them, see the suggestions and comment without even realizing they are old.

[thumper1]

The month and year would do it. Like Dec 2015. That would be clear!

[Lindagaf]

@CC_Jon @CC_Mike , this date issue is a problem and it is confusing. The thread we are on now shows that it was started in December 2020.

This thread, however just says Jan 20: Why might people hide their profile? - #2
Having just been on that thread, and now looking at this one, it is indeed very confusing. I don’t think it’s enough to format the date as Jan ‘19, for example, because it’s too easy to miss the apostrophe. When scrolling down the timeline, it can get very confusing if you don’t realize you’re on a long-running thread, or just a thread with a lot of responses, especially if it was started in 2020.

Also I noticed a user commented on a thread from April ‘08. It’s possible that user thought it was perhaps from April of last year. Definitely need to make the year more obvious.

[austinmshauri]

The apostrophe, written in light gray, is easy to miss on a cell phone. It seems like a lot of old threads are being resurrected because people are confused by the date. There’s no way to tell on my phone how old a thread is, so I end up opening a lot of really old threads. It would be helpful if the full date a thread was started and the name of the OP were listed under the title next to the name of the forum. For example:

DATES IN OLD THREADS
College Confidential Community
ucbalumnus, Dec 31, 2020

[CC_Jon]

@helpingmom40

I asked about this a bit ago because I keep getting threads down below in the suggested topics that are old or should be inactive.

We have a plan to close old threads automatically after 6 months. That should help, but it’s taking some time internally to get it working.

@austinmshauri

The apostrophe, written in light gray, is easy to miss on a cell phone.

I agree. We’re looking into displaying the full year. I’ll let you all know what the outcome is.

[austinmshauri]

It would be helpful to list the OP’s name under the thread name with the date it was posted.

[Lindagaf]

I agree with @austinmshauri that the OP should be listed under the date. This is because, when I see activity on an older thread, I have to see if it was the OP who posted and update.

[CC_Jon]

Are you specifically talking about in the header? Or am I misunderstanding?

[ucbalumnus]

Dates with month and two-digit year can be found on the post headers and on the list of posts in a forum category.

It would be best if all displayed years were four digit years to minimize confusion due to not noticing the apostrophe in something like “Jan '18”.

[austinmshauri]

Where it says:

Dates in old threads
College Confidential Community

I’d change it to:

Dates in old threads
College Confidential Community
Stated by ucbalumnus, Dec 30, 2020

[CC_Jon]

Got it. The space on mobile is somewhat more limited. If we added that, it would reduce the number of threads visible at any one time.

[austinmshauri]

The Early Action Class of 2025 and Northeastern University 2021 EA pinned to the top of the Latest screen already take up my entire screen. And it takes several page scrolls to get to a current post in the Financial Aid forum due to the number of pinned threads. I don’t see how this will make things worse.

[Lindagaf]

When a user adds a new comment to a post, there should be a designator on the most recent post if the user is the original poster, especially if the thread is more than, say, 10 pots long. So when I look at an old thread, I will know right away if that is the user commenting on their own thread. If it’s a long thread, it can take a long time to scroll back to the top to see who the OP is.

[CC_Jon]

We pinned these threads because we are seeing a lot of people searching for them both via Google and using our internal search feature. We want to save people the time of looking for these threads, so I’m pinning the most popular ones. By the way, you can unpin them by tapping on the pin icon:

Maybe that’ll help?

[austinmshauri]

Thanks for that info., John. It doesn’t change the fact that several people have mentioned that it would be useful to be able to see who started a thread without having to open it. The number of threads we see on our phones is limited anyway. At least make the information we do see useful.

[CC_Jon]

We’ve updated the dates on the site to avoid the 'YY notation:

=>

This should be everywhere now. If you still see two digit years somewhere, please let me know so that we can fix it.

[austinmshauri]

Thanks, @CC_Jon. This change will be very helpful to those of us working on little phone screens.