FWIW, as somebody who never used LJ before DW came along, I have *never* understood what that "Don't show on Reading Pages" option did or what it was for. Now it makes (a little) more sense ;-)

Suggestion for a more intuitive approach:
- On the update page, initially show a "now" timestamp from the server, taking account of the user's time zone
- If somebody wants to edit this, either let them just edit it, or they have to click a button or enable a check box to be able to do so
- If the user has edited the time, use the time that they edit it to. If they don't choose to edit it, use the server-provided time.

This would mean that the only time a user-provided date was used would be if they made a deliberate effort to provide it - so it should avoid picking up odd times from users' bad clocks. Probably? :-)

Disadvantage: Time zone shenanigans and resulting confusion. People will have them set wrongly, and people (like me) who travel and change time zone often may get annoyed.


(also, just as a data point, I used to use the far-future-date technique in place of a sticky post, because that way it mirrors to LJ correctly.)