Date of posts submitted by email

[swaldman]

Title:
Date of posts submitted by email

Area:
Posting by email

Summary:
Date and time of a post submitted by email should be taken from the email's Date: header.

Description:
At present, posts that are submitted by email get a date and time based on when they are received by Dreamwidth.
IMHO this is wrong, because many emails are written offline and may not be synced until hours or days later. The date and time of the post should be taken from the Date: header of the email, which (depending on mail client) will usually reflect when it was written.

Ideally, it should also be possible to manually specify the date/time using "post-date:" or similar in the body, in the same way that security settings, tags, etc., can be specified.

Poll #1499 Date of posts submitted by email

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 30

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
11 (36.7%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (13.3%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
8 (26.7%)

(I have no opinion)
7 (23.3%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[azurelunatic]

The immediate problem I can see with this concept is that if a post-by-email arrives late, and after something with a later timestamp has been made, that it could very well be rejected if it the 'Date Out of Order' option is not turned on.

To defeat that problem, I recommend a change in handling Things What Need To Be Dated Out of Order: that if it is not tickied, it become tickied, and an emphatic error message explaining the situation be sent to the inbox.

[jeshyr]

I like the "put a date in the body text" idea, but not the automatic dating from the Sent time. Because these would have to be dated out of order as Azz explained, they would probably not end up read by subscribers - depending on how many piled up before being sent, this may or may NOT be desirable. If I have been away a week but only written one post, I'd prefer it's dated when I get back and upload it so my friends read it. If I have been journalling my 3 month trek through antarctica each day, OTOH...

Being able to specify the date in the body means, effectively, that the email writer has the option to do either which I think is better.

[kyrielle]

This makes a lot of sense, though it has the drawback of not being automatic. And the advantage of not being automatic, for that matter....

[cesy]

Yes, this makes sense.

[azurelunatic]

And not specifying the date in the body would still mean to use server time.

[swaldman]

I have to confess I'm surprised... I had almost been thinking of this in terms of a bug rather than an RFE... :-)

I have little knowledge of DW, and none of the years of LJ experience that many here probably have... but to me, intuitively, the date of a post should be the date on which it was written. That's the useful piece of information.

I don't think that I've seen anybody arguing against this, or saying that it is better to show the date that it appeared on the journal. AIUI, the main objection is that if posts appear dated in the past, readers may not see them. This is a fair comment, but surely it's a reason to fix that behaviour, not a reason to keep the wrong date being applied to posts?

Suggestion on how to deal with it: When a new post is posted, it should appear on recent posts / friends pages / RSS feeds, regardless of the date assigned to it. That way it is in the correct order in the actual journal, but is still obvious to readers.
I'm sure that this is more technically difficult, but if it's not feasible let's discuss that rather than ignoring the problem! Unless people do actually think that the date of a post should be the time it appears on DW, rather than the time it is written?

Thanks for your attention
Simon.

[(Anonymous)]

Why is that the "useful piece of information", though?

For me, the useful thing to know IS when it was posted. I don't care if someone has been working on that post for the past week or just wrote it in the last ten minutes, I care that it was posted now.

Unless people do actually think that the date of a post should be the time it appears on DW, rather than the time it is written?

Yes, I do. Posting is the important activity on a site like this.

[swaldman]

Why?

You may be misunderstanding what I mean - apologies if I wasn't clear. I'm not suggesting that anything should be based off the time that somebody starts writing a post. The date/time of a post should be the date/time that the post is submitted.
Now if you are working online in a web interface, the date that a post is submitted and the date that it appears on DW are (near enough) the same. But when you are posting by email there can be a delay between the two - anywhere from minutes or hours, to days or even weeks.

Let's say I write a post in email, while offline, saying "I'm going to a party in 3 days", and that email only leaves my PC/PDA/whatever a day later. Assuming instant email transmission, at present, the date of the post would be the date that the post arrived at DW's server, a day after the post was submitted, and that would put the date of the party a day late.
What I am suggesting here is that the default date/time of a post should be the date/time that the author presses "send", rather than the date/time at which it actually arrives at DW and appears on the journal.