Don't show backdated entries on Latest Things

[katherine]

Title:
Don't show backdated entries on Latest Things

Area:
entries, latest things

Summary:
Don't show backdated entries in Latest Things.

Description:
So far as I can tell, posting an entry backdated means it doesn't show up on reading lists, but it does still show up on latest things, arranged by when posted, not by the date and time set in the backdating. This doesn't seem consistent to me.

I have no idea of the technical reasons or difficulties, I admit!

Poll #5180 Don't show backdated entries on Latest Things

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 58

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This suggestion:

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Should be implemented as-is.
46 (79.3%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (1.7%)

(I have no opinion)
11 (19.0%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[marahmarie]

I'm curious why you don't want backdated posts to not show up - besides the consistency argument, which is valid.

I only wonder if people assume backdating alone should keep a post off the latest things page, and that alone shouldn't, I think. (What if the backdating is only a few hours back, or what if it's to yesterday's date but it's just past midnight when it's posted...)

[zing_och]

Speaking only for myself, of course: I assumed that backdating did keep entries from the latest things page - probably because I think of this page as a DW-wide reading page.

[fyreharper]

Speaking for myself - I wouldn't assume that backdating alone would keep a post off the Latest Things page (as per your examples, where the date/time backdated to could still feasibly be considered a Latest Thing), but I would assume that backdating an entry to a week ago (for example) would keep it off of the Latest Things page - because it doesn't show entries that old.

[matgb]

I rarely backdate a post, and when I do it's either because it's a new sticky post, or because I'm doing something with code that I need to test but need a public post (most recently, figuring out some CSS to display a message to logged out users only).

Those posts are of little to no relevence and I'd not want to see such things lon latest, if someone backdates they do so for some sort of reason, not wanting it on Reading pages, normally becausre it's a clutter post, is valid. I'd just assumed latest things wouldn't pick up something I backdated to 1999, and I suspect those that use the feature had done likewise.

[marahmarie]

Yeah, the whole backdating thing isn't applicable to me, either, since I never use it - at least, not anymore.

I used to use it it under just two circumstances on LJ; 1) when I was manually restoring a deleted journal, or 2) when I was manually restoring a deleted post (oh, and I used to use it for Sticky Posts, too, but I don't use Stickys anymore, so that's no longer an excuse to break out the backdating).

I don't like to delete comments, so when comments would get too out-of-control (admittedly I'm too hot-headed to be a good ringmaster under those circumstances), I was more comfortable just deleting the post they were attached to, then restoring the post after whatever brouhaha occurred finally calmed down. Comments? Automatically gone, forever.

Otherwise, backdating is not a "feature" I touch. If I don't want a post on the Latest Things page, I know I can just make it private, access-list, or subscriber-list only, then change the security just five minutes later and it will never display on Latest Things. Which is a good thing to know. :)

I also know that if I'm really worried about not wanting a post to show up on the Latest Things page, all I have to do is lock the post down to one of the security levels mentioned in the last paragraph.

Given that, I don't see why people expect backdating to eliminate Latest Things display of their posts when backdating was not designed to stop that - it was designed to backdate things, period.

[azurelunatic]

One commonly-cited reason for backdating, one that I've used myself on occasion, is for courtesy when one's making a lot of entries that are viewable to others and doesn't wish to clog up people's reading lists. The way around backdating something old when one wants the entry to show on reading lists, is to initially post it with the present date and edit it to reflect the date one desires it to appear in the calendar view. (The bug with previous/next when this is done is supposed to be fixed.)

The reading page uses the server time when the entry hit the server to determine the position that the entry shows up there, given that time zones and people with computers with badly-set dates exist. One fellow I know on LJ has been two years in the future for ages, either because he and his band play time travelers on stage, or because at some point in his past there was a date incident. People in a community can post to it with any date (because the backdate feature is turned off in communities, due to time zones, people with badly-set dates, and the moderation queue) and so comms use posting order in the lastn view, and user-specified date in the calendar view. Latest Things strikes me as sort of inherently lastn, so it should continue to use actual posting order.

[marahmarie]

Thank you for this comment, since I was wondering what the heck was up with the posting dates on my Reading page on Nov. 25th. The dates went like this:

top post - Nov. 25th at whatever:am
next post - Nov. 25th at whatever:pm
next post- Nov. 26th at whatever:am
next post - Nov. 26th at whatever:am
next post - Nov. 26th at whatever:am
next post - Nov. 25th at whatever:am
next post - Nov. 25th at whatever:pm (ditto next three posts, all dated Nov. 25th)

I was sitting here rubbing my eyes trying to figure out if I was seeing things, but I guess I wasn't. I can't recall if the out-of-order (Nov. 26th) posts were from comms or not, but either way, your explanation clears up a lot of my initial confusion over that. :)

[azurelunatic]

It could very well have been regular users in a different time zone. Looking directly at a single personal journal, you'll always see the entries in order by user-set time (except for the sticky), but when viewing a community's main page directly, say http://dw-news.dreamwidth.org, if fu made an entry on November 30th in her time zone, and a few hours later denise made an entry on November 29th in her time zone, denise's would show up as the most recent, having hit the server most recently, although on the calendar view, it would show up according to the dates that fu and denise had set.

[marahmarie]

Because the servers are state-side (here in the US), right? This is one of the biggest ah-ha! moments I've had all year. Thank you again for this, it's all making sense now!

[azurelunatic]

The servers run on UTC (more or less London standard time), although they are state-side. So when an entry hits the servers, the time it comes in, in UTC, is logged, and then that time is used when building the reading page, the recent entries page of a community, and the Latest Things page.