The first post right next to mine in the thread on the expansion of the scope of AppleVis, was displayed to have been posted 5 seconds ago, and the one after it 1 second ago. I am almost sure these posts were not created almost at the same time though, and I am even more sure that I have come across other instances of post times being shown incorrectly. By the way, we probably need a new post category called AppleVis for posts pertaining to applevis.com itself.
* Update: The category "Non-Apple Technologies" cannot be selected. It should probably be removed already, as we now have several subcategories for posts not related-to Apple products.
By Enes Deniz, 19 March, 2024
Forum
Other Apple Chat
Comments
I agree
I have noticed this behavior with the times as well.
As for the non-Apple technologies category, I totally agree with you. It was announced a day ago and there are already nine pages of topics. It is getting crazy. Also, there already are plenty of other places for these topics. They are ruining AppleVis’ name.
Likely explanation and clarification
Just to clarify, there have only been 5 brand new topics posted to the new forum areas since they launched.
The reason the new areas contain many more posts than that is because I migrated over a number of existing posts from other parts of the AppleVis forums. These now have a better fit within one of the new forums.
This migration of old posts is likely why the displayed post times may seem off. The timestamps shown reflect when a post was last updated or replied to, not its original creation date. So for the migrated posts, you're seeing times from the last day when I moved them over.
Now that the migration should be mostly complete, you should start seeing new post times that align with when topics/replies are actually being posted in the new areas going forward. But I'll keep an eye out in case any time stamp issues crop up.
It's worth noting that due to browser caching and page caching by the website itself, the relative timestamps you see for posts may not always be 100% accurate, especially for logged-in users where more page caching occurs. The cached versions could reflect slightly outdated timestamps compared to the live data. While this discrepancy is usually minimal, if the potential for slight timestamp inaccuracies bothers people, I may revert to displaying absolute date/times instead of the current relative formats like "2 hours ago".
Appreciated.
There's one thing though: It's not after the migration that I have first encountered this weird situation.
Incorrect times - another example
Hi David. The new changes are totally cool. Thanks for your hard work.
On the main page, I saw an old blog post of mine, "Need a Website? Do-It-Yourself WordPress and Accessibility." The main page showed a new comment added 90 minutes ago. This seems wrong for two reasons. When I go to the blog, the last comment is nearly three months old. Also, I'm subscribed, and I did not receive an email notification of a new comment. Thought you would want to investigate.
Re: Incorrect times - another example
Thank you for your kind words, Paul! 😊
Regarding your blog post, the author edited the comment today which is why it resurfaced. Sadly, not for a good reason. The comment was initially innocuous, but the author edited it to include spam content. This tactic of posting an innocent comment first, then editing it later to add spam is a common technique used by human spammers to bypass initial spam checks.
Fortunately, we have measures in place to detect such behaviour. The spammy post and the author have already been removed and blocked from returning.
Full time job
Thanks, David. Great catch.
Here's an example:
My latest comment in the Envision Assistant thread is shown to have been posted or edited 33 seconds ago, which is not the case. Besides, the 33 seconds, or the timestamp, just remains the same and is not updated. Uh, I do play Timecrest, but can I actually freeze time?