Do Blogs Need Timestamps?

The timestamps are the date and time normally used in blogs. From Problogger.net, I hopped over to Rachel’s cre8d design blog and she brought up the discussion of; My blog timestamps theory: removing the clutter.

The discussion is still very minimal at this point of time but it could develop to be a very interesting one in the research of user behaviour towards the abscence of timestamps normally found on blogs.

Rachel has listed 3 theories she’s trying out at the moment.

• Individual entry archives should have a post date; they’ve been archived.
• The home page should have freshness information – show how long it’s been since you last posted. Keep it simple by only showing one lot of units (if it’s less than an hour, display the number of minutes ago, if it’s less than a day display the number of hours ago etc).
• Comments don’t each need timestamps on them. Optionally show the freshness of last comment – i.e. time since the last comment.

I, myself said in her comments whilst agreeing with Darren (from Problogger) that timestamps in comments are really not a necessity as long there’s another type of indication which is the newer post.

If you’ve visited a diverse number of blogs, there are bloggers who’re using comment numbers as well as timestamps. This actually creates more clutter around the comments because it’s providing more details than a commenter needs.

After we’ve read an entry and proceed on to leave a comment, what are the details you’re likely to want to know?

• Name
• Weblog (if they have)
• Age of Comment

What other things do you really need to know as a commenter? Browser? Operating System?

Come to think of it, we don’t need timestamps as well if we’re implementing a ‘Subscribe to Comment’ function on the blog. Reason being is that the notification would alert that the latest comment(s) has been posted so all you need to remember is a simple digit or search for your name as a commentor when you last posted.

So what do you think of removing timestamps in certain areas of your blog?

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