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Replace vague "[x] month(s)/year(s) ago" upload date with specific dates #2817

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zweidrache opened this issue Feb 17, 2025 · 1 comment
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Feature request Wish or idea good first issue A GitHub standard for inviting (new) contributors *Congratulations in advance!* help wanted Just an old github standard we add automatically. (The team can remove it when working on it.) up-for-grabs (a github standard for inviting new contributors) - Welcome! ♥

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@zweidrache
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PROBLEM:
I get disoriented by the way Youtube always rounds the upload dates of videos on the various pages. This has been going on for long enough, but today I was watching a video that was uploaded in June of 2023 (~20 months ago) and youtube decided to show the label as "1 year ago", which is a wild underestimation chosen for rounding purposes.

SOLUTION:
A toggle to change the displayed rounded "date" (e.g. "1 year ago") of the upload with the specific upload date (e.g. June 23rd, 2023) in the top line of the video description field, in the sidebar, and in search results. I know this information loads on the video page, at least, because it's available when hovering the cursor over the words and getting the hover text showing the full view count, full date, and any applied tags, but I don't know if there's some way it's stored that can easily be swapped out with CSS.

ALTERNATIVES:
I can't think of any alternative except a toggle in the options. Perhaps except that to satisfy the broadest number of people (and given how much space is still on the line where this information is displayed) you could simply just have both be show and be done with it.

RELEVANCE / SCOPE:
I'm not sure how many people this would affect, or if it would be good as a default, but at the same time I can't see a drawback to posting specific dates as it would frame the context for when a video was posted and, well, if someone wants to shorthand something posted 16 months ago to "about 2 years" or "a little over a year ago", they can do that math on their own, can't they?

"SIDE EFFECTS":
I don't know about any unintended side effects of this except for I guess those who 1) aren't bothered by this, 2) never noticed it because they don't mouse over to check precise upload dates, or 3) don't want to convert the time themselves mentally.

CONTEXT:
I'm frequently caught off guard by the way it seems to arbitrarily decide on what constitutes "1 month ago" or "6 months ago", etc, and when trying to find videos in a long list of search results that aren't clearly labeled chronologically - an unmarked podcasts, long playthrough series, or old live streams, it can be frustrating to have to click on the videos where only there can I mouse over the vague date to get the specific date to figure out which video is actually the first. It just wastes a lot of time. I've tried to leave feedback through YT's own methods several times to no avail.
//
Thank you!

SHORT Table (Summary)
Problem Dates are rounded up/down arbitrarily across the site and only specific dates can be found when loading onto a video page and hovering the mouse over the top of the description.
Solution Obtain the specific date from the HTML and replace the vague date, using a toggle in the options.
Alternatives Show both specific date and rounded date per above instead.
Scope Likely everyone who has ever needed to think about the date a video was uploaded, and doesn't like youtube needlessly obscuring the fact.
Side effects No reasonable inconveniences.
Context From a UX perspective, for navigation, it just wastes a lot of time hiding data that should be shown to a user to make their own determinations with.
@zweidrache zweidrache added Feature request Wish or idea good first issue A GitHub standard for inviting (new) contributors *Congratulations in advance!* help wanted Just an old github standard we add automatically. (The team can remove it when working on it.) up-for-grabs (a github standard for inviting new contributors) - Welcome! ♥ labels Feb 17, 2025
@BhavanaK223
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I can work on this!

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Labels
Feature request Wish or idea good first issue A GitHub standard for inviting (new) contributors *Congratulations in advance!* help wanted Just an old github standard we add automatically. (The team can remove it when working on it.) up-for-grabs (a github standard for inviting new contributors) - Welcome! ♥
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