Discussion:Time zone

Thank you for the spelling correction. I knew I hadn't spelled in correctly when I posted but with the long hours, I just couldn't think of the proper way to spell it. Guiness, on the other hand, I can usually spell correctly. I've got two cold ones in the refrigerator getting chilled for April 17th.

The date & time used to be displayed on the index page, but that has now been replaced with "5 minutes ago", and "2 weeks ago" so y'all (I live in Texas and we say that here) don't have to do any mental calculations to determine the 'freshness' of a discussion. Does this format work for you?

Within each discussion, the date that each post was made is saved and displayed. The date is in GMT (Greenwich, England), so it may appear to be a day ahead, depending on where you're located and how late you're actually posting on TaxAlmanac.

We could do the following with the date:

• Change it to be CST/CDT (the systems that run TaxAlmanac are located in Plano, Texas).
• Change it to reflect your local timezone (each person might see something a little bit differently, depending on where they live. Because we'd have to do a timezone lookup and a calculation for each post in each discussion each time it was displayed, this could put a strain on the systems that run the site, and could slow the site down.)
• Leave it as it is.

We could add the time to the posts in addition to the date, but the same issues that I listed above come into play. Should the time be GMT, CST/CDT, or local to the viewer?

Note that you can click on the history tab at the top of each discussion to see the complete editing history of that discussion, you can view any previous version, see who made each change, and see exactly what was changed. This view also shows edits which I or a few other advanced users make to the discussions by using the edit tab instead of just replying at the bottom. This history view shows the exact edit date and time.

This is probably more than you ever wanted to know about dates and times on TaxAlmanac, but I'd be interested in any feedback you might have.

Thanks everyone, and have a great tax season!

- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator 07:36, 7 April 2006 (CDT)

Help me understand the issue with being logged out. I log in, ask it to remember me, and it does so for weeks at a time, even if I shut down my computer. Is this the area you're referring to? What is your experience?

As for banning you, I've seen nothing that has even hinted that you've been causing problems. Have I missed something?  ;-)

- Tim Doyle, TaxAlmanac Moderator 07:57, 7 April 2006 (CDT)

After you leave the board to do other things (work)...it'll automatically log you out. Sometimes it's in 15-20 minutes, other times it may be a couple hours. No biggie, just have to log back in...just seems curious that the timing is different sometimes. I've assumed that it might have to do with traffic, only so many folks at one time or something like that.