A solution here that I’m considering is revealing the historical information after a post has reached past a certain age. This will bring context to the post while also reduce bias on recent posts.
I do feel reluctancy answering to a post even a few hours ago thinking my answer might not be applicable to their context anymore. But not knowing, I believe keeps the conversation going for a while. I see it actually taking place.
So, what is the right thing to do here? More engagement and lack of information, or more information and less engagement? Not an easy answer.
> I do feel reluctancy answering to a post even a few hours ago thinking my answer might not be applicable to their context anymore. But not knowing, I believe keeps the conversation going for a while. I see it actually taking place.
First time I hear about textlog today, seems interesting (and good to remove likes etc). But if there aren't other comments that already address whatever point I would want to make I dont care if it is 10 minutes old or 10 days old (now, 10 years might be different and probably should be different).
Maybe that is due to my background in forums focused on solving technical problems (troubleshooting, programming, etc), but even if the original poster helped by my input any longer, someone else might be even if that is years down the line, so answers are always useful.
Of course context is everything, and if it is someone talking about what they had for lunch, that is irrelevant 10 days later (but I also wouldn't be interested in that content to begin with, even if it was 10 seconds old).
So in conclusion, I think having a timestamp is useful, and definitely for older posts (but for newer posts I think you are overestimating the problems of having them).
You could have a feature that users could turn on in their profile to display if they are online or when they were last online, and have a setting to restrict it to certain times, so that other users can know if this person would respond to a post/needs response to a post. And then a "follow" feature, that just displays the timestamps for users that you "follow" in particular (because I imagine that if you follow someone you might not care about the age of their posts). Lastly, you can just have it as an option for any post "include timestamps," so that a user can let others know the temporal context of one (or all) of their posts. I think these 3 features together would solve all of the issues with timestamps while still retaining the engagement strategy you are looking for.
Less granularity could be a middle ground.
Show the date but not h/m/s.
Gotta say that I agree with @evnm's reply on the original post that timestamps are fundamental to microblogging and maintaining a timeline. I love the philosophy behind textlog but I do disagree with this particular aspect; seems like something the author of a note/post should have choice and control of.