"Member for: today"

Question

Very new members will have this text displayed in their profile:

Should this not be changed to say "1 day" or "3 hours", etc? Especially as the "last seen" also works in this way.

Note that members who joined 24 hours ago have been members for "2 days", etc.

You'd say "x has been a member for 1 day" over "x has been a member for today"; saying "member for today" just doesn't feel right to me.

Answer 1

Replacing "today" with "less than 1 day" should work fine, without needlessly introducing a granularity of hours into a time interval that is supposed to be relatively long.

Answer 2

Totally agree it should be changed, and now with the new profile page design it should be easier.

My own suggestions to replace it:

• Member for less than 24 hours
• Joined today (instead of the whole line)

Answer 3

They probably have not actually been a member for the whole day, so saying "1 day" would not be better than "today."

That someone who's been a member between 1 and 2 days is said to have been a member for 2 days doesn't mean that when there is an opportunity to be clearer, that opportunity shouldn't be taken. It should, and is.

Furthermore, an inaccuracy of a fixed amount is more serious when it affects a smaller quantity. It's much more serious to say that someone who has been a member for 1 minute has been a member for 1 day than to say that someone who has been a member for 1 day + 1 minute has been a member for 1 days. The latter is off by a factor of approximately 2. The former is off by a factor of 1,440.

Answer 4

There's related bug reports for scenarios where intervals are treated as a point in time.

It would be a good idea to come up with distinct and consistent presentations for points in time and intervals across the site. For points in time, we already use:

just now
today
in [n] [unit of time]s
[n] [unit of time]s ago
[explicit date format]

Note that you need different formats, depending on whether the point in time is in the past or the future.

We need a separate format for intervals:

[a short time/less than a [minimum unit of time]]
[n] [unit of time]s

In this situation we are clearly looking at an interval of time, so it should follow the appropriate grammar:

Has been a member for: less than a [minimum unit of time].
Has been a member for: [n] [unit of time]s
                       ___________________________________
                                                    |
                                                    |Interval format

Where a reasonable minimum unit of time is a day.

Alternatively, you could stick with the point in time format and use, "Has been a member since" instead of "Has been a member for":

Has been a member since: today
Has been a member since: [n] [unit of time]s ago
                         _______________________
                                             |
                                             |Point in time format

Answer 5

This is a small detail, but you're right in pointing out that for today could be considered incorrect, since it comes with a strong connotation of temporary status in most contexts. As in:

You can join meta for today.

I'll be your moderator for today.

How to fix this?

If the member for language needs to be static, getting rid of today is the easiest way to remove the ambiguity. The replacement can use more or less precision:

1. Displaying 1-hour precision in the first 24 hours of membership is consistent with how last seen is displayed, so that would help with consistency.

   • member for 1 hour
   • member for 23 hours
     
     

2. Or a slightly less precise variation, though it's a bit long-winded.

   • member for less than one day

Though it makes me wonder if there's some hidden unit changes we haven't seen yet due to their extremely tiny or gigantic scale.

Member for 2 jiffies
Member for 2 days
Member for 2 months
Member for 2 centuries?
...