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I have a usability suggestion.

Since we are now dealing with six versions of PHP, generations of Java, and decades of HTML, the relevance and value of answers are critically based upon these versions and the date of the answer.

Almost every time I'm seeing an answer now, I have to scroll down to the bottom of the answer FIRST before I even read it to check the date.

So, I'm thinking, it's time to make the date of the answer and last upvote or comment front and center on the article. Even more than how it's now hanging top right sortof.

I'll leave it up to you guys to decide what the best format should be but I think at this point it's really important to see the date and it will really help people save time in trying to implement the concepts presented.

For instance I'm dealing with Pyramid, Psql, Sqlalchemy. There's been a lot of churn and I'm looking for the latest.

Other times, I'm needing to deal with PHP 5.2. So I really need a better understanding of context. the timeline of the answers and how they relate to versions of the software tagged would also be useful up front.

I really think this would be a fabulous change and would not be that hard to implement.

Another possibility for achieving this would be if we could skin our own versions of Stack Overflow or have an API?

Thanks!

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This sounds like an awfully big change. But I do see your use-case.

As a work-around, the date is actually listed in the upper-right hand corner, so you don't have to scroll down for that.

Version is a bit more difficult, since users would have to supply it, and I don't think that's ever going to happen reliably enough to work.

If you're looking for questions that are tagged with a particular version, and if you'd rather just not see anything else, you can always use the search functionality to filter that.

As far as skins on top of Stack Exchange, some users do write scripts that transform or complement certain aspects of the site. It's possible that you could write one of those, or maybe find an existing one. But those, naturally, don't receive the same level of support as native implementations.

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  • I'm definitely throwing out some big concepts here more than requests. But one thing I think would be really nice and about as easy as it can be moving the "answered" block for each answer to the top of the answers. Since answers don't have a title, the "answered by div" could be up there or just moved top right instead of bottom right per answer. That's a more straightforward feature request. Searching via functionality could help or by versions, good tips! Or maybe even by date for older good responses perhaps. – iJames Mar 13 '15 at 19:50
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    @iJames Unless I misunderstood your question, you can also sort answers by "oldest" first and read the last answer, which is the newest answer. Otherwise, sort by "active", which sorts the answers by latest activity (whether it's posted or edited) – Meta Andrew T. Aug 11 '15 at 8:43

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