Timestamp Position Modification

This document is a work in progress. Comments are appreciated but this is not a final draft.

This document describes the design of a modification to the location of the "last updated" timestamp for articles.

Rationale

• Inexperienced users are often unaware that documents have history and that this history can be browsed.
• Inexperienced users are often unaware that a document's structure is fluid, especially with regard to current events.

Hypothesis

• Providing an obvious key to a document's fluid nature will promote user understanding of document history (and that it even exists).

Feature Requirements

• A human-readable, time-relative timestamp is to be included in the Article title.
• This timestamp links to the Article's history page.
• This timestamp will only appear on Main namespace Articles, and not Talk pages.

User Experience

Note: This modification would not remove the timestamp from the footer. This suggestion is in addition to the existing timestamp.

Current

The current timestamp location

Currently, the only timestamp exists at the bottom of the page, in the chrome. It is easily overlooked, and is not in a human-readable format (it isn't even in the user's local timezone).

Proposed

A proposed mockup of modified timestamp location

A link will be inserted (via Javascript) in the Article title, floated right (but left of any article icons or emblems). To avoid issues with cache spoiling, the Javascript on the page would rewrite the timestamp so that it is human-readable (e.g., "X minutes ago", "Y hours ago," "Z days ago," and so forth. Absolute accuracy is not required; only enough to indicate that the Article is a living document.