This extreme comparison with many authors and translators shows how the old version didn't reflect credits correctly when a post had been translated more than once. This also shows the changes to the way dates and time are displayed, as discussed later.

Hi everyone, this is Jer the Global Voices Tech Lead with another design update where I'll discuss how we display credits and dates on our stories and translations. The changes might be a bit subtle, but we think they clean up some clutter on posts while adding useful tools for readers to understand when posts were created, and who did all the wonderful work on them.

Credits on translations now specify the languages involved

Our Lingua director Lauren noticed that on posts with a “bridge” translation (e.g. English to French to Russian) the credits weren’t showing correctly, and indeed there was a bug and the credits for multiple languages were getting jumbled together. After reviewing the situation, we decided that the answer was to carefully specify the name of each language involved in a translation, and that this should apply to both “bridge” translations, with multiple languages, and direct translations, where only two are involved.

A simpler example of a direct translation where there are less than four total credits so the avatars are showing.

So now anytime you’re looking at a translation, it will specify the language it was originally posted in, as well as the language it was translated into. No more ambiguity!

On the homepage, and other places where lots of posts are listed, we won't show the languages to save space, but when someone clicks through, they’ll always see the full details.

Original dates now show on translations posted more than 14 days after the original

The new version shows when the original post was published.

Another change we made is that translations now show both the date the translation was published and the date the original post was published, so that readers can have a chance to understand that the translation might not be completely up-to-date as of the translation date.

We only show this “originally published” date when the translation was finished more than two weeks after the original. This time limit is basically arbitrary, but we wanted to avoid showing the “originally published” date on every single post to save space.

“Older post warning” on stories posted over six months ago.

Another significant change was adding a little tag tag like “Seven months ago” or “15 years ago” next to the date on posts over six months old, to help readers notice when a post isn’t recent.

We think this is useful for readers to avoid accidentally misinforming themselves, especially for a site with such an enormous history of posts going back 20 years!

You can see an example in the first screenshot comparison above, where it says “5 years ago”.

Where has the time gone?

The final change is the removal of the hour and minutes display on posts. We used to show it as e.g. “14:59 GMT” after the date, but from now on the time won’t show at all. Again, you can see the change in the screenshots above.

We don’t think the exact time a post was published is really important for readers to know, especially considering it's almost never in their local time zone, and removing it helps clean up the display and make room for the other information we’re adding in this update.

As authors and editors, remember, you can always see the exact time a post was published by editing the post and checking the Publish box in the editor!

Thanks for reading

I really appreciate you taking the time to read through this. If you notice any bugs or problems, or have any feedback about the changes, please feel free to reach out to me here in the comments, on the GV Slack, or through the GV Community mailing list 🙏🏻💚