"Updated" works, but sounds a bit jargonish. "Answered" is good too, except it implies that the OP is a question. But I'm wondering what the objective is. In terms of screen real estate, there isn't much difference:

Last reply
Updated

... About half an em is all (if even that). So perhaps the issue is not just length, but the fact that there's no verb? If that's the case, then I think something like this would work:

Updated by Toby 2 hours ago

It does seem a bit more natural to have the time at the end. (You can't do that with "Last reply" because then it sounds like we're talking about the last of several replies made by Toby.) And you could change the "Started by" string to match.

Of course then the username is a bit closer to the avatar... 😉

I was thinking purely in terms of length – but you're right, "Updated" isn't that much shorter than "Last reply".

I would argue that showing the time before the username is better for another reason too. On a narrow mobile screen, there's a good chance that there won't be room to show the whole "Last reply" string for some discussions (with >1 tag). In that case I'd rather the username get cut off than I would the time.

Dominion Hmmm ... is that 16 months or minutes? 😉

I don't feel the need for it on the desktop layout. Would it be possible to use the long version in the desktop layout and the abbreviated version in the mobile layout? (Probably too much bother, I'm guessing.)

Ideally as you suggested we would use an abbreviated version on mobile, but that introduces a bit of complexity which I'm not sure it's worth. We'll put it on the "nice-to-have-maybe-one-day" list.

      Toby Ideally as you suggested we would use an abbreviated version on mobile, but that introduces a bit of complexity which I'm not sure it's worth.

      Perhaps the not-quite-so-drastic abbreviation would be the way to go, in the meantime?

      Updated 27 min ago by Toby

      I like that better than a single letter, not only because of the ambiguity of the "m" but also because it seems a bit less user-friendly than how language is used elsewhere. (In the long run, of course, it doesn't matter much to me either way. Japanese time units are all just one or two characters long. 😉 )

        Toby changed the title to General UX, discussion list avatar mismatch .

        @Toby
        I don't like the current one: "Last reply X hours ago by AAA".
        It feels weird on the discussion list. That sentence is repeated over and over more than 10 times.

        1

        How about this one:

        2

        Or showing only 1 avatar:

        3

        Edit:
        I forgot to mention that the timestamp should be thread start time instead of last reply time. I think it makes more sense because generally people don't care about last reply time as long as they know whether there are new unread messages or not.

          Darmawan I don't like the current one: "Last reply X hours ago by AAA".
          It feels weird on the discussion list. That sentence is repeated over and over more than 10 times.

          Agreed. Ideally you could just have it say "time username" to eliminate all static text but oh well 😒

          Toby Wild idea: What if usernames aren't bold? The reply icon might still draw unwarranted attention to it, but at least your eyes wouldn't be juggling the icon and username.

          Otherwise abbreviating time is probably fine. I'm not sure if this is a 66-post problem, at least not for the beta, so whatever works works.

                What about Darmawan's idea to remove the "Last reply" text? That is intruiging.

                • Toby replied to this.

                    That's the point

                    At least for me, last reply time seems unimportant because the "discussion list" page is already sorted by the newest reply. So it's kinda...overkill?

                    1

                    Ok, I just realized that the discussion start time and OP username is already displayed as a tooltip...so my idea is irrelevant.

                    8 days later

                    Sorry to dig this up again, but the repetition of "Last reply" is really getting on my nerves. It's also less than ideal on mobile, because it pushes the important info (time/username) off of the screen in some instances.

                    I'd like to revisit the idea of removing the "Last reply" text altogether. As Toby mentioned, it could be confused with information about when the discussion was started. However, I feel like people will quickly catch on to what it actually represents (last activity), by virtue of the fact that the discussion list is ordered by it. I do like that it puts the time and the username front and centre, with no distractions. The important thing is that the username isn't immediately next to the avatar.

                    Anyway, to try it for yourself, paste this into your browser's URL bar and press enter:

                    javascript:app.translator.translations.core.discussion_replied = '{ago} by {username}';app.cache.discussionList.refresh();m.redraw()

                    You can try other variations by altering the {ago} by {username} part – let me know what you think!

                        That snippet isn't working for me, even after I told Safari to allow JS from the Smart Search field ...

                        Would you also be removing the "Started" in that case?

                          Dominion Would you also be removing the "Started" in that case?

                          Yeah. In both cases it refers to the last activity.

                            Toby I pretty much prefer it exactly as you just provided it, that is {ago} by {username}. Short, clean, to the point.

                              Hmm ... I don't really care for the idea of leaving the "when" and "by whom" and removing all indication of exactly what happened. Yes, people will catch on eventually, but it's a bit clunky compared with the rest of the interface. For example, you could remove the word "posts" from the scrubber displayed to the right of this thread. People would be able to figure out what it means ... but why put the user in that position?

                              Being telegraphic in some places and not in others makes for somewhat uneven presentation.

                              If the length is the only problem, then perhaps you could get rid of the "Last" and just leave the word "Reply"? (As an alternative, perhaps it would be a good idea to revisit the arrow icon suggestion by wizgriz. It doesn't have to be an arrow. Perhaps we can come up with a pair of icons: one to represent the OP and one to represent replies?)

                              Failing that, I hope you will at least leave the "Started" and "Last reply" strings as two separate strings, so translators can add in verbs if they feel the need.

                                  Dominion The problem is not the length, but the repetition. Leaving the word "Reply" doesn't fix that. Removing the word "posts" in the scrubber isn't comparable because it's not repeated for every item in a list.

                                  Maybe you're right that we should leave the word "Started" there – certainly when sorting the discussion list by Newest or Oldest, it would be needed. But when sorting by recent, I think knowing that "something happened 2 minutes ago" is enough. Thoughts?

                                      Certainly there is not the same motivation for removing the word "posts" from the scrubber. But the comparison was just to demonstrate how fluent can seem better than telegraphic.

                                      But I can see why the repetition bugs you. The problem I'm having with the solution is, by the time I'm looking at the

                                      x minutes ago by User

                                      I've pretty much forgotten how the discussions are sorted (assuming I've even bothered to think about that). So without the "last reply" that information gets tied directly to the title ... which makes it seem like info about the OP, not about the latest activity. So we end up with another username/avatar mismatch, no matter how much space is between.

                                      I think you could get away with removing the verb, if you could make the four options in the drop-down menu a little more clear. That is, the word "reply" doesn't appear in the drop-down menu, so if you remove it from the posts, it won't be anywhere. Perhaps you could change:

                                      • Latest
                                      • Top
                                      • Newest
                                      • Oldest

                                      ... to something like this:

                                      • Latest reply
                                      • Most replies
                                      • Newest
                                      • Oldest

                                      That adds the information you're removing from the individual topics (but it also adds volume to the menu).

                                      EDIT: Nothing's ever easy. I guess minimalism comes with its own set of challenges.