posting time-warp oddity

I have been wondering for a while now why I get odd results when I browse the forums (fora?)

The main symptom is that unread posts appear, but not at the top of the list

I always mark all read when I leave a forum
then when I go back, a cheeky one has slipped in apparently 3 hours ago!

I suspect that the local time (either by time zone, or just from the user's PC) is being used as the time of posting

Would it make more sense to use the database time (time at the server)
That way threads would appear in order, as indeed would posts

You can see that some threads have posts apparently out of time order, too!

I think it's the result of someone editing a post.

The server uses its own clock to do timestamps, and the time is translated to the timezone specified on user profile.

Topics are sorted by the descending time of LAST post in each topic.
This means that if someone posts a reply on a topic, the topic pops up on the first place.

If you find some topic out-of-order can you post a link to that so we can further investigate?

Post timestamps are not updated when a post is modified...

Reply #3 on: Today at 01:37:09 PM
Last Edit: Today at 01:38:49 PM by Coding Badly
Reply #3 on: Today at 01:37:09 PM

...which (I think) explains the behaviour @mmcp42 is seeing. A post is displayed with a has-been-modified marker but is not at the top of the list.

thanks
that makes sense!

I remember, doing the time-warp ...