Booger,

Pixies Place has, as do all sites, a time. It has a time because it needs to order events (posts) as they are processed. In the database which lies behind what we see, the posts are stored with both the time the post was sent, as Lilith observed, as well as the time the post was received. The database uses the time received (Pixies time) to discriminate between the order of arrival of posts. Depending upon the design used, the stored system (Pixies) time may actually be used to order the lists (threads) displayed, or the arrival time may be used to derive a key (often a sequentially increasing number) to serve the same purpose.

Ultimately, as you pointed out, the choice of the site (Pixies) time is arbitrary. Being arbitrary does not mean that the site time is not important – it is mandatory. It is the principle by which the site events are organized in time. If you reflect upon the situation for a moment, I think you will agree that displaying “Today’s Birthdays” becomes impossible without a Pixies time – without some way to determine when “today” is, be that time relative to Greenwich, Paris, Mumbai, Tokyo, or wherever.

The time which is displayed in the upper left of each post is, unlike the site time above, a question of preference. Perhaps you could get Lilith to display the time the post was sent (local time), rather than the time the post was received (Pixies time). Keep in mind that if you do get this to happen (assuming that the database design can accommodate this change), then we will be entertained with people replying to posts with a time prior to that of the post to which they are replying. Consider a thread where Oldfart posts on Sunday afternoon, Loulabelle (posting from the UK) posts a reply which is dated earlier than Oldfart’s, and then osuche (posting from the West Coast) replies to Loulabelle’s post with a time which precedes both Lulabell’s and Oldfart’s posts! Not, I hasten to add, to my tastes, but quite doable.

You log in to Pixies when you post. I log into Pixies to read your post. By logging in we hold Pixies Place in common. I think you might agree that one of the attributes we share here at Pixies is not our local time when we post, but our shared time when the post was received. Worrying about the local time of each Pixie introduces unnecessary complexities along the lines of “well, let’s see, when last I heard he was in Perth, so that’s GMT + 8:00, so I’ll need to post that many hours earlier than Pixies’ says to – but wait! I just moved to Hawaii, so I must add an addition 10 hours…”. No, that just won’t do.

Just a suggestion – stick with Pixies Place time. It is clear, unambiguous, and we get it for free when we log in. Everyone will be singing from the same sheet of music.

__________________
Eudaimonia