My guess is that including timestamps in messages to the LLM will bias the LLMs responses in material ways, and ways they don't want, and showing timestamps to users but not the LLM will create confusion when the user assumes the LLM is aware of them but it isn't. So the simple product management decision was to just leave them out.
ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
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Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#102ChatGPT to this day does not have a single simplest feature -- fork chat from message. That's the thing even the most barebones open-source wrappers had since 2022. Probably even before because ERP stuff people played with predates chatgpt by like two years (even if it was very simple). Gemini btw too.
ChatGPT has conversation branches. Or do I misunderstand? Just edit a message and it’s a new branch.
In not aware of a feature to access the previous message versions after editing.
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Regular people hate numbers What does this even mean
There is a non-trivial number of people who get an adverse reaction to anything technical, including the language of technical - numbers. Numbers are the language of confusion, not getting it, feeling inadequate, nerds and losers, stupid math, and the "cold dead machines". The thing is that people who are fine with numbers will still use those products anyway, perhaps mildly annoyed. People who hate numbers will feel…
So you're claiming people are annoyed by... clocks? Prices? Sports scores?
I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.
An adverse reaction to equations, OK. Numbers themselves, I really don't know what you're talking about.
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#104My biggest complaint about ChatGPT is how slow their interface is when the conversations get log. This is surprising to me given that it's just rendering chats.
It's not enough to turn me off using it, but I do wish they prioritized improving their interface.
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChatGPT has conversation branches. Or do I misunderstand? Just edit a message and it’s a new branch.
In not aware of a feature to access the previous message versions after editing.
This is a big use-case for me that I've gotten used to while using Open-WebUI. Being able to easily branch conversations, edit messages with information from a few messages downstream to 'compact' the chat history, completely branch convos. They have a tree view, too, which works pretty well (the main annoyances are interface jumps that never seem to line up properly).
This feature has spoiled me from using most other interfaces, because it is so wasteful from a context perspective to need to continually update upstream assumptions while the context window stretches farther away from the initial goal of the conversation.
I think a lot more could be done with this, too - some sort of 'auto-compact' feature in chat interfaces which is able to pull the important parts of the last n messages verbatim, without 'summarizing' (since often in a chat-based interface, the specific user voicing is important and lost when summarized).
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#106My guess is that including timestamps in messages to the LLM will bias the LLMs responses in material ways, and ways they don't want, and showing timestamps to users but not the LLM will create confusion when the user assumes the LLM is aware of them but it isn't. So the simple product management decision was to just leave them out.
I could definitely see that being an issue, but like with so many UX decisions, I wish they would at least hide the option somewhere in a settings menu.
I also don't think it would be impossible to give the LLM access to the timestamps through a tool call, so it's not constantly polluting the chat context.
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#107If you download a Data export, the timestamps are there for every conversation, and often for messages as well. The html file is just a big JSON with some JS rendering, so I wrote this bash script which adds the timestamp before the conversation title: sed -i 's|" " + conversation.title + " "|" " + new Date(conversation.create_time*1000).toISOString().slice(0, 10) + " @ " + conversation.title + " "|' chat.html
Do you know if this is available in the actual web interface, and just not displayed, or is it just in the data export? If it is in the web, maybe a browser extension would be worth making.
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#108ChatGPT to this day does not have a single simplest feature -- fork chat from message. That's the thing even the most barebones open-source wrappers had since 2022. Probably even before because ERP stuff people played with predates chatgpt by like two years (even if it was very simple). Gemini btw too.
This is a constant frustration for me with Gemini. Especially since things like Deep Research and Canvas mode lock you in, seemingly arbitrary. LLMs to my understanding are Markovian prompt-to-prompt, so I don't see why this is an issue at all.
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#109ChatGPT to this day does not have a single simplest feature -- fork chat from message. That's the thing even the most barebones open-source wrappers had since 2022. Probably even before because ERP stuff people played with predates chatgpt by like two years (even if it was very simple). Gemini btw too.
You can click the three dots on any response and click "Branch in new chat". Not sure when it was added but it exists.
Re: ChatGPT conversations still lack timestamps after years of requests
#110ChatGPT to this day does not have a single simplest feature -- fork chat from message. That's the thing even the most barebones open-source wrappers had since 2022. Probably even before because ERP stuff people played with predates chatgpt by like two years (even if it was very simple). Gemini btw too.