I don't mean to take away from your entirely-valid response, but I was pleasantly surprised that something like that had been thought of, to ease the awkwardness in such situations. I imagine there's a bit of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation.

It's true, it's annoying—but the alternative is even more annoying: every related thread would fill up with "how can X be Y when the timestamp is Z and the other timestamp is W". I know that because it's what prompted us to relativize the timestamps in the first place.

I'm not averse to encoding more metadata in the HTML if people would actually use it, but I'm averse to displaying that sort of thing in the UI because I fear the downside would outweigh the upside.

It weirds me out too, I always have the same reaction. Have been so confused that I emailed staff about it, but turns out there's no perfect solution. If someone hadn't replied to my comment today I'd never have seen this again.

I wish my comment history ("threads" link at top of every page) would adjust to push the comment up so I'd be more likely to see the thread again or notice any replies without counting on email alerts.

I'd also be interested in further discussion into something like that. Talk about deja vu.