Why do we need the "Modify Date" column?

[Bob_Peters]

The subject says it all.  Why do we need that column?  It just occupies real estate.

[Claudio_González1]

Well, the matter is debatable. I find it very useful.

[John Waller]

Claudio González wrote:

Well, the matter is debatable. I find it very useful.

How is it useful?

It's identical to the Last Post column.

[~graffiti]

I would imagine it would be identical to the last post column unless someone has gone in more recently and removed spam or cleaned up the thread?

[Noel Carboni]

So in that case wouldn't you always want to see the "last post" info?

-Noel

[pwillener]

It seems to contain the same as the Last Post column.  It does not really matter to me, as I am on a wide screen PC.  But people on narrower devices (as your iPad in the other topic) may find this waste of space stupid.

[Steve Werner]

It would be good to make display of that column optional. That would help viewers on lower pixel resolution devices.

[Dave Merchant]

Modify date is affected by any moderation change and a user edit of a message - so it's usually the same as last post date but not always. The sort orders and RSS feeds need both columns as they see 'new content' differently.

[Noel Carboni]

I don't mean to be critical of you, Dave, but a "That's just the way it is" response leads to apathy, and apathy leads to junkware, and junkware leads to hate...

Nobody needs the modification date to be on the screen.

-Noel

[John Waller]

Noel Carboni wrote:
Nobody needs the modification date to be on the screen.

Seconded.

It's a waste of screen real estate.

[Jacob Bugge]

In the days of the fair forums, it was a simple list of threads, each with just the Title, one line for each, no separation.

Threads (with posts) that were unread were shown in bold with a red flag.

On a normal size screen about 40 threads could be seen at the same time.