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.