Revamping the system is a large ask, and while it's on the to-do, it is not on the very top of the list.
That said, we do recognise that the community very much wants this functionality, so it's not at the bottom either 😉
I participate in the http://mangolassi.it community and just noticed that if you hover over the "replied about 18 hours ago" text, you see the actual timestamp. Great little gem. Can it be set to show something more readable though?
Just found this thread and wanted to say thanks for updating the hover text.