

If You Don't Date Your Work It Sucks (date as in time, not as in romance) - dkasper
http://www.protocolostomy.com/2010/01/18/if-you-dont-date-your-work-it-sucks/

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patio11
One compelling reason to not date your articles is that age sometimes destroys
perceived value even if it doesn't destroy actual value.

For example, I have a bunch of stuff writing about customer service written in
2006/2007. That field has not evolved so much that "Don't curse at your
customers" is bad advice in 2009. However, if one of those were posted here,
the first comment would likely be "Dude, mark in the title this is from 2006",
because the audience here is socialized to assume that the new and shiny is
what they want to be exposed to and the old and crusty is largely not valuable
with the exception of a few classics.

I have sites where I have no visible dates for exactly that reason: I intend
the content to be evergreen, and if it is evergreen you don't need to know
what year it was planted. (Edit to add context: elementary school teaching
activities. I am not a textbook publisher so I have no incentive for ripping
up my multiplication activity every year and coming out with New Shiny
Multiplication 2010 Now With Numbers You Totally Couldn't Have Multiplied Last
Year!)

~~~
iamwil
Shouldn't the judge of evergreen-ness be from the reader, and not the author?
If it really is timeless, people will come back and link to it again and
again. I see the Norvig posts on learning to program in 10 years come up again
and again here.

It sounds like if you wrote books instead of blog posts, you'd rip the covers
off so readers can't judge it by its cover.

~~~
patio11
Why rip covers off when I can instead obsessively A/B test them and remove
elements that hurt the business value of the IP I spent so much work creating,
like dates?

Here's the fundamental difference between me-as-employee and me-as-
businessman: I will get paid for my labor of January 19th on February 30th,
and will never see another penny of it even if what I do today has lasting
value. What I do after I get home, though, I get paid for every year if it has
lasting value. I will not cheat myself out of that lasting value by setting an
auto-expires header on it.

~~~
iamwil
I've had the same frustration as the OP where the date wasn't included when I
was looking for time-sensitive information. It was a disservice to me-as-
reader, and I ended up not reading the article and looking elsewhere, since I
couldn't be sure of its timeliness.

If that article was timeless, it's because I hear about it again and again
from other readers linking to it, not because there was no date on it.

Of course, I don't know what you write, nor have I seen the results of your
a/b testing. So shrug.

------
bootload
_"... What happens when you don’t date your articles? ..."_

I read a lot of articles and going through through them is a bit like
undertaking an archeology dig for useful bits of information. The best sites
include subtle hints that convey context. Useful if you are evaluating, _"do I
continue reading?"_

How?

Authoritative sites are good because they convey more meaning than just an
article. They tell you _"who"_ is writing, _"when"_ it was written and most
important their viewpoint and intent, the _"where"_. You find this out using
subtle hints.

Date is an important clue for understanding context. Writers who don't
including perceived affordances such as date, mark themselves as the writer
equivalent of a first time ice skater constantly tripping over. A writer
newbie, who doesn't grasp the concept of readers who use context to search and
evaluate. Some sites where I have found a motherload of stuff:

\- <http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/>

\- <http://htmlarchive.scripting.com/>

\- <http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/>

\- <http://paulgraham.com/articles.html>

\- <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/archives.html>

I read these sites again and again, because the value of the posts are
increased by the _"perceived affordance"_ of details such as the date a post
was written.

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jrockway
Now I want to display a random date to each viewer of my blog, and record that
date when they make a comment. Then I will see if the commentary changes based
on the date they think the article was published. (The dates on the comments
will also be changed randomly.)

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mr_dbr
Same thing applies to tutorials which don't mention version numbers and
such...

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jsz0
Depends on the content. If you're dealing with broad timeless subjects dating
isn't a big issue. You could read an article 50 years old dealing with
male/female relationships and get some value out of it. If you're dealing with
technical issues, or any subject that moves fast, it's more than a little
irresponsible not to date your work. I've personally hosed multiple Linux
systems trying to follow old out of date HOWTOs. I know better now of course
but I still have to filter through hundreds of outdated results for almost any
technical search I do these days.

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Poiesis
I'll add here that more people should date comments in code! Don't know how
many of you are collaborating on projects, but It's a personal pet peeve of
mine to see something like:

    
    
      // Updated for the new login system
    

...which of course has other problems too, but it's really annoying to try to
figure things out when comments are out of date.

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nitrogen
Another thing to consider is that dated publications may help in the future if
someone accuses you of stealing their idea (or vice versa).

------
dkasper
On a related note update the copyright date on your websites to 2010! I
updated ours at JTV on Friday, Youtube is so 2009 :-)

~~~
cema
Just make it automatic.

~~~
dkasper
That is of course the correct solution ;-)

~~~
boucher
I also do this. But, theoretically, it's not entirely legal. In other words,
if you have a piece of content which has not been changed, but for which
you've "automatically" updated the copyright date, you are basically lying
about when the content was created. Not sure how this affects any future
standing you may have. It's also not really a concern for a reasonably dynamic
site, including things like JTV.

~~~
nitrogen
Untested hypothesis: maybe adding some nearly-trivial randomized content, such
as a quote from a public domain quote database, can allow you to claim a new
copyright each time the page is served?

~~~
DTrejo
Can you legally do something like 2009- _2010_ where the year in italics is
updated automatically?

~~~
cema
I think this amounts to something like _(c) Current_. I do not think it is
legal! But maybe there is a way?

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ionfish
Articles lacking a last-modified date are annoying as well—'About' pages are a
classic case in point.

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10ren
Agreed.

Wayback machine is another strategy to date articles.
<http://www.archive.org/>

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noelchurchill
I feel the same way as the auther. It drives me nuts when I'm reading
something and I don't know the time context it was written in.

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J3L2404
I completely agree and I can't help but think that it relates to "The Last
Responsible Moment" approach to decision making where delay = more current
data, so if an article has no date, its value is seriously suspect.

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jayliew
If you don't date at work, it also sucks (romance, not time)

:D In all seriousness, people spend a ridiculous % of their lives at work,
sometimes it happens, and sometimes it works out!

