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Re:Ask HN: Is the past disappearing on the web? by saurik on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @06:05AM (#30084066)
FWIW, I started hating putting dates on most of my stuff because I simply got sick of people incessantly asking "is this still up to date?" because the date happened to be from even just a few months ago much less a year ago.
Re:Ask HN: Is the past disappearing on the web? by nosianu on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @06:40AM (#30084326)
Why not add something together with the date telling people for how long this information will be valid? Does not have to be a date, can be "indefinitely" or, in the case of software "until new major version update". Works best when you also revisit old content occasionally and update that information. I think you drew the wrong conclusions from those inquiries.
Re:Ask HN: Is the past disappearing on the web? by helsinkiandrew on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @06:16AM (#30084148)
> I simply got sick of people incessantly asking "is this still up to date?"

I don't know what or where 'your stuff' is - but isn't that a fair question for a lot of topics? Writing about data structures or political protests might be valid for decades but a lot of technical writing about languages, platforms, even products and companies can age very quickly and unlike news or culture might be of less interest to people in the future.

Many people find technical writings whilst searching google for a solution to a problem. I love the articles that have a date and version of whatever platform something is relevant for (even better when someone adds a "this was written for version X.Y things have changed in version X.Z see the doc at..." etc)

Re:Ask HN: Is the past disappearing on the web? by randcraw on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @08:50AM (#30085318)
And if you remove the date, people will still ask the same question. Inevitably.
Re:Ask HN: Is the past disappearing on the web? by worble on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @06:21AM (#30084186)
It's a valid question, you don't have to respond to them but at least if the date is there the user themselves can have a fighting chance at looking up what's changed since then.

It's entirely possible a tutorial made for software 3 months ago or something might have outdated information if there was a new, backwards incompatible release, or that a news article might be missing information that was revealed only a few days ago, etc.

Re:Ask HN: Is the past disappearing on the web? by dusted on Wednesday January 26, 2022 @07:16AM (#30084613)
Yeah, that can be a problem, I used to put a Created and an Updated date, but now I just have a Last updated date.