I’ve decided that writers who don’t include dates on their blog pages, or at least in the permalink structure, are following one of the worst blogging trends ever to grace the wide open spaces of the blogosphere.
Here’s why: Context matters.
I found an interesting post today that started out, “Last night, I finished my first book…” but there wasn’t a date in the url, on the page, or anywhere else that I could find. It mattered, because I’m pretty sure the blogger in question has since finished several books and I just really wanted to know when it was that the post was written, or when that first book was finished.
I didn’t find out.
It hit me then that although there are contexts where we don’t want to include dates because someone might pass by an article when the article is still very relevant, in situations like this, where the post is very much part of a history of something, missing dates are significant.
Blog entries need context—they’re incomplete without it. Dates matter.
In a fit of pique, I abandoned the site. It probably had something interesting to say, but it was just a jumble of posts without context.