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The lesson people learn from articles like this is "don't put dates on date-sensitive web spam", or alternately "always put today's date on every article". Bot
by jellicle 12y ago
The lesson people learn from articles like this is "don't put dates on date-sensitive web spam", or alternately "always put today's date on every article".
Both of those are just spamming techniques.
If it doesn't have a date it's almost certainly worthless content. Having a prominent date is actually a huge positive credibility sign.
- hbien 12y agoPeople are quick to call other authors' work worthless. Patio11's piece you just read was very valuable to me, but it doesn't have a timestamp on it -- did you think it was worthless? Patio11 calls TechCrunch pink slime. He may find it worthless, but it's valuable to others. The truth is just have an audience/subject in mind and cater towards that. Writing a technical article that depends on current state of technology? Put a timestamp on it. Writing evergreen advice about salary negotiation? No need to put a timestamp on it.
- tptacek 12y agoThat is empirically not true in my experience and in Patrick's: putting a dateline on a piece of content (surprise) dates the content, and creates the expectation that the material is effectively superseded by any piece on the same subject with a newer dateline. It's also quite a stretch to point to any of Patrick's writing (or, I guess, mine) and call it "spam", or its promotion a "spamming technique". You probably didn't mean to say that, but that's the impression you created, by giving undue weight to spamming tactics. And your penultimate sentence is, of course, trivially refuted.