When I was in elementary school one of the first things I was taught was to always write my name and the date at the top of my papers.

I’ve noticed on the Internet people have no problem remembering to put their name on their posts, blogs, rants, etc. (or, anyway, putting some name on them). On the other hand it’s astounding to me how many people forget to simply add a date! For many social media platforms and forums the date is added automatically, of course. Ditto with some blogging environments. However, I see lots of articles online where someone has gone to a lot of effort to create some useful information and post it… but without any indication of when it was posted. This can be critical information, especially in the tech world where things change very rapidly.

When I read an interesting critique of something or a “howto” article with no date attached it seriously detracts from its usefulness: how do I know whether it was posted last week, and thus still quite relevant, or three years ago and hence more likely to be out of date?

Please people, remember your elementary school teachers and put a date on your content… even online.