additions… #44
…editorial…
dated information…
When on a tight schedule, there's two types of dated articles I usually skip past while searching for information: outdated and undated. Needless to say there's plenty of both on the web. Having to deal with them makes all serious search-efforts take longer, and sometimes it's like wading through a sea of mud.
Having to read through an article where the date is missing, to establish whether it contains timely and relevant information, is something I only occasionally do. If there's no date, then I usually regard the content as outdated and/or irrelevant, and leave in search for something more up to date and relevant.
I don't know why some authors leave “timeless” documents floating around on the web, as most of what's relevant today is outdated and irrelevant in a short while.
With no dates to show its “timeliness” or lack of same, most articles are actually outdated and irrelevant even before they're released. So, what's the point in releasing them?
There's a lot of undated and/or outdated, faulty, released-and-forgotten, material on the web, so I guess some think a few more of the same won't do any harm. They're probably right, but with a few millions more like that released every week their very existence slows down our information-searches for no good reason.
All these articles and other stuff need, is dates so we can quickly place them in the correct timeframe and judge their content on that basis. It can't be that hard to add a date, so I'm a bit lost as to why so many web documents aren't given any.
on this site:
All our articles have a signature and two dates at the bottom, like the following…
sincerely 
Hageland 15.dec.2008
last rev: 19.dec.2008
The signature belongs to whoever wrote or inspired the article – usually me, and the dates clearly show where and when the article was originally written – which in some cases may predate this site or site-section, and when the article was last revised.
This kind of “marking” should not leave anyone in any doubt about authenticity or timeframe, which I think is important for quick determination of an article's relevance. Further relevance-checking has to be based on its content.
copyright dates? so what?
Some web documents have a copyright note with year(s), which makes no sense and usually doesn't help in figuring out when the article, or whatever, was written and launched.
1: original documents are automatically subject to various national and/or international copyright laws, which protect original material created by individuals or groups of individuals from being freely copied and reused until a number of years after the authors have died, no matter when in the authors' lifetime the documents were actually written. This means copyright dates on private pages makes no sense on the web, unless the author died a long time ago.
2: copyright dates on web pages are quite often updated independent of the document itself, so they tell nothing about the date the document was created. Some even use a script to update copyright dates, which means the copyright makes no sense since one (when it comes to javascript) only has to turn script-support off to make the copyright note disappear completely or in part. Some browsers don't support javascript at all.
So we may find an ok-looking…
Copyright ©
…but no information about when the article was actually written. Besides, I'm not interested in
copying the article, only in knowing if it's potentially worth my attention.
on this site:
There's a copyright document linked in on each page – in the page-footer. There's no “copyright expiring dates” anywhere, simply because I ain't dead yet. Copyright on all my original material expires some 50 years after I'm dead and buried – give or take a few days, so at the moment of writing I'm pretty relaxed on the matter.
The way I've put the relevant dates and signature at the bottom of my articles, provides all the copyright protection my original material will ever need, and get. According to all copyright laws I've ever read there's no way one can add more protection to it, so I won't bother with unnecessary paragraphs or copyright notes.
Good people respect laws and other people's rights. Bad people don't respect anyone or anything, not even themselves.
preserving search engine ranking…
Some focus most if not all their attention on search engine ranking, and don't want to make the slightest changes in fear of dropping on the lists for some search terms. That's fine with me, but if the material is outdated it's just clogging up the search-pipes.
Adding dates to show visitors how timely or outdated the material really is, might make such a site a bit more interesting, and prevent visitors from thinking the entire site is full of legacy-stuff. Unless legacy-stuff is what one is after, such sites tend to fall out of favor quite rapidly – even if a few old documents literally get “stuck in the search-pipes.”
on this site:
Search engine ranking is low on my list of things to keep an eye on. I can't say it doesn't matter at all, but months may pass between each time I look at ranking or statistics for this site – can't remember when I last looked, and I never do anything in particular to affect search engine ranking.
The content is either relevant and interesting to some, or it isn't. Either way: it'll have to perform on its own without me bothering about anything but its informational value. If I'm not happy with what I once wrote and signed off, then it's time to do something about it no matter what effect that may have on search engine ranking and other low-ranking variables.
preserving web rot…
Web rot is quite common on the web, as old stuff rarely ever gets updated or deleted. Apart from not keeping phase with the technical progress – html, CSS, script etc., the material, content, is just left to rot once it seized to carry anything of value.
Some point to “historical value” to justify old stuffs existence, and in some cases that may be ok. However, in most cases it's just web rot with no value on any level, and most if not all references – links to other documents – are long since dead and gone.
Some old web pages are referring to or relying on functionality and material on the same site, that has long since disappeared. As a result the old articles, blog-posts and whatnot become nonsensical and/or disinformative – web rot.
That some documents, images and scripts are altered or deleted while the pages that relate to and rely on them are kept unchecked and unaltered, is certainly not uncommon. This happens quite often when sites are redesigned and styling old pages rely on gets replaced with styling that only works properly for new pages.
One either revise an entire site during or immediately after a redesign – including old archives, or chance is one has broken ones own site by redesigning it. I personally would recommend splitting redesign in two: provide new styles for new parts and keep the old styles for the old parts – if those old parts are not deleted altogether as part of a constructive fight against web rot.
on this site:
Going through my own material I have no problem finding parts that should be upgraded, updated or removed. Keeping information relevant and correct is important to me, and far from everything on this site measure up. Archived web rot is not something I can declare myself pleased with, even if the material was good and relevant at the time of release.
Every now and then I sweep through a few pages, delete what I don't think is relevant anymore and tighten up the rest as best I can. Even on a modest-sized site like this a few hours content-tidying each week is time well spent, and I probably should spend more time on that side of it.
However, as long as visitors can check dates and figure out for themselves if my articles and other material is timely and relevant to whatever each individual is searching for, then I'm not too obsessed by fixing all the minor details I may not be entirely happy with, even if some information becomes slightly dated after a while.
Of course, dead links, missing content and other vital parts will be fixed almost immediately – once they are discovered. Having completely nonsensical and disinformative documents on this site is not acceptable.
dated skills…
Visitors who find themselves at a higher level of knowledge than the author of a particular article, may to some degree be right in questioning a document's relevance – and even its very existence. However, in most cases such knowledgeable readers should only be grateful for being in such an enviable position, and carry on.
We all are at different stages of personal development in various fields, and may even have lost interest and/or stagnated in some fields. No big deal, as we can not all master everything to perfection anyway. That ones web documents show what level of knowledge one was at in a particular field at any given time, is as expected and should not in itself attract negative criticism.
Of course, it would be nice if old documents was updated with pointers – links – to more up to date information when new documents on same subjects are released, as that would save time and help to avoid confusion amongst visitors arriving at the older documents.
on this site:
I have to some degree provided older documents with pointers to new and more relevant information, but I can't say I've covered all. Cross-referencing between documents is one of the great things on the web, but it can also complicate things quite a bit during revision.
Normally I prefer to replace an old document with a new and better one when the time comes, and simply erase all traces of the old one. Most times that approach works just fine, but it quite often means I'll have to update maybe a dozen related documents as part of the process, to avoid flawed or nonsensical cross-references.
For the most part I'm only interested in getting the language right, as English in any flavor is a third language to me and I don't get to practice it very much apart from in my writing on and across the web. It would be bad if the words and grammer get in the way of otherwise good content, so trying to improve my writing is high on my agenda.
The dates provided for each article may indicate any progress I make regarding my writing-skills, as the older the articles the weaker the language – I think. Reading some of my older documents can be quite an embarrassing experience. Still some pretty flawed ones around, but I'll hopefully find time to rewrite them one of these days.
Even my latest, like this one, contain language-flaws, but hopefully not as many really bad ones as some of my old documents. Of course, the language should preferably be improved during a revision, so the date for last revision is important – not only for relevance of the material.
sincerely
Hageland 15.dec.2008
16.dec.2008 - rewrote and added some.
19.dec.2008 - language check.
last rev: 19.dec.2008
additions…
