Tell Me When You Wrote This
If there’s one problem in this ever-growing blogosphere, it’s that sites are so easy to create that no one worries too much when they die. So they continue to sit out here with the living, quickly becoming useless piles of bones that get in the way of the rest of us.
This is a problem in itself, but it’s one with which we can cope. We can cope so long as these bones aren’t intentionally made to look more alive than they are. So long as bones show themselves to clearly be bones, we living members are pretty able to avoid those we don’t really want to look at.
But a problem arises when you hide that your website is a skeleton. When you decide that you’ll get rid of post times or — and this is far, far worse — dates. Then when I come upon your site a quick glance around doesn’t tell me if I’m dealing with a skeleton or a living, breathing, changing blog
And if there’s one thing I less like than a dead blog, it’s a blog that doesn’t quickly fess to its deadness. Some otherwise great blogs and themes have this problem. I really like a lot about Brian Gardener’s Revolution theme, but I hate that no version puts publication times or dates on all the articles shown on the front page. Perhaps this was intentional or a simple oversight, but I don’t like it.
This is the internet age when lifespan of content is measured is hours, or — if we’re to be very generous — days. In such an atmosphere not telling me when your content was published is like admitting that you’re not a part of these exciting and rapidly changing times.
In some situations you could get away without times. Yahoo!, for example, doesn’t offer them on it’s homepage. And the Washington Post and LA Times are both lax about the times their stories were written. But they’ve got a great deal of built-in trust as well-known sources of information, and arguably important ones. A visitor can easily guess that, at most, the content is a day old.
But visitors to MyRandomSite don’t know who you are or what you do. They don’t know that they can trust that you’re not a pile of bones. So you need to tell them. Not much is needed; seeing “March 5, 2008” on a post is enough in most situations. That way I can tell that if nothing else, your site’s not a pile of bones. Maybe you’ve not updated in a few days or hours, but I know when you were last seen breathing. In a place where content’s cheap and credibility costs a great deal, that little bit matters a lot.
So please, bloggers, webmasters, web designer, and spectators, put a time stamp on your content. On your front page. Tell me that you’re not expired and I’m more likely to stick around and give what you’re doing some consideration. Thank you.

