There was no good reason to add the year.
No, that's not the reason for the HN convention. Why would someone even submit an article with out of date information?
The reason for the convention is that "news" is generally expected to be new, so when it's not new, HN readers want to be informed of that fact, and they can react to the submission accordingly. It's a simple courtesy to readers.
The incredulous tone of this hypothetical worries me, because I think this actually happens with troubling regularity.
Obviously because people don't check or don't know or don't understand assume it's still valid. It happens all the time.
The actual question is why would anyone even think that people would not submit articles with out of date information?
> The year is useful in the title when the article provides out of date information.
In other words, rahimnathwani was suggesting, incorrectly, that appending the year is necessary only when the article submitter knows that the article provides out of date information.
In that context, when I asked rhetorically, "Why would someone even submit an article with out of date information?" I meant why would someone knowingly submit an article with out of date information? Thus, your examples are not applicable to the debate about when an article submitter should append the year to the article title, because in your examples, the out of date information is submitted unknowingly:
> Obviously because people don't check or don't know or don't understand assume it's still valid.
Of course people unknowingly submit out of date information. If you thought I was suggesting otherwise, that's a misunderstanding of the argument.
So that's the case my comment was about (which was precisely the case of TFA, since people were discussing adding the date after it was posted).
rahimnathwani submitted the article. I personally replied to rahimnathwani, the submitter, suggesting that the year (2021) be appended after it was posted. So, your so-called "fun fact" describes the very situation that I already participated in. You're explaining something that is not only totally obvious to me already but in fact should be totally obvious to everyone, including yourself, since it occurred just a few comments earlier in this discussion thread!
Again, though, the publication date has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not the information is out of date.
What I was getting at, in any case, is that it sometimes the need to add the date after-the-post-is-up can arise. To that, the objection that "but who would post outdated information knowingly" is moot.
In the general case, I stand by what rahimnathwani said, that "the year is useful in the title when the article provides out of date information".
You might think "that's not the reason for the HN convention". It might not even be the canonical reason PG or whoever established the convention.
Nonetheless, it's a solid idea, and it probably should have been the reason for the HN convention to begin with.
I don't care nor have a use for a date stamp on evergreen or still relevant content. Even if it's older article or post someone posts here. I do have a use for a date stamp of a post with information that's potentially out of date, whether the OP includes one, or someone here adds it.
I am the person who asked rhetorically, why would someone even submit an article with out of date information, in the same comment where I suggested adding the date after the post is up. Thus, it was not an objection to adding the date after the post is up, and again, you've unfortunately misinterpreted the context. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45324088
> I don't care nor have a use for a date stamp on evergreen or still relevant content. Even if it's older article or post someone posts here.
You're free to disagree with the HN convention. However, this is not the place to argue with it. I would recommend creating your own HN submission for that. The only reason I'm still here is to clarify my previous comments in this thread, which I believe I've done now.
Anything that good hackers would find interesting is on topic.[1] This includes some history.
The submitted article is not an historical review. If there was an article written explaining how Disk Utility had a bug, but the bug is now fixed, that might be interesting. On the other hand, to submit an article about a bug that no longer exists, with no explanation, would simply be misleading, out-of-date information. In this case, however, the bug still exists presently, so it's not history either.
I did not say that you did say that.
> I answered why someone would submit an article with out of date information.
And I explained why history is not the same as out of date information. Thus, you have not explained why someone would submit an article with out of date information.
Submitting history is fine. Submitting out of date information is not fine, and it wasn't done in this case, because the information continues to be accurate.
I did not say you said I said that. My point was it was irrelevant.
> And I explained why history is not the same as out of date information. Thus, you have not explained why someone would submit an article with out of date information.
There is nothing to explain. Some history is on topic. History includes articles with out of date information. Consider the 1st Linux announcement.[1]
Yes, but a lot of out of date information is of no historical interest. That's the distinction I was getting at when I said that history is not the same as out-of-date-information.
What's distinctive about history is that we recognize it as history. In other words, when we take an interest in a document as historical, we don't assume that it describes the current state of affairs. Nobody is misled in that respect.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6276961
Notice that this submission has the year (1991) appended, which is all we wanted in the first place. It's simply standard practice on HN and has nothing to do with whether the information included is out of date, contrary to what rahimnathwani was arguing. Indeed, someone could publish a blog post in 2025 that includes out of date information (of no historical interest), but it wouldn't receive a (2025) label on HN, because the label is not an indicator of out of date information, just the publication year.