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Comment by timmb | Hacker News Reader

While I have all the bloggers - please can I ask you to remember adding an RSS feed to your blog? This is what makes it possible for those like me to keep returning for the occasional new post.

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And published date too, please!

Definitely this. I don’t even read posts on tech blogs that lack a publication date because everything moves so fast, and I don’t want to waste my time using stale info.

If I remember correctly then patio11 argued strongly against adding anything that dates your posts and write "evergreen content" instead. From a reader perspective I never understood this: I much prefer if there is a date right at the top, under the headline. From a user perspective I also don't like to see ads, I don't like to be asked to sign up for a newsletter or to subscribe to a Youtube channel but I guess it's all necessary evil that's done for the business.

I guess it depends on what you're writing about: tech might benefit more from a date than philosophy. I'm sure he's written multiple times about this, but patio11 has a thread you might be referring to here https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1234141833661440001 .

Regarding the newsletter/youtube subscription thing: I run a paid service https://kopi.cloud that can do email-to-rss conversion. You give the newsletter or youtube account an address like youtube@weinzierl.kopi.cloud and it will then publish emails received at that address as an RSS feed you can subscribe to.

Some RSS readers are beginning to support this functionality too (Inoreader just started doing this, but you need to be subscribed to one of the higher tiers to get the feature).

If it truly is evergreen content, the date is irrelevant. If it's something that will change with the next version of a piece of software, yes, the date is important. But all too often someone will skip an article written in 2014 even if it answers their question because it's "outdated."

Amen to that! The word "blog" stems from "weblog", and I don't understand why anyone would want a log that lacks timestamps? And for the record, I don't think an old publication date implies that the content is stale. It might be stale of course, and in that case the date will help me figure that out, which is good. It might not be stale despite having an old date, and in that case the date will help determine things like priority and standing the test of time. Which is also good. To me, lack of a date means the article is some SEO-tweaked clickbait whose only purpose is to waste my time.

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