[theme-reviewers] Pages: date/time stamp should not be displayed?!

[james]

Doesn't it also make them no longer timeless. When reading, if something is too old I tend to disregard it depending on the subject matter. A timestamp doesn't really tell me this content is static, it tells me it's stale. And those two words are not synonymous for me.

In building hundreds of sites I can't think of a dingle use case where timestamps on a static page would have been desirable. That being said I'm sure there are some in which that makes sense but definitely not the norm or even frequent.

James Lawswpninjas.com
twitter.com/jameslaws



---- On Thu, 16 May 2013 11:46:43 -0500 Edward Caissie<edward.caissie at gmail.com> wrote ---- 


No timestamp means no fixed position means not static ...


Edward Caissie
aka Cais.
 

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:46 PM, Edward Caissie <edward.caissie at gmail.com> wrote:
 A published timestamp fixes the page to a point in time, thus making it truly static.


 Edward Caissie
aka Cais.
 

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Chip Bennett <chip at chipbennett.net> wrote:
 Let's look at this another way: what would be the point/benefit of displaying the *publish* date/time on a Static Page?


 On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:43 PM, Edward Caissie <edward.caissie at gmail.com> wrote:
 My bad for not "noticing" it before now ... but that does not change the point that it should not be in the guidelines; or the point that there are most likely quite a few themes that should not be in the repository based solely on that guideline as well.
 

The point of something being static requires it to be fixed to a certain place or time thus having a timestamp is more likely to indicate the page to be static than to not have a timestamp. Having a guideline that dictates no fixed location, as in time, seems more counter-intuitive than useful.
 

Edward Caissie
aka Cais.
 

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:37 PM, Amy Hendrix <sabreuse at gmail.com> wrote:
 (this is becoming a bad habit!) My bad -- that wasn't the original
 version, just the oldest revision on the first page of history (D'OH!)
 but my point is that the no timestamps guideline has been around for
 several years now.
 
 On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:33 PM, Amy Hendrix <sabreuse at gmail.com> wrote:
 > Sorry to follow up to my own email, but the first version of the Unit
 > Test codex page at
 > http://codex.wordpress.org/index.php?title=Theme_Unit_Test&oldid=91985
 > has "Make sure datestamps or timestamps are not visible." in 2010 --
 > as authored by Cais ;)
 >
 > On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Amy Hendrix <sabreuse at gmail.com> wrote:
 >> The guideline that Posts should display timestamps but Pages should
 >> not has been around for as long as I've been using the Theme Unit Test
 >> -- I completely agree that stale information on posts is always an
 >> issue, but IME the norm for just about all the users I deal with is
 >> that static pages should be seen as static, not time-dependent.
 >>
 >> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 12:21 PM, Emil Uzelac <emil at uzelac.me> wrote:
 >>> I did not have time to check latest version yet, however I do agree
 >>> that timestamp should be displayed and not dictated if that is the case.
 >>>
 >>>
 >>> On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Edward Caissie <edward.caissie at gmail.com>
 >>> wrote:
 >>>>
 >>>> I was just reviewing the latest Theme Unit Test data (mostly because I
 >>>> cannot seem to get the entire data set to import into my local test
 >>>> environment) and noticed "date/time stamp should not be displayed" ...
 >>>> perhaps I missed some extensive discussion but where did this guideline come
 >>>> from?
 >>>>
 >>>> This is the single most common complaint about information found on
 >>>> WordPress installations that I hear, the reader generally has no idea if the
 >>>> information is current or stale ... and more often than not those search
 >>>> results that appear to rank highest tend also to be the ones that are
 >>>> outdated.
 >>>>
 >>>> I can see the category/tag meta data not being displayed (mostly due to it
 >>>> not being available in a default installation) but to not show the timestamp
 >>>> by reason of it being a guideline, that simply does not make sense.
 >>>>
 >>>> By design? Yes. By theme author prerogative? Yes. Dictated by the WPTRT?
 >>>> NO.
 >>>>
 >>>>
 >>>> Edward Caissie
 >>>> aka Cais.
 >>>>
 >>>> _______________________________________________
 >>>> theme-reviewers mailing list
 >>>> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
 >>>> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
 >>>>
 >>>
 >>>
 >>> _______________________________________________
 >>> theme-reviewers mailing list
 >>> theme-reviewers at lists.wordpress.org
 >>> http://lists.wordpress.org/mailman/listinfo/theme-reviewers
 >>>
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