Re: [gentoo-doc] Proposal: remove 'last updated' date from rendered page

[Camille Huot]

On 9/3/08, Josh Saddler <nightmorph@g.o> wrote:
> I'm getting tired of folks bashing our docs
> as being "out of date", "stale", "old", or "inaccurate" just because of the
> displayed date of the last update.

What's the point saying a doc is out of date if they haven't any issue
with it? -- they can't have any, since the doc is up to date ;)

> The only possible downside I can see to this is that we might get fewer
> patches/bug reports from users who see an "old" date and feel the need to
> send in stuff based on it. Anyone know if this is a common occurrence? Is
> there otherwise really a *need* to display the date?

I think this would be a bad motivation to remove the last updated
information. The date show us if a doc has been updated recently or
not, and it's a valuable information even if there is nothing to
update. It represents the date of the information we put into the doc.
If you remove the date, you can't distinguish two versions of a (HTML)
document anymore. How to tell if this is the last version or a cached
one?

> I look at it like this . . . sometimes, our docs are okay because they're
> feature-complete. They don't *need* any further updating. Just like gamin,
> which hasn't had an upstream release since 2007....it's because it "just
> works." I like to think our docs are this way, too. Mostly. :)

As a workaround, I would suggest to bump the date when an old document
has been checked, tested and certified with current material.

Best regards,
-- 
Camille Huot