I think the date is still extremely valuable. Knowing whether something is from last month or a decade ago makes a huge difference. It's also useful so that URL's can be sorted by date.
Also, "you're not going to publish two essays with the same title" feels false. If you write 1,000 pieces and use short titles and tend to write about the same subjects, it feels extremely likely that you'll wind up repeating titles.
And it's sad how often one needs to use the URL to find the date, since many authors just don't put it on the page (corporate sites are particularly scared of dating their stuff)
Others seem to think just day and month is fine, as if the year isn't the most significant part. And if both numbers are <=12 then you have to go and find out what locale the author formats their dates in...
I agree, but I think it's important to note that the date in the URL can also be misleading. For example, it's often assigned at time of creation. If that page or post gets updated years later, even if almost entirely rewritten, it still has the original date in the URL
> even if almost entirely rewritten, it still has the original date in the URL
If we're talking about blogs/news, they don't ever get almost entirely rewritten. The original publication is the only date that matters, and it matters a lot.
If we're talking about evergreen content like documentation, then of course you don't put dates in the URL. A small "last updated" on the page itself is appropriate there.
> If we're talking about blogs/news, they don't ever get almost entirely rewritten.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case. It should be the case IMHO, but it (currently) isn't. The SEO/marketing people nowadays (ab)use popular pages for the search rankings and update them regularly to keep the content fresh and highly ranked (since search engines give much preference to new content).
Also, even for strict blogs/news, it's not unusual for a particular post to be a draft for many months before publishing. Most serious blog will fix the date to match publish date, but that isn't what happens by default especially in Wordpress (which is the most important platform for blogs).
Also, "you're not going to publish two essays with the same title" feels false. If you write 1,000 pieces and use short titles and tend to write about the same subjects, it feels extremely likely that you'll wind up repeating titles.