> The year is useful in the title when the article provides out of date information.

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 Why would someone even submit an article with out of date information?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.

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jxf 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Why would someone even submit an article with out of date information?

The incredulous tone of this hypothetical worries me, because I think this actually happens with troubling regularity.

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pseudalopex 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Why would someone even submit an article with out of date information?

Anything that good hackers would find interesting is on topic.[1] This includes some history.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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lapcat 9 hours ago | parent [-]

History is not the same as out-of-date information.

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other hand, to submit an article about a bug that no longer exists, with no explanation, would simply be misleading, out-of-date information.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.

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pseudalopex 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I did not say the submitted article was history. I answered why someone would submit an article with out of date information.

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lapcat 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> I did not say the submitted article was history.

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 I answered why someone would submit an article with out of date information.

And I explained why history is not the same as out of date information. Thus, you have not explained why someone would submit an article with out of date information.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 Submitting out of date information is not fine, and it wasn't done in this case, because the information continues to be accurate.

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pseudalopex 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> I did not say that you did say that.

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]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6276961

	▲	lapcat 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> History includes articles with out of date information. 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.