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Access dates

[edit]
  • Up to you. It's just that I saw you add them, and they're not needed, just as they're not needed for books. The point of access dates is for online material that might be time sensitive, where you have reason to believe it might disappear or change. If an article was in a newspaper on such-and-such a date, it will always be there for the finding. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 02:51, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd say don't remove the retrieval dates if you're giving a url; every url needs a retrieval date. Malleus Fatuorum 03:03, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think you're misinterpreting what CITE actually says, and there's no "citation clutter" as the retrieval date only appears in the References section. If you access the ODNB online, for instance, and request a formatted citation it always includes a retrieval date. Similarly, if the newspaper article was accessed online it should also include a retrieval date. Malleus Fatuorum 03:39, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • I came across one example fairly recently where the online version of a newspaper's article didn't match the published version. It was in a case involving a female teacher accused of seducing one of her pupils; names were given in the published report but they were removed from the online version. Malleus Fatuorum 03:47, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • (ec) ODNB, the EB and others change their entries, so the access date is meaningful. But newspapers don't change their articles, except online on the day of rolling news coverage, in which case it's an access time that's needed, not a date. Giving an access date for a newspaper is like adding which date you took a book out of the library. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:47, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Okay, the example you gave is a fair point. But then what would the access date add? If it's the hard copy you're citing, an access date just looks odd. If it's the online version, that didn't change, did it? It was just different from the hard copy. But yes, where there's a sensitive legal issue, you might be right that an access date would be helpful. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 03:50, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • The bottom line for me is that every url needs a retrieval date, because as I've said, even newspapers change the online versions of their stories. In this particular case the online version did change, yes, some weeks after the article appeared in print. Initially it was a copy of the published article, but then some of the names were removed. Malleus Fatuorum 03:59, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is offtopic, so I hope Truthkeeper doesn't mind. I dislike access dates because they're almost always unneeded clutter (like ISBNs), and also because you can anyway never be sure what they say when they write the date like this: 2010-10-11. I've felt particularly opposed to them since I saw someone add the dates he had read the books he was citing, and I'm not kidding.

    And look, if you do add something that's later removed—"the person seduced by the teacher was Mary Smith"—and you give an access date, it almost never helps us. If it's not in the hard copy, and it's no longer on the Web, and it's not in the Internet Archive (and newspapers invariably block the bots), then it's not anywhere, and we can't use it. And if it *is* in the hard copy, we don't need the URL and the access date that tells us it used to be at this URL, but sorry it's disappeared. :) SlimVirgin talk|contribs 04:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to follow MLA style that requires retrieval dates, so not having dates seems odd to me. Does anyone have a link to the page for date formatting according to the latest ISO 900x (sorry can't remember what iteration we're at now) so I can check the formatting. I do tend to confuse the day/month parameters. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:13, 3 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

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