In the context of a blog, if you’re browsing in a manner that is no longer chronological (through related/popular posts navs for example), then dates become even more crucial. While not in the sense of relevance in all cases, but context in others.

Awesome point on regular updates and quality of the comment, a blog isn’t worth reading without them.

Either way, you’re right that it’s super important to have dates on your content. For me this goes back to the most important factor in creating a successful blog (and something you alluded to in your response above) which is that the content needs to be regularly updated. Even more important is that it’s consistently good content, but that seems to be outside of this discussion.

With that said, thank you Kyle for regularly providing us with consistently good content!

Michael: A blog is still a website as you pointed out, and in my mind a blog is sort of a personal opinion area. Blogs are almost always recognizable when you arrive at them. While all of the typical conventions for the web apply there are a few that are more associated with a blog than any other type of website. I do believe you can have a blog without commenting. One of my favorite blogs, that of Andy Rutledge, never allows comments; but it’s still a blog in the sense that it is a regularly updated journal of Andy’s opinion and/or thoughts.

As far as dating content, while it may seem “timeless” at the time it was written, it may no longer be so timeless ten years from then. Making sure that things have a date and/or time associated with them ensures that users won’t be confused. For instance, an article written about computer processors eight years ago will largely be irrelevant today. You are correct that Slash7 is guilty of omitting this, I included it for it’s great use of all the other conventions however.

As for Ordered List, while you may not need to persuse each of the different varieties of archive listings, you can choose one that best suits you and use it from then on.

Matt: You bring up a good point about comment previews, however, I think these are still rare enough that a user doesn’t expect it to be available by default.

I often appreciate comment preview as well. Sometimes it’s easier to re-read one’s comment with the benefit of emphasis / strength styling, as well as to test links.

Finally, sometimes I like to browse posts sequentially in order to gain a sense of context. It’s more difficult to keep a post’s content in mind when you have to navigate away from the post to the archives in order to navigate between neighboring posts that have since slid off the main page. Monthly archives partially solve this problem, but can be intimidating to browse on a prolific blogger’s site.

I expect all sites to have clickable banners, and break up their walls of text. If commenting is disabled, then is it really a blog? (Assuming you define blog as more than reverse chronological article listings). And should only blogs date their work? Even if the content itself is timeless?

Looking at the examples you listed, Ordered List has a huge list of date archives, which are of no use to me (How can I tell which month is going to be useful?), and Slash7 doesn’t post dates on their articles. I like Elliot’s site the best, and its design would allow it to pass as an ordinary web site, as well as a blog.

It’s interesting to hear your comments on ‘related posts’; it’s something I’ve never adopted on my site, although I’ve often thought about it. I’ve always considered it unnecessary simply becauseI think that’s what categories are for, but you’ve thrown an interesting angle on it: a list of ‘related posts’ may well provide an implicit level of navigation and act as a promotional tool for seldom-read articles.

Oh, and thanks for the link in the conclusion!