I ask because of this thread.
None of the Staff Reports in the archives are dated - except if you click through the archive itself. I tried doing just that, to see if I could find the link to the report in question using its URL, until I realized the URLs of the staff reports aren’t in date order. :mad:
Can someone tell me when the report was written, at any rate?
We began running Staff Reports, then called Cecil’s Mailbag, when we were on AOL in the late 1990s. The format we were using had no provision for dates. In 1999, when we switched to the Web, the format used for Straight Dope columns had a line for dates, and at some fairly early point we began dating Staff Reports as well. We have paper copies of the printed Straight Dope archive from the early years, so it was possible to determine the original pub date for those columns. Staff Reports have always been published strictly online, and what with hard drive crashes and other mishaps the original drafts have been lost. So we don’t have a way to establish the original pub date. Most undated columns are from 1999 or earlier, though.
Seems like it would be fairly simple and helpful to the reader to add “first posted circa 1999” or “written between 1992 and 1999” or some such, along with a revision date if appropriate. Maybe that wouldn’t be helpful to the Reader though.
Thanks, Ed. I guess “more than 11 years ago” is close enough for government work here.