Why every row in a register carries a date
Vendor pages are rewritten without notice. A quotation recorded with the day it was read stays useful after the page changes, because a reader can compare the two and see that something moved. As of 2026-09-12.
| Without a date | With a date |
|---|---|
| A claim that cannot be checked | A claim anybody can recheck |
| A stale row looks current | A stale row looks its age |
| A rewrite is invisible | A rewrite is a visible difference |
| Corrections look like edits | Corrections have a before and an after |
Inclusion rule. Consequences of recording, or not recording, when a source was consulted. Order. Paired, worse case first in each row.
1Dates are what make an old row usable rather than wrong
A sentence quoted accurately in one month may describe software that no longer exists. With a date attached it becomes a statement about that month, which is still true and still informative.
Without one it is an assertion about now, and it decays into a false claim without anybody touching it. The register does not have to be current; it has to be honest about when it was.
2Batches make dates cheaper and more informative
Reading a set of pages in one pass gives a group of rows a shared date, which is also a shared basis for comparison. Counts across such a group mean something.
Rows read months apart cannot be compared as confidently, and a register that mixes them without saying so is offering a snapshot that was never taken. Recording the batch date is the fix.
3Keeping the old wording when something changes
When a page changes, the useful record is both versions with the dates of each. A row quietly updated to match today cannot be relied on, because a reader has no way to know whether today's version is the one somebody acted on.
That is also the only way a register can be held to account for its own accuracy. A history of corrections is evidence of a process; a clean current state is evidence of nothing.
4Absolute dates only
Relative wording decays immediately and cannot be repaired from the outside. Recently, last quarter and before the change are unreadable a year later, and a reader cannot recover what they meant.
The same applies to a delivery record kept alongside production. Where something was checked rather than done, the check date belongs in its own field, because the two answer different questions.
Background on mechanism and practice. Nothing here is attributed to a product, and nothing here is a reading of any instrument. The sourced material is on the generator table. Related: Defaults decide it, Per-call controls.