> I feel like I'm encountering more and more sites and articles where I can't seem to find the date.
A friend also recommended me to not write a date in the past, but I did not see the reason really. And to simply not write it, because others don't is not a reason enough for me. To me adding the date to any content is a kind of honesty and if not that, then at least useful information, that can be easily added.
> Google will return irrelevant results from today rather than relevant results from 10 years ago.
This might be on Google, not the Internet in general. However, I also miss some things, that I did not store in earlier times and that are now nowhere to be found.
> I feel it's getting worse, is it just me?
I think it is not only you. I think it is a result of how the Internet has (d)evolved into more and more walled gardens. More and more short time engagement is optimized for, rather than long term quality websites and information. Many good content sources have long shut down.
I blame society for its overall mediocrity and lust for the social media quick fix, without realizing, what is destroyed by that. There are too many people online, who don't have a clue about how the Internet works, heck, how even a single website works. They make such a big part of online communities, that it becomes more profitable to cater to them, than the people, who actually know how stuff works. And why not? It is easier for them to do so, plus they make more money from the crowd. The majority does not care about sitting in walled gardens. They do not care about being able to host services yourself. They do not care about services being served by big corp and not being decentralized and extensible. They do mostly not care about their choices being taken away, which they never knew they had in the first place. There are countries, where the "Internet" is served by Facebook. They did not get to know the Internet by writing their own HTML by hand and putting that online. Most of them will never want to learn about the web's basics anyway. Today you are a "creator", when you produce content that goes through the filters of massive platforms, which are owned by FAANG and others. This is how we end up with a situation, that is less and less what people in the know would like. This is how the many ruin it for the few.
> I also miss some things, that I did not store in earlier times and that are now nowhere to be found
Same. So much content disappears over time and even if it still exists it can be difficult to find again without knowing the exact search terms used. Or search engines just don't list it in a visible spot because 200 links to Pinterest and other networks are ranked higher.
I now have a habit of downloading or at least screenshotting anything I find interesting. Which of course leads to the problem of organizing & finding the data locally.
I sometimes print things to pdf (often after using developer tools to clean up the page) and save them in Calibre, which lets me save dates, tags, and other metadata with them.
A friend also recommended me to not write a date in the past, but I did not see the reason really. And to simply not write it, because others don't is not a reason enough for me. To me adding the date to any content is a kind of honesty and if not that, then at least useful information, that can be easily added.
> Google will return irrelevant results from today rather than relevant results from 10 years ago.
This might be on Google, not the Internet in general. However, I also miss some things, that I did not store in earlier times and that are now nowhere to be found.
> I feel it's getting worse, is it just me?
I think it is not only you. I think it is a result of how the Internet has (d)evolved into more and more walled gardens. More and more short time engagement is optimized for, rather than long term quality websites and information. Many good content sources have long shut down.
I blame society for its overall mediocrity and lust for the social media quick fix, without realizing, what is destroyed by that. There are too many people online, who don't have a clue about how the Internet works, heck, how even a single website works. They make such a big part of online communities, that it becomes more profitable to cater to them, than the people, who actually know how stuff works. And why not? It is easier for them to do so, plus they make more money from the crowd. The majority does not care about sitting in walled gardens. They do not care about being able to host services yourself. They do not care about services being served by big corp and not being decentralized and extensible. They do mostly not care about their choices being taken away, which they never knew they had in the first place. There are countries, where the "Internet" is served by Facebook. They did not get to know the Internet by writing their own HTML by hand and putting that online. Most of them will never want to learn about the web's basics anyway. Today you are a "creator", when you produce content that goes through the filters of massive platforms, which are owned by FAANG and others. This is how we end up with a situation, that is less and less what people in the know would like. This is how the many ruin it for the few.