Should we accept title edits to reflect when a question was asked?

Question

I've noticed a few questions relating to current events being edited to have the date they were asked in the title - this one just came up in the review queue and I accepted it without really thinking, but it did then strike me that this doesn't really add any information - the date the question was asked is already recorded.

Is this something we want to encourage, or should we avoid these types of edits?

Answer 1

In general, no. I don't think this helps others find the question, nor is it very useful when you stumble upon the question. In some exceptional cases a date may be helpful, for example when it's a much publicized deadline (e.g. the 29th of March 2019, at one point Brexit deadline or December 2019 election to refer to the upcoming UK election). If we do include those, it's probably best to write the month in words to avoid confusion (see this question on Skeptics Meta).

Bonus: how to search by date

Quoting from the help center

Dates

You can use specific dates or date ranges to narrow results down to posts created or active within a certain time period, using the following operators:

• created: to specify when the posts were created

• lastactive: for posts active in a specified time period

Dates can be entered in the following formats:

• Absolute dates:

  • year only – e.g., created:2012..2013 searches posts created from January 1, 2012 through December 31, 2013; created:2012 searches posts created from January 1, 2012 through December 31, 2012.
  • year and month – e.g., created:2012-04..2012-05 searches posts created between April 1, 2012 and May 31, 2012.
  • day, month, and year – e.g., lastactive:2012-04-03 searches posts who were last active between 12:00 AM on April 3, 2012 and 11:59 PM on April 3, 2012.

• Relative dates:

  • 1y, 1m, and 1d are shorthand for "last year", "last month", and "yesterday" - e.g., if today is April 15, created:1m searches posts created between March 1 and March 31. (You can substitute any number for 1 to look back that many years, months, or days.)

  • Relative dates in a range (1y..) look back to the same date in the previous period - e.g., if you want to see all the posts active in the last three months, use lastactive:3m.. On April 15, that will show posts from January 15 up to the most recently active. You can close the range as well: lastactive:3m..1m.

Please note that all times are recorded in UTC; the results may not match your timezone.

Answer 2

I made that edit because I kept seeing multiple identical-seeming questions pop-up in the "related questions" section on the right. (well, not that specific one, but the habit of editing some time/date info into titles)

I thought it was the best course of action for questions which get asked and answered without being merged/closed multiple times, but with subtle differences. e.g. many brexit questions, and US election questions that don't specify any kind of timeframe.

Basically, I got annoyed at having to click on questions in the related bar just to find out what they were about, and started making edits. I may have gotten carried away.