Reading date: why every row carries one
A reading date is the day this register read a page. Without it a row is a claim about the present; with it, two rows months apart are what a swap looks like from outside the company. Most of this register's subject matter has no announcement, so the date is the evidence. As of 2026-09-22.
| One dated reading | Two, months apart |
|---|---|
| What a page said, on a day | That it changed, and roughly when |
| A claim a reader can check | An event nobody announced |
| A snapshot of a menu | A swap, recorded without a notice |
| Useful for choosing today | Useful for planning a season |
Inclusion rule. Applied to every row in this register and exported with the data file. The date recorded is the day the page was read, not the day it changed. Order. One reading first, then a series.
1A series is what makes an unannounced change visible
Eleven entries here publish no dates at all, so a model leaving a menu is the whole event and no page records it. Two dated readings of the same page are the only evidence such a thing ever happened.
That is why the data file is exported as rows with dates rather than as a current directory. A snapshot cannot show change, which is the subject.
2The reading date is not the change date
A page read in March and again in September, with different values, shows a change somewhere in between. Narrowing it further would require guessing, so the register records both readings and claims nothing about the day.
Where a vendor published a date, that date is recorded separately. The two are different kinds of fact and collapsing them would make both unverifiable.
3It is also what keeps a quoted figure honest
Anybody quoting a number from this register can say when it was read, which matters because several of these pages are edited without notice. A figure without a date ages silently.
The licence on the data file asks for nothing, and naming the reading date is the one habit worth keeping anyway. The sourcing page explains the rest of the method.
A definition rather than a dated entry: no line above is a vendor statement. Where this word turns up in a real notice, the wording and the date are on the notices as a file. Nearby terms: Reproducibility, Deprecated, Retirement date.