Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, but I think it's important to note that the date in the URL can also be misleading. For example, it's often assigned at time of creation. If that page or post gets updated years later, even if almost entirely rewritten, it still has the original date in the URL
> even if almost entirely rewritten, it still has the original date in the URL If we're talking about blogs/news, they don't ever get almost entirely rewritten. The original publication is the only date that matters, and it matters a lot. If we're talking about evergreen content like documentation, then of course you don't put dates in the URL. A small "last updated" on the page itself is appropriate there.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case. It should be the case IMHO, but it (currently) isn't. The SEO/marketing people nowadays (ab)use popular pages for the search rankings and update them regularly to keep the content fresh and highly ranked (since search engines give much preference to new content).
Also, even for strict blogs/news, it's not unusual for a particular post to be a draft for many months before publishing. Most serious blog will fix the date to match publish date, but that isn't what happens by default especially in Wordpress (which is the most important platform for blogs).