Hah yes if I can't see a publish date on something I often look for something else. Not saying things need to be formatted/sorted by publish date (which I think is grandparent's actual point) but definitely it helps with contextualising content.
You got my point. I do appreciate the created/modified date on pages, I just prefer content to be organize by something pertinent to the content itself. Sometimes that is the publication date, sometimes it’s something else.
