If it's CompSci, it lets me know if it's an older version of a current work or an updated version of older work. I like to skip the former in many cases to go straight to the final, polished paper. Whereas, the latter keeps me from skipping a paper whose preprint or initial results I already read. Without a date, I might think it's the same paper.
I'd say it's even more important as a search aid. I run through hundreds of papers looking for the next dozen or so worth submitting to a wide audience. Search will bring me results that span decades. Dates in prominent places help me quickly filter or discover stuff depending on what I'm looking for. For instance, I was looking for CompCert-like projects getting results going back to the 1980's. Verification of realistic, low-level programs didn't get feasible until into the 2000's. So, I immediately filtered anything before that time. Where the date shows up also varies depending on what kind of site has the article. And you bet people might have not thought about this use case when publishing their papers in the 80's. Yet, the standard practice of dating the stuff still helped me.
Also, RiscV has matured and had upstream gcc and linux kernel support. It is also completely GPL'd and you can run it on an FPGA.
This project is cool and done with the correct intentions by the author, but there are other projects with the same correct intentions that are already much farther along.
Why do you compare my A2Z project with RISC-V? Have you read the pages and the blog posts on hackaday? Have you understood what A2Z is? A2Z is (only) a DIDACTIC project. The goal is learning by doing, and therefore the goal is to reinvent the wheel, just for fun.
The "learning by doing" method is the best method I know.
The principle is absolutely NOT to take an existing CPU or OS and assembling existing parts.
And of course, I have learned a lot of things with this method. That's why I'm sharing this project. I hope some people will begin such project on their own, and learn as much as I did.
I'd say it's even more important as a search aid. I run through hundreds of papers looking for the next dozen or so worth submitting to a wide audience. Search will bring me results that span decades. Dates in prominent places help me quickly filter or discover stuff depending on what I'm looking for. For instance, I was looking for CompCert-like projects getting results going back to the 1980's. Verification of realistic, low-level programs didn't get feasible until into the 2000's. So, I immediately filtered anything before that time. Where the date shows up also varies depending on what kind of site has the article. And you bet people might have not thought about this use case when publishing their papers in the 80's. Yet, the standard practice of dating the stuff still helped me.