RFC: "Last edited by" and displayed dates of posts can be incorrect and/or misleading

[confocaloid]

Even when the "Last edited by" date is displayed, it can be wrong. (Hence the "Last edited by" dates are unreliable.)
The displayed date of the post also can be wrong. And even when correct, it does not reflect later edits to the post. (Hence also unreliable.)

An example when the displayed "Last edited by" is earlier than the actual date of last edit: viewtopic.php?p=177726#p177726
(I just edited that post again, but it still displays "Last edited by confocaloid on February 12th, 2024, 7:06 pm, edited 1 time in total."
The date is displayed at all, only because there was another post after that when I made the first edit. Later, the next post was deleted.)

An example when the displayed date of the post is incorrect: viewtopic.php?p=145969#p145969
(That post was made significantly earlier than June 10, 2022.)

I don't know whether any of this is fixable (easily or at all).
See also this post by carsoncheng (for a relevant discussion): viewtopic.php?p=177316#p177316

For wiki citations of edited posts: should we cite the date when the post was last updated (or when the last relevant update took place)? It looks like the current scheme cites posts using the original upload date, but that might cause confusion to the reader in some cases.

Take https://conwaylife.com/wiki/P76_pi-heptomino_shuttle as an example. The references table is listed below:

1. Carson Cheng (September 24, 2023). Re: Oscillator Discussion Thread (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
2. Chris857 (September 17, 2023). Re: Synthesising Oscillators (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
3. shinjuku (#5154514610) (September 25, 2023). Job triggered by Adam P. Goucher at GitLab Catagolue project.

This pattern is discovered on September 24, 2023, but it cites a post by Chris857 that was posted on September 17, one week before the discovery. This could create a confusion for the user (for thinking that the pattern was synthesized before it was discovered!) before they click on the link and find out that the post was updated on September 25 for the synthesis. So would it be a good suggestion to list the date of last relevant update, instead of (or in addition to) the original posting date, in the references?

It could be argued that this causes even more confusion, as the date of the original post (the date that is immediately seen by the user on clicking the link) would not be equal to the date listed in the citation. But I think that is probably a common practice to include the last updated date (see https://www.google.com/search?q=do+you+cite+original+publishing+date+or+updated+date, but I'm not sure if more research is required for this argument). And maybe it would help if a feature can be turned on in the forums to include the last updated date at the top of the post, instead of only at the bottom of the post.

Maybe this problem is big enough that it deserves its own thread (it also impacts lots of other pages, particularly those involving oscillators discovered in the last few years), but I think I'll probably leave it to the moderators for whether this post should be moved or not.