Paul A's talk page also has a useful statement on the usefulness of this page:

Hi Paul. I noticed in Blade Runner that you reverted 2003 back to as of 2003. I just wondered what the logic was, since the latter is a redirect to the former anyway. I'm not going to get into an edit war on something so minor, just curious. (Although as a Brit, the American usage grates a bit anyway) jimfbleak 06:38 21 May 2003 (UTC)

The reasoning, as it was explained to me when I asked someone else the same question, is that there is a fundamental difference between "In 2003, something happened" and "As of 2003, something was the case" - namely, that when 2004 rolls around all the former will still be true, but the latter will need updating. Making "as of 2003" a link means that, in years to come, it will be relatively easy to find pages that need updating by seeing what links to [[as of 2003 (http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Whatlinkshere&target=As_of_2003)]]. (Just as, this year, one can find pages that need updating by seeing what links to as of 2002, as of 2001, etc.)

Each "as of x" page was made a redirect to the corresponding year page because the page needed to have some kind of content, and nobody could think of anything better at the time.

-- Paul A 09:16 21 May 2003 (UTC)