Topic: backdated to meta

The bulk update request #13503 is pending approval.

change category backdated (2) -> meta

Reason: backdated describes information about an image, not anything in the image itself.

I don't really see the point in a tag like this

donovan_dmc said:
I don't really see the point in a tag like this

I don't think this is a bad thing, rattfood frequently does this, and for an art archive it's probably not a bad idea to have metadata that tells you the date on the image isn't reliable.

Somebody in the future looking at e621 could easily believe post #6067394 was made in 1995 rather than the (presumably) correct year of 2025, even if nobody would believe that right now.

faucet said:
I don't think this is a bad thing, rattfood frequently does this, and for an art archive it's probably not a bad idea to have metadata that tells you the date on the image isn't reliable.

Somebody in the future looking at e621 could easily believe post #6067394 was made in 1995 rather than the (presumably) correct year of 2025, even if nobody would believe that right now.

Wouldn't tagging it with the actual year of creation solve the same problem without needing a new tag? If you have some info to know the year in the image is wrong then surely that same info can tell you when it was actually made

donovan_dmc said:
Wouldn't tagging it with the actual year of creation solve the same problem without needing a new tag? If you have some info to know the year in the image is wrong then surely that same info can tell you when it was actually made

Given how badly I've seen year tags being mistagged recently, largely assuming the posting date is the creation date (even when the image itself is dated differently, or when you can find the image posted much earlier via blurry thumbnails on their Patreon), I don't think relying on the "real" year being tagged would be reliable. A tag like backdated (and forwarddated for future dates?) would be useful I think, since a tagger would have to go out of their way to use it, indicating they have good reason to believe the dated year is not the year of creation (and which they can be reprimanded if they use it without an apparent reason), rather than assuming the tagger has secret knowledge when a post is tagged 2026 without any indication from the artist that it really was made that year.

watsit said:
and which they can be reprimanded if they use it without an apparent reason

This same logic applies to people mistagging dates on posts, why do we need to make a whole new set of tags just because people mistag dates

Imo, sounds like a job for tag locks.

donovan_dmc said:
This same logic applies to people mistagging dates on posts, why do we need to make a whole new set of tags just because people mistag dates

Problem is, people tagging dates on posts is normal and is less likely to draw scrutiny. For example, if someone finds post #6211046, would it be wrong of them to remove a hypothetical 2026 tag and replace it with 1994? Similarly, post #6145716 is tagged 2026 despite being watermarked 2025 (I even tried to fix it, but the uploader changed it back; something they've done on a number of posts I tried to fix).

If someone tagged backdated to either of these posts, that would help clarify that the tagger knows that the image is dated prior to when it was really made. Someone would see that and could expect to find an explanation that the artist is known to add bogus dates to their images, or a statement from the artist that they didn't update their watermark for this year, or something more than just the date tag itself. If they keep using the tag without providing information, they can be dinged for tagging abuse. The date tags in comparison seem to be easy for users to mistake as being the public posting date rather than the work's original creation date, and this would help distinguish art that has a wrong date tag from art that's dated wrong.

watsit said:
Problem is, people tagging dates on posts is normal and is less likely to draw scrutiny. For example, if someone finds post #6211046, would it be wrong of them to remove a hypothetical 2026 tag and replace it with 1994? Similarly, post #6145716 is tagged 2026 despite being watermarked 2025 (I even tried to fix it, but the uploader changed it back; something they've done on a number of posts I tried to fix).

If someone tagged backdated to either of these posts, that would help clarify that the tagger knows that the image is dated prior to when it was really made. Someone would see that and could expect to find an explanation that the artist is known to add bogus dates to their images, or a statement from the artist that they didn't update their watermark for this year, or something more than just the date tag itself. If they keep using the tag without providing information, they can be dinged for tagging abuse. The date tags in comparison seem to be easy for users to mistake as being the public posting date rather than the work's original creation date, and this would help distinguish art that has a wrong date tag from art that's dated wrong.

What happens when some user comes along on a post with a correct date in the past and decides that actually that date was backdated, now the date is wrong and there's even less reason anyone would ever correct it?

This isn't a solution for mistagging, it's just kicking the can down the road

As was said above:

aacafah said:
Imo, sounds like a job for tag locks.

If a date is being mistagged then the tags can be locked

donovan_dmc said:
As was said above:
If a date is being mistagged then the tags can be locked

wouldn't that have the potential to lead to even more tickets being filed since users would be confused as to why what appears to be an inaccurate date is locked?

I guarantee you we'll still get them, & I couldn't tell you how less frequently it'd be.

I'm not strictly opposed to this, but I'm not really in favor without a better sense of how far-reaching a problem this even is. If I had a set of like a hundred posts where this has caused mistags, I'd be a lot more willing to try this as a solution.

Besides, this only covers half the spectrum; while it's far less of a problem for multiple reasons, a post with a date a few years ahead of the creation year isn't covered & could easily result in mistags once that year comes. I'd prefer a direct "this was made a different year than the labelled year" tag, at least as an implication.

aacafah said:
Besides, this only covers half the spectrum; while it's far less of a problem for multiple reasons, a post with a date a few years ahead of the creation year isn't covered & could easily result in mistags once that year comes. I'd prefer a direct "this was made a different year than the labelled year" tag, at least as an implication.

misdated maybe?

aacafah said:
I guarantee you we'll still get them, & I couldn't tell you how less frequently it'd be.

I'm not strictly opposed to this, but I'm not really in favor without a better sense of how far-reaching a problem this even is. If I had a set of like a hundred posts where this has caused mistags, I'd be a lot more willing to try this as a solution.

I'd imagine every time the beginning of a year comes, there will be some mistags. Other than that, I'm not sure.

usetheblacklist said:
I'd imagine every time the beginning of a year comes, there will be some mistags.

Well, I don't think backdated will prevent many mistagged dates; artists that purposely misdate their art is few and far between, and the tag won't stop people from tagging the wrong date on posts that are properly dated. My hope is that the existence of the tag on other posts will make mistagged dates more apparent when backdated is missing, for more people to recognize and fix it instead of assuming the wrong date tag means the art was backdated and leaving the wrong year tagged. And when people use the backdated tag, they should offer a proper explanation with it; if they say something like "dated last year, but was posted today", we can explain that's not how the date tags are used and fix it, and more effectively getting them to stop mistagging the year.

Regarding how often mistagged dates happen, it occurs all throughout the year. I found some posted just today, that were tagged 2026 despite the art being explicitly dated as 10/25 and 11/25. Artists that delay posting their work from Patreon or wherever by however many months (or a full year, or longer), with people that tag dates based on the source/public posting date, will have it happen well into the year. This is particularly annoying when artists post undated art in between dated art from last year, and people tag the current year on all of them, making it unclear if the undated art was made at the same time as the dated art and should all be fixed, or the undated ones are extra pieces made more recently and should have the current year while the dated ones should be fixed. But undated art isn't really related to the backdated tag discussion (it can't be backdated if it's not dated to begin with).

watsit said:
Well, I don't think backdated will prevent many mistagged dates; artists that purposely misdate their art is few and far between, and the tag won't stop people from tagging the wrong date on posts that are properly dated. My hope is that the existence of the tag on other posts will make mistagged dates more apparent when backdated is missing, for more people to recognize and fix it instead of assuming the wrong date tag means the art was backdated and leaving the wrong year tagged. And when people use the backdated tag, they should offer a proper explanation with it; if they say something like "dated last year, but was posted today", we can explain that's not how the date tags are used and fix it, and more effectively getting them to stop mistagging the year.

I was specifically referring to new year celebration posts because images will have the new year (2026) in it but it may have been created last year (2025.) So it's inversion of backdated. Though I don't really know that would qualify as misdated because "2026" in that case is more like a name of an event rather than a creation date.

usetheblacklist said:
I was specifically referring to new year celebration posts because images will have the new year (2026) in it but it may have been created last year (2025.) So it's inversion of backdated. Though I don't really know that would qualify as misdated because "2026" in that case is more like a name of an event rather than a creation date.

They should tag new_year_2026 in that case. The 2026 and other date tags are only for the work's date of creation.