What exactly should go into the source field?

It does not look like this is mentioned anywhere in the wiki, and there are several distinct kinds of links that people put there:

1. DA/FA/etc image page links
https://teagangavet.deviantart.com/art/It-Can-Be-Both-589190683
2. DA/FA/etc artist page links
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/blackteagan
3. DA/FA/etc CDN image links
https://d.facdn.net/art/blackteagan/1455833189/1455833189.blackteagan_itcanbeboth.jpg
4. misc artist-related stuff like Patreon page
(exhibit one: https://e621.net/post/show/827392/)

Proposition: use image source field for #1 links only, and describe it somewhere in the FAQ. Put #2 and #4 links to artist wiki page. Do not use #3 anywhere.

It may be worth mentioning that having both FA and DA whenever possible is a good idea.

Rationale: #1 easily leads to #2, #3 and often #4 as well; the inverse usually involves some searching. It's kind of minimal amount of data necessary. And it is the quickest way to check authorship, read comments or description, look for the largest version and such, which I think is primary purpose of the source links.

I'd be wary of using CDN links as permalinks. Also, it's kind of uselss since the data pointed to is already on e6.

A related note, most source sites including FA and DA support https. How about using https links whenever possible?
I don't even think it is worth mentioning in the FAQ. Some kind of auto-replace should be easy to set up, similar to how aliased tags are handled.

Your thoughts gentlemen?

#1, #1, and #3 have purposes and should be on submissions, if only for convenience.

What's the purpose of number 3? Reverse image search, our server strips the filename and that link preserves the file name and can give some additional information that might not have been tagged.
However, those direct links should be in one of the later spots, they don't really need to be at the top.

This is how I link to posts on FA:
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/lizart/ so you can still reach the artist's user page, even if he deletes the post
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16842669/
http://d.facdn.net/art/lizart/1434488590/1434413150.lizart_happy_birthday_mousie.png the file name sometimes contains information like character names

If the image has been posted to multiple places, I also put the other sources in the Description field, like so:
Sources:
user - post - direct link
user - post - direct link

The post used for this example is post #832152

Munkelzahn said:
This is how I link to posts on FA:
http://www.furaffinity.net/user/lizart/ so you can still reach the artist's user page, even if he deletes the post

I don't like those much, personally. Especially if there's nothing but a gallery link. Trying to find the image itself (for character names and such) is often like looking for Waldo.

And more often than not, it's nowhere to be found. I've wasted way too much time on those.

If the post is no longer there, can it be considered a source?

Genjar said:
I don't like those much, personally. Especially if there's nothing but a gallery link. Trying to find the image itself (for character names and such) is often like looking for Waldo.

And more often than not, it's nowhere to be found. I've wasted way too much time on those.

If the post is no longer there, can it be considered a source?

That's why I use *three lines* when I source a post:
Line 1: gallery = http://www.furaffinity.net/user/lizart/
Line 2: post = http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16842669/
Line 3: direct link: http://d.facdn.net/art/lizart/1434488590/1434413150.lizart_happy_birthday_mousie.png

If the post has been deleted, then we have a case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot
The only solution to link rot would be:
Archive the original post with something like https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/mozilla-archive-format/ and attach the archive the e621 post (yes, I know this will never be implemented for various reasons)

I'd keep the source, because w/o it you can't know that post has been deleted.
Or you could replace the source with another valid one (example: the artist has deleted the pic from his gallery, but it's still up in the commisioner's gallery)
But I wouldn't delete the source if you can't replace it with another valid one.

this reminds me of something i come across somewhat uncommonly. source field with plain text and no actual links in it. saw a post not long ago that simply had google as the source. no link or anything so that kind of "source" info probably could stand to be cleared away or replaced with actual source links.

Note that direct links can also be used for uploading, and for some sites (DA, furaffinity, and possibly pixiv) it will add the gallery url automatically (it works on tag edit as well).

Until recently, the latter feature didn't work very well so a lot of posts ended up getting a direct link as the first source. Feel free to move those to the end (if possible) if you happen to see them.

Genjar said:

If the post is no longer there, can it be considered a source?

Mostly I avoid removing sources of any kind since they sometimes have useful information for digging up information (often with archive.org and google cache).

If you have an alternate source though (from the artist) go ahead and swap them out. Also, if it's just the artist name, "none", "unknown", "image board", etc., go ahead and remove those.

Munkelzahn said:
Line 1: gallery = http://www.furaffinity.net/user/lizart/
Line 2: post = http://www.furaffinity.net/view/16842669/
Line 3: direct link: http://d.facdn.net/art/lizart/1434488590/1434413150.lizart_happy_birthday_mousie.png

Can you move the post link to line 1? I think that's the more important thing, and the other links are secondary to it. The post link is what most people think of when they think of what a source is. This is also how the upload page autofill currently works.

Munkelzahn
If the image has been posted to multiple places, I also put the other sources in the Description field

This way you get relevant source links in Description and some less-relevant stuff under Sources. That does not sound right to me.

Genjar said:
I don't like those much, personally. Especially if there's nothing but a gallery link.

There's nothing wrong with gallery links imo, except that their place is on the artist's wiki page, not on every single post.

hslugs said:
This way you get relevant source links in Description and some less-relevant stuff under Sources. That does not sound right to me.

He said "in addition". Meaning if the possible sources exceed the current limit of 5 lines he gives all additional sourced in the description.

hslugs said:
There's nothing wrong with gallery links imo, except that their place is on the artist's wiki page, not on every single post.

We allow 5 source links, if the direct link is on an image then a link to the gallery saves one page load, and thus time. Having that additional link there is a laughably small price to pay to save some time, and potentially transferred data.

IMHO it would be ideal if the Source field were a 5x5 matrix, like an Excel spreadsheet.

I like to keep the sources to the image pages, not the direct images, myself, but I don't delete the direct links when used. Some artists can have several galleries, and linking to the image on each sounds reasonable.

Munkelzahn said:
IMHO it would be ideal if the Source field were a 5x5 matrix, like an Excel spreadsheet.

That would be good, I usually like to find all the sites artist post their stuff, so I have had few times where all five lines were for differend sites with exact same stuff.
However I do wonder how many users would actually use it as in fill all the stuff. Most will just put up FA image page there and be done with it, if even that.

Furrin_Gok said:
I like to keep the sources to the image pages, not the direct images, myself, but I don't delete the direct links when used. Some artists can have several galleries, and linking to the image on each sounds reasonable.

leomole said:
Can you move the post link to line 1? I think that's the more important thing, and the other links are secondary to it. The post link is what most people think of when they think of what a source is. This is also how the upload page autofill currently works.

Agree with these sentiments for sure - Submission link is the most useful source. If I'm adding to or editing a source that already has a direct image link at the top I'll usually re-sort them to Submission/User/Direct. Nothing really wrong with having them all in there though in the current setup, as long as there is space.

Crispix said:
Agree with these sentiments for sure - Submission link is the most useful source. If I'm adding to or editing a source that already has a direct image link at the top I'll usually re-sort them to Submission/User/Direct. Nothing really wrong with having them all in there though in the current setup, as long as there is space.

Doesn't the Direct Link upload url go to the bottom anyways now?