Requested feature overview description.
Popular by Year & All Time filters
Simply put, adding to the popular page of the site a "year" filter allowing popular by year, and then an "all time" button to sort out whats been the most popular on the site in all time.

By year, might look something like this;
https://e621.net/post/popular_by_year?year=2017
While all time, might look like this;
https://e621.net/post/popular_all_time?amount=32
Allowing users to type in an amount in the URL bar to show how many they want to see. Possibly maxed at some amount, if you prefer.

Why would it be useful?
Well, popular by day is pretty useless, its not like you have that many people upvoting things every single day. Week is a little better on the statistics but, still not that great. Month is good because it gives time for an image to be examined by many more. However, I think for the best stats of what is most popular, a per year and an all time filter would show the best results.

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
post, I think. "e621.net/post/popular_by_day"
Adding "popular_by_year" and "popular_all_time"
Altering "popular_by_day" "popular_by_week" "popular_by_month"

Because of the robust search engine, you can pretty much adjust the search however you want.
https://e621.net/help/show/cheatsheet

So let's say, you want most upvoted image from last year worth of time, simply search: date:year order:score

If you want last year as in 2016 instead of last 356 days, use something like:
date:yesteryear order:score
If want to go furthed down the line e.g. 2010, then date:2010-01-01..2010-12-31 order:score should work.

Or maybe it's favorite count that works better? Use order:favcount instead. etc. etc.

I actually wouldn't be opposed to completely nuking the "popular" section. It only shows set amount of posts and you cannot adjust it in any way, e.g. if you want to see most popular posts today which do not have female in it and it's still pretty much date:today order:score anyway.

Except the search engine maxes at 6 things, which kinda sucks when I'm trying to get rid of all the crap I don't like, like MLP tagged 5 different ways.

Also some people wouldn't want to use a search engine just to see the most popular, most popular is also a good way to show artists what their best work was and gives other artists an idea to figure out what people like most before they start their next project.

Vas said:
Except the search engine maxes at 6 things, which kinda sucks when I'm trying to get rid of all the crap I don't like, like MLP tagged 5 different ways.

Also some people wouldn't want to use a search engine just to see the most popular, most popular is also a good way to show artists what their best work was and gives other artists an idea to figure out what people like most before they start their next project.

So you rather have no tags useable at all rather than 1-2 used out of 6? Because I cannot see any way to use tags in popular posts page. Also you do have blacklist you can use to get rid of stuff you do not want to see in your search results and things hidden by blacklist can be toggled on search pages left side panel - but cannot be in popular post page.

This is still talking about upvotes, so any fetish content is out the window no matter how well it's done. As site hosts explicit content, there's huge chance that it gets upvoted much more compared to far better safe post. Popularity is also pretty bad thing in a way that it keeps feeding itself, something is popular, more people watch it because they want to see most popular content, they upvote/favorite it and keeps it visible to next users doing the same. It becomes circle jerk. If I go to deviantart front page and select popular all time, I see the exact same posts there I saw 5 years ago.

I'm not opposed to being able to see most popular posts even up to all time, but we have search engine for that, where dedicated page is cut down version of single search result in every single way.

I proposed adding a calendar selector to the popular by day page and even wrote some code for it somewhere.

Popular by day can be completely replaced by the new date searches and if you run into the 6 tag problem you can use the blacklist to help cut out mlp or other tags. Just increase your posts per page to compensate.

Is there a way to search for most popular artists?

Strogg said:
Is there a way to search for most popular artists?

Technically no. You can check Tags to see what artist type tags are most used.

However what considers as "most popular"? Because like I have said in past, number of posts or upvotes aren't necesserily metrics of best or most popular, just that the artist manages to create most content and is above avarage. Checking content that's most upvoted and favorited should give you posts that are most popular and you can check artists of those posts.