I'll keep this short, but uploaders shouldn't be able to bypass basic meta information like that if the source 98% of the time clearly has it listed by the post title or even on-site tags.

Instead of having to tag them manually, there should be typeable dropdown menus in the upload page to select "Year" [going from the earliest tagged year + year gaps that might not be listed - to present] and "Medium" [basically all meta medium tags currently on the site]

Clear exceptions for the year tag would be for posts that have no known source, or the original work being gone but the year of the earliest repost the uploader can find.

I'd say a lot of the time the source doesn't say when a piece of art was made. Having a drop-down to tag a year would likely encourage mistagging a year by people thinking it means the current year they're posting it to e6, or the year the image was posted at the source, both of which can be different from when it was actually created. See the increase if humanoid and intersex mistags when the upload form got simple buttons to press for them, with people not being careful about what those tags are for. And worse, when a post gets mistagged with the wrong year, it's very unlikely to be corrected. An incorrect tag is less likely to be removed if it requires others looking into the source to verify when they don't have a reason to doubt it, and even less likely to be removed if it's not obviously wrong (even if the source is silent on the matter, perhaps the tagger knows something you don't, and removing a tag that's valid can get you in trouble).

I feel like forcing people to tag the year will probably only result in people tagging it wrong just to be allowed to upload. Best case they'll just pick the date the submission was uploaded (which isn't always the date of creation) and worst case they'll pick something random.

Including the mediums on the upload form is a good idea though, it's pretty easy to tell what's digital and what's traditional at the very least.

I'd say a lot of the time the source doesn't say when a piece of art was made.

X, FA, inkbunny, sofurry, even 4chan either has the exact date or "x day ago" hover-overs listed every single time. I have almost never seen source websites NOT display when they were uploaded.

Having a drop-down to tag a year would likely encourage mistagging a year by people thinking it means the current year they're posting it to e6, or the year the image was posted at the source, both of which can be different from when it was actually created

I feel like forcing people to tag the year will probably only result in people tagging it wrong just to be allowed to upload.

The year listed in meta is the year the image was posted at the source or shown on the work's signature or listed in credits, etc. If people are dumb enough to not figure it out by browsing through "2015" and then seeing the same upload year at the sources, I don't know what to tell them.

If someone did find an older upload from the artist, they can just change the year in the tag box after listing the new source.

protogeneration said:
X, FA, inkbunny, sofurry, even 4chan either has the exact date or "x day ago" hover-overs listed every single time. I have almost never seen source websites NOT display when they were uploaded.

Case in point. The date tags are for when the art was created, not posted to the source. These are separate things, and having the same tags mean one thing on some posts and another on other posts will just create an inconsistent mess. A drop-down to select the year will cause more people to make this same mistake and mistag the wrong year, with few people willing or able to check the tag is accurate, let alone remove it without replacing the correct year if the creation date isn't clear.

protogeneration said:
The year listed in meta is the year the image was posted at the source or shown on the work's signature or listed in credits, etc.

These are different things. The date in the art or in the credits is not always the same as when it was posted, and when there is no date in the art or in the credits, it's best to not assume the date posted is the date created. Plenty of artists can and do post art months or years after it was created, especially (but not exclusively) if they have a patreon/subscribestar/other paywall. If the artist doesn't say when they made it, we don't know when they made it. It would only be your guess as to what year is correct, and we don't tag based on the uploader's guess.

IMO, a date should only be tagged if it's printed in the image. The source post date isn't accurate, nor would I strictly rely on when the artist puts ©20XX in the description, since they may also just be indicating the post time rather than creation time. The date on the image best indicates when the art was last worked on.

I mean the tag is in effect when something was first posted to the internet (for recent years). I'm going to go out on a limb and say that a significant portion of new year posts are not made on the same day they were posted

also do year tags have to account for artist timezone

watsit said: The date in the art or in the credits is not always the same as when it was posted

Plenty of artists can and do post art months or years after it was created, especially (but not exclusively) if they have a patreon/subscribestar/other paywall. If the artist doesn't say when they made it, we don't know when they made it.

You're correct about all this, but from e621 user's perspective we need to prioritize tagging what we see from the source first. Unless the artist says "I actually made this five years ago" in the description box or is asked about when they made it in the comments and such, the year of the upload should be taken as objectively as possible.

protogeneration said:
You're correct about all this, but from e621 user's perspective we need to tag what we see.

Meta tags work differently. They tag information about the art itself, rather than what's seen in the art. For the date tags, it indicates when the art was created.

protogeneration said:
Unless the artist says "I actually made this five years ago" in the description box or is asked about this later on, the year of the upload should be taken as objectively as possible.

Unless the artist says when they made it, or the creation date is in the art itself, we shouldn't assume its creation date based on the upload date. It would be a guess that the two are the same, nothing objectively verifiable linking them together.

Some artist who post here themselves can't even be expected to provide a proper source, yet you expect them to give an accurate year and art medium (and as you said it "basically all meta medium tags currently on the site")?
What if the artist forgot/didn't mention what year they made an artwork? Are we going to allow an unknown_year option? Because that sure as hell won't get abused to shit like the existing "No available source" option for sources.

IIRC we already have a bot that goes through all of the artwork and does all of the meta tagging (except for year), so I really don't understand why you want to force this as an upload requirement for users who probably don't even know basic tagging.

I don't like the idea of it being mandatory, but I do like the idea of a 'meta' (or meta-ish) category and checklist on the upload page. Currently I use the 'artist' box for this to keep things organized when I'm tagging.

Some artist who post here themselves can't even be expected to provide a proper source, yet you expect them to give an accurate year and art medium (and as you said it "basically all meta medium tags currently on the site")?

That kind of behavior is exactly why I made this feature request.

What if the artist forgot/didn't mention what year they made an artwork? Are we going to allow an unknown_year option? Because that sure as hell won't get abused to shit like the existing "No available source" option for sources.

Then the uploader, again, takes the date the artist posted it on their page at face value until the artist clarifies if asked or if they bring it up themselves. Your argument is a weird reach.

protogeneration said:

Stop trying to come up with weird arguments like this when we're supposed to TWWS.

TWYS only applies to what we see in the image, and only for general tags

protogeneration said:
Then the uploader, again, takes the date the artist posted it on their page at face value until the artist clarifies if asked or if they bring it up themselves.

Making it irrelevant. If all you have is the date it was posted, then at face value all you have is the posting date and not the creation date. Tagging a creation date when all you know is the posting date is asserting your own guess that the two are the same, not taking it at face value. If a tag will so readily need clarification from the artist for accuracy, it's probably best not to tag it until you get that clarification.

As it is, I've seen people post several pieces of art here when the year it was made was mentioned in the source post's title, and they still tagged the wrong year, using the year it was posted rather than created. Making it easier to make such mistakes by encouraging selecting a date when the uploader otherwise hasn't cared about it will only make the problem worse, and isn't something I look forward to having to clean up.

protogeneration said:
Then the uploader, again, takes the date the artist posted it on their page at face value until the artist clarifies if asked or if they bring it up themselves. Your argument is a weird reach.

post #852013: *laughs in 1939*

Like @Watsit already said, taking whatever the year the artist/poster posted an artwork would make it irrelevant. An artist could easily dig up old sketches from decades ago and posted it current year, and you'd be forced to tag it as 2025.

I wonder if just having a toggle button for <current_year> and <previous_year> to the upload form would be enough to encourage users to tag the creation date.

dba_afish said:
I wonder if just having a toggle button for <current_year> and <previous_year> to the upload form would be enough to encourage users to tag the creation date.

I think it'd be difficult to convey that the year is intended for the art's creation instead of posting date, without being ugly or intrusive. It may also encourage users to make their best guess, or just pick the closest option, rather than only tagging it when relatively sure. See the issues with an increase in people tagging intersex for ambiguous gender, or intersex/female for a solo female, because they're unfamiliar with what intersex means and think it could apply. Or the increase in tagging humanoid for anthros, because they hadn't thought about using humanoid before and don't know what the tag means here. The sex and form tags can be considered too important to ignore, so there is an argument for having them despite the misuse, but I don't think the date tags are that important to deal with the added misuse they'd cause on the upload form, IMO. It's better to leave the date untagged when not sure, rather than encouraging guesses or incorrect use resulting in the wrong date being tagged. Let the tagger find it on their own, to put in some effort to figure it out and tag it, rather than being presented with a button they can mindlessly click without paying attention.

watsit said:
I think it'd be difficult to convey that the year is intended for the art's creation instead of posting date, without being ugly or intrusive. It may also encourage users to make their best guess, or just pick the closest option, rather than only tagging it when relatively sure. See the issues with an increase in people tagging intersex for ambiguous gender, or intersex/female for a solo female, because they're unfamiliar with what intersex means and think it could apply. Or the increase in tagging humanoid for anthros, because they hadn't thought about using humanoid before and don't know what the tag means here. The sex and form tags can be considered too important to ignore, so there is an argument for having them despite the misuse, but I don't think the date tags are that important to deal with the added misuse they'd cause on the upload form, IMO. It's better to leave the date untagged when not sure, rather than encouraging guesses or incorrect use resulting in the wrong date being tagged. Let the tagger find it on their own, to put in some effort to figure it out and tag it, rather than being presented with a button they can mindlessly click without paying attention.

I have thought more about the feature idea, and while I still think it should be implemented (medium especially), my logic and reasoning for adding the year was just not well thought out.

Here's a much better approach:

Dropdown menu with the title of "Year Created" and then you get the question mark hover-over on the right

"The year the art was created. This is not always the year present on the source, but this can be always be changed later by editing the tag"

protogeneration said:
Dropdown menu with the title of "Year Created" and then you get the question mark hover-over on the right

"The year the art was created. This is not always the year present on the source, but this can be always be changed later by editing the tag"

You still did not address the unknown_year issue. Would that be an option? What is stopping people from abusing it (and simply putting the current/unknown year)?

I'm still of the opinion that making something compulsory on the upload form would make people tag it more recklessly.
Currently the only things that are compulsory are the source, rating, and tagging (at least 10 tags).
These are all covered by the Tagging, Rating, and Sourcing Abuse clause in the Code of Conducts.

Are you going to make it so that all of these are punishable if abused?