As a spin off from Forum:SH:Proposed Layout Guide additions for Index Pages, there's been debate about how best we can include and reference the publication or approximate publication dates of stuff like Databank entries and Episode Guides on StarWars.com. Those pages don't provide any publication date up front, but there are two potential sources that can be used to date them. The first option is using the date of the earliest backup link in the wayback machine or equivalent archiving sites. This of course relies on someone having manually archvied the page, which might not have happened on the day the page was published (or even the same year), but it gives us a date by which we know with confidence that the page had been published to the public.
The second source of information is the publish date given in the source code for the page. Annoyingly, the latest StarWars.com update removed publish date from the source code for all its pages, but the source code is still available on the archived versions. According to Dani (who has far better understanding than I on the source code specifics) this publication date does not always equal the go live date for the page, so I assume it might represent when it was internally published, possibly shortly prior to the page going live for the public. As such we'd need to use it as an aproximate date in BTS's or anything similar.
A good example for this is Magaloof, where dating the databank entry is important given that it's his first ID. The oldest wayback entry for the databank page is February 8, 2016, where as the source code on those backup links gives the databank's publish date as February 5, 2016. Now based on the earliest archiving alone, I'm entirely confident that the databank use of the name Magaloof predates any of the later uses and so is the first ID. When reaching status, the page just didn't give any date for the databank at all when saying it was first ID, but I don't think this is ideal, since it's still using the same logic based on the earliest backup date, just without informing the reader where we're getting the info.
I think it's vitally important that we do show how we're dating this stuff, especially if it's likely to happen more commonly on index pages, but the question we need to figure out is whether we go with using the oldest back-up date, the source code publish date, or a combination of both. I think to some extent the case-by-case approach might be best, but I could also see the logic of going with only using earliest backup since the publish date is a little more ambiguous. Ayrehead02 (talk) 12:21, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
- So did some further research and for the purposes of dating. The Kenobi Episode Guides dropped a few months after the series finished, on August 5th. We can only assume we found them ASAP as our editors were looking out for them. The history for the episode articles and archive.org support August 5th as the earliest date that we found them. But "Part I"'s and "Part IV"'s sourcecodes both say "July 27, 2022." NBDani
(they/them)Yeager's Repairs 13:33, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm, that does seem to suggest that it's some kind of internal publishing date before go-live. I think it still might be useful approximate dating of some older stuff that might not have archive dates till long after it was published, but generally perhaps we should stick with the earliest backup link then. Ayrehead02 (talk) 13:42, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
- This sounds wise. Imperators II(Talk) 16:22, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
- I hope a happy middleground is acheiveable. Another example is the "Rendezvous Point" episode guide. The source code says Nov 25 and it was added to the episode's article on Nov 25 too. But the earliest archive date is Dec 09, 2019. NBDani (they/them)Yeager's Repairs 13:43, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
- Hmm, that does seem to suggest that it's some kind of internal publishing date before go-live. I think it still might be useful approximate dating of some older stuff that might not have archive dates till long after it was published, but generally perhaps we should stick with the earliest backup link then. Ayrehead02 (talk) 13:42, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
- While Ayre has put the Databank at the center of this SH, I'd like to remind everyone that this discussion may apply to any web source. It's fairly common to search for a publishing date (or an approximation of) either in the html source code, the url itself (swtor.com tend to do this), or through archiving dates. It must be understood that none of those methods can be consider 100% sure, as various factor can impact them. As an additional note, also consider that social media dating can be problematic as it tend to display a date adjusted to the time zones of the web browser your using. The solution I'm proposing would be to introduce an annotation such as to indicate if we're uncertain about the date, something like: "A. March 14, 2023" with A. for "approximation" (akin to c. for circa with IU dating). NanoLuukeCloning Facility 14:07, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
