Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2021 March 6

= March 6 =

How can you find the publication date of a wordpress blog?
I want to know the publication date of this page. https://survivingbaenglish.wordpress.com/nineteenth-century-russian-realism/ I searched for time related keywords in the page source and find a line thus:  Can I be sure that this page has been in existence since 25th January 2010 and that it was last modified on that date? It can be manipulated, can't it be? How can I be sure of it? Thanks for any suggestions.--Tvl-yen (talk) 14:04, 6 March 2021 (UTC)
 * It could probably be manipulated, though I'm not sure why it would. It's just a blog. There are comments from 2014 as well, which is at least supportive. If you're looking for a date to cite it, 2010 is probably reasonable, though it probably would not qualify as a WP:RS. If you need it to exonerate the guy for killing the space pope or something, that's not nearly secure enough. Was that you asking back in 2016 about the publication? That is persistence... Matt Deres (talk) 03:14, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Look for a Wayback Machine mirror from that era? 2601:648:8200:970:0:0:0:1A5F (talk) 22:06, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
 * Since WordPress allows custom HTML, I suppose it is possible to forge that property. There is a Wayback Machine capture of 31 January 2011. The text is identical to today's text. --Lambiam 11:57, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
 * "Forge" or "manipulated" seems an odd word to me. Of course whoever made that page could have crafted the modified time with some intent to mislead which you could call forgery or manipulation, but it could easily be nothing like that. This is just a metadata property. I don't know if it has a definition published anywhere that is sufficient to cover what it must mean in this circumstance and that definition means it's an answer to the OP's question. But even if it does, unless the document has something indicating it's following said definition, there's no reason whoever made that page has to follow this definition, they may not even be aware of it. And if they're not following that definition, then why is any reasonable definition "forged" or "manipulated"? I'm unconvinced there's really any reason why they author needs to indicate somewhere they aren't using the standard Wordpress definition if there is such a thing. For example, if the author wrote a document in 2010 on their computer but kept it totally private, is it "forgery" or "manipulation" for the author to publish that work without modification in 2020, with a metadata entry saying modified_time:2010-01-25T22:19:37+00:00? Also it's easily possible that the way someone edits a page may mean they can make some minor corrections or even completely delete the text and replace it with something else without be aware they are keeping an old modification time metadata tag. Nil Einne (talk) 13:51, 12 March 2021 (UTC)