Help with sourcing posts from deleted Tumblr blogs

This is a question I've had for a while since I <3 uploading deleted art and Tumblr always stops me in my tracks when trying to source: Since Tumblr effectively destroys the sources of any posts on a deleted blog, it makes it impossible to get an actual source for deleted artworks from that account, I was curious about if there is a preferred method of sourcing such a thing? In the case of meromero, I've seen posts like post #7032434 where the given source leads to another user's reblog of that post and I was curious if this type of sourcing is appropriate when it comes to Tumblr? If so, would those still be tagged as bad id or maybe bad source?

I personally dislike the practice of using another user's reblog as the source for a given post. It's fundamentally like having the source for a post taken from Twitter be the tweet ID of the user who retweeted the art and not the underlying tweet itself. It's particularly annoying in Tumblr's case, because, using your example post #7032434, the actual commentary of the post is rendered as quote with the link to the actual dead source being listed right there! So not only do you have an unnecessary quote around your commentary, you can update the post to have the right source at any moment! There would be no difference in the image if you changed it to the correct source, it'd just annoy those users who insist that there must be an active source by any means necessary.

Bad ID would not be appropriate, because while the actual source is dead, the listed source, the reblog, is not. Bad source might fit, but that tag typically implies that the source is still on the artist itself, so linking to their Tumblr account as opposed to it being a third-party account. And third-party source also isn't appropriate since it implies a complete disconnect between source and artist, and a reblog is not that.

If nothing else, I'd say you can put the reblog in a comment as a source as to how you found the post, even if it is currently a bad ID. (And then also remove the necessary blockquote from the commentary for good measure)

Damian0358 said:

I personally dislike the practice of using another user's reblog as the source for a given post. It's fundamentally like having the source for a post taken from Twitter be the tweet ID of the user who retweeted the art and not the underlying tweet itself. It's particularly annoying in Tumblr's case, because, using your example post #7032434, the actual commentary of the post is rendered as quote with the link to the actual dead source being listed right there! So not only do you have an unnecessary quote around your commentary, you can update the post to have the right source at any moment! There would be no difference in the image if you changed it to the correct source, it'd just annoy those users who insist that there must be an active source by any means necessary.

Bad ID would not be appropriate, because while the actual source is dead, the listed source, the reblog, is not. Bad source might fit, but that tag typically implies that the source is still on the artist itself, so linking to their Tumblr account as opposed to it being a third-party account. And third-party source also isn't appropriate since it implies a complete disconnect between source and artist, and a reblog is not that.

Maybe just make Reblogged source it's own tag given it's a unique edge-case.

Space_Force_Detective said:

Maybe just make Reblogged source it's own tag given it's a unique edge-case.

The same amount of effort you could spend making that tag could be used more productively just making the sources correct.