Source Gone

If you know the artist of a work, and have a link to his/her art page or pixiv site or whatever, but he/she has taken down the particular image you uploaded, how would you tag it? Just posting the artist's gallery will net you bad_id, but at the same time I don't think you should leave the source field completely blank either.

Tag the artist and stop there. The artist entry already has the links to their sites--or if it doesn't, add them there.

You can leave it blank if the artist took the image down or if you know the url, put it in, even if it's been taken down it's better than nothing.

Put the URL in even if it's non-functional. Incomplete information is better than lack of information.

Since bad id was mentioned, I took it that the image in question was from pixiv and--since it would be unexpected for you to have the pixiv direct link on hand for something already removed--that the link mentioned was either to the member profile or member_illust style URL, which are pointless as sources for individual images.

RaisingK said:
Since bad id was mentioned, I took it that the image in question was from pixiv and--since it would be unexpected for you to have the pixiv direct link on hand for something already removed--that the link mentioned was either to the member profile or member_illust style URL, which are pointless as sources for individual images.

It is still possible to know the ID number of the image even after it's been taken down, either if it comes up in a SauceNAO search or if the information has been saved somehow (I always try to keep the number in the file name for images I save from Pixiv to my hard drive). If you know the ID number and the artist, then you know the direct link too.