You’re absolutely right. I’m now afraid that if going forward I pick release date, then uncheck the release date box, then add 1 minute to it… 10 years from now Trakt will decide:
You can’t possibly have watched this movie twice with just one minute difference? was your left eye out of sync? why would you possibly want these check-ins?, I’m going to nuke your check-ins that overlap with each other or with anything else since you can only watch one thing at a time
To prevent this particular [admin action use case] I will pick a year that doesn’t ruin my data and a different day for each watch… Say I’ll check in at the first year available, 1950. Will they decide tomorrow that:
Your birthdate doesn’t match your check-in. You weren’t alive. This 2030 tv show wasn’t even out. You’re probably not a time traveler. I’m gonna nuke your check-ins again!
The unpredictable factor here are not our check-ins, but future destructive changes by staff. At some point one of them is going to argue that check-ins before Trakt went live are impossible, and finally someone will put forth:
imagine how many gigabytes we can save if we just wipe all check-ins before [user account creation date]
I suspect making dates optional saves more kilobytes.