Investigate whether scripted metadata re-curation needs to be accounted for

[bryanmgee]

Planned scripted metadata changes will partially overwrite timestamps for datasets. Consider a manually versioned dataset:

latestVersion": {

          "id": 5986,
          "datasetId": 755095,
          "datasetPersistentId": "doi:10.18738/T8/R9MSCP",
          "storageIdentifier": "s3://10.18738/T8/R9MSCP",
          "versionNumber": 2,
          "versionMinorNumber": 1,
          "versionState": "RELEASED",
          "latestVersionPublishingState": "RELEASED",
          "productionDate": "2025-11-21",
          "UNF": "UNF:6:6yNzs3Qi8t4FaAdJdrY0uQ==",
          "lastUpdateTime": "2026-01-30T16:06:06Z",
          "releaseTime": "2026-01-30T16:06:06Z",
          "createTime": "2026-01-30T16:03:07Z",
          "publicationDate": "2025-07-01",
          "citationDate": "2025-07-01",

Based on this, the full timestamps are overwritten, while the first publication date is still retained. This holds true across versions:

{
          "id": 5916,
          "datasetId": 755095,
          "datasetPersistentId": "doi:10.18738/T8/R9MSCP",
          "storageIdentifier": "s3://10.18738/T8/R9MSCP",
          "versionNumber": 2,
          "versionMinorNumber": 0,
          "versionState": "RELEASED",
          "latestVersionPublishingState": "RELEASED",
          "productionDate": "2025-11-21",
          "UNF": "UNF:6:6yNzs3Qi8t4FaAdJdrY0uQ==",
          "lastUpdateTime": "2025-12-23T20:45:26Z",
          "releaseTime": "2025-12-23T20:45:26Z",
          "createTime": "2025-12-23T17:30:13Z",
          "publicationDate": "2025-07-01",
          "citationDate": "2025-07-01",

Unfortunately, the version notes that are automatically generated don't seem to be represented anywhere in the API (neither changes nor who made them). If certain metadata fields being updated should trigger retention clocks to reset (minor versions, major versions always [?] lead to the clock resetting), then there might be a need to rake through the Versions API endpoint and do a 'show diffs' basically to determine when and how those fields were modified.