This is a git repo, so "authored" tries to map to the person who wrote the content, and the "idea" of the commit, if there is such a thing. It's set when the co

This is a git repo, so "authored" tries to map to the person who wrote the content, and the "idea" of the commit, if there is such a thing. It's set when the commit is initially created, and for the most part not changed unless explicitly requested. The commit date is the actual time the commit object was made; this can differ if the commit is amended, rebased, cherry-picked, the result of a squash/fixup, etc. If a commit sits on a branch for months, then gets rebased against master, code-reviewed, and merged, those two dates will be significantly different. This usually works as you might expect. If your coworker Joe authors a commit on a branch, and you cherry-pick it onto another branch, that cherry-picked commit is authored by Joe (and the time reflects when Joe authored it) and commited by you (at the time you performed the cherry-pick).