First, I'd rename the column to something like "record_created_at" to empahsize its the recording of the record and not the actual creation date. Second, if I

First, I'd rename the column to something like "record_created_at" to empahsize its the recording of the record and not the actual creation date. Second, if I was going to do a default version, I would probably use two fields, the above record_created_at and an additional "created_at" field. By default they would be the same, however the understanding would be that created_at is potentially available to the user, settable by import, and record_created_at should be treated as immutable.