Emancipation

When dmaxx created this forum one month ago we were only a couple of people complaining about nik and teo.

There was an initial enthusiasm, as the number of members increased and we all agreed in our complaints and frustration.

Then Stormbringer was pessimistic because the forum looked dead.

But now, perhaps since the Announcement of Discogs V4, we are one hundred and fifty people full of ideas and with a very high morale about the new db.

The new forum structure looks great, we have a domain name and a lot of polls to run democratically the new site.

I think this project is ready to take off. Please change the title from 'Discogs Forums' to 'DiscographyDB Forums' and the subtitle from 'An independent Discogs discussion platform' to 'Ideas to build an accurate discography site", or whatever.

And remember: Day One is Saint Valentine's Day & my birthday: 14th February 2008.

Cheers!

it'll take time to shake off our mental discogs shackles

when i saw the title of the thread i thought 'yeah, i updated a prince cd once'

pano4423_004, I'm as enthousiastic as your are, but as long as the "Accept DiscographyDB?" poll is running I will leave the forumname, description and banner neutral. I hope you understand this decision.

Edit: well, in fact I can change the forum title and description into something neutral, which I did

The forum link will remain discogs.actieforum.com though... at least for this time being...

Sure, I understand it's better to remain neutral for the time being.
Glad to see the title and description are Discogs-free though.

pano4423_004 wrote:

Then Stormbringer was pessimistic because the forum looked dead.

Yeah! And I'm very happy to see that I was wrong!!!

Sadly my own life has forced me to be inactive this week when I've seen a lot of posts that I NEED TO ANSWER!

I see some people trying to turn back the Discogs metods a notch or two and base that to build a new site. No! No! NO! Nooooooooo!

As soon as I got the time I'll elaborate what I mean. We can't do Discogs again!!! We need something completely different but better!

WoW! Before going to work today I read through most of the posts, trying to keep up with most of whats's been posted (all you guys get my utmost props for your dedication and dilligence). I was thinking that same thing, that we really need to get away from that site's name and it was bothering me somewhat that that name appeared in the headings and what connotation it may have had with any new persons checking out the site, hoping they would be interested enough in participating and being a part of all that existed and believed in my mind was good about that other site but in which the current management has clearly dismissed: The primary focus being updating and maintaining what could have been the "know all and end all sound recording" data base. I was beginning to worry that with that name present here, somehow, this site may have seemed as if it was an offshoot or grand incarnation thereof. So after having a very rough day at work, I'm happy to see that name is no longer appearing here. Now I can use that energy spent worrying over something others may find trivial and increase my anxiety on the pile, the ever increasing pile of new new releases I receive added to all the other piles of releases I've yet to submit or have in my drafts from that site surround me. I was almost tempted in that ever so other site mentality to add them over there, just to get them in, you know, that feeling one gets in being the first to submit a new or existing release (not yet in the data base) feeling? But I matured and realized I didn't want my relationship with my new lover to start off like that. Besides, with the new DB, I know I'll be able to enter them in half, if not far less time than that. So you have made one new member very

[quote="Stormbringer"]

pano4423_004 wrote:

I see some people trying to turn back the Discogs metods a notch or two and base that to build a new site. No! No! NO! Nooooooooo!

As soon as I got the time I'll elaborate what I mean. We can't do Discogs again!!! We need something completely different but better!

Stormbringer, I understand how you feel towards Discogs, but you've got to admit the site's got a lot of things right (not perfect) as to the process of cataloguing releases. No matter how different we wish to be from Discogs, we'll have no choice but to base a lot of concepts on the current process there. We can only make things close to perfection. I don't know if you've had time to read all threads here, but when we all work together we can come up with incredible ideas.

Of course we won't do Discogs again. We ain't all here with the purpose of creating another failure in the history of records cataloguing sites.

Iron_Fist wrote:

you've got to admit the site's got a lot of things right (not perfect) as to the process of cataloguing releases.

Yes, but a lot of things could be done a lot smarter imo.

The submission form is too complicated for a green cogger. Both the "Artist (X)" and the ANV rules are hard to grasp in the beginning. I have an idea how to avoid the number after the artist that I'll explain later.

Not being able to list labels/companies/distributers/manufactures etc. properly is something I personally find very annoying.

The country field is another thing that most coggers don't understand how to fill in. I have a solution for that too that I'll explain as soon as I got the time.

Releases with many credits are something that also complicates both the submission process and the moderation process, but credits aren't that important really if you just want to catalog the audio media and not all artists involved making the relase. What do we want "our" database to be? Is it really realistic to think that we can do exactely everything that Discogs does and do it better? I don't think so.

We could drop the credits alltogether actually if we just want a swift and easy way of submitting and moderating correctly. That would also mean that "our" database could grow fast and be an alternative to Discogs much faster than if we try to just copy the Discogs concept.

Some things that Discogs doesn't handle at the moment could then be added to better catalog/list the releases (I have a long list!) so that we offer something that Discogs lacks. I'll go into more details later why I think we should consider NOT to add credits.

Iron_Fist wrote:

No matter how different we wish to be from Discogs, we'll have no choice but to base a lot of concepts on the current process there. We can only make things close to perfection. I don't know if you've had time to read all threads here, but when we all work together we can come up with incredible ideas.

Of course we won't do Discogs again. We ain't all here with the purpose of creating another failure in the history of records cataloguing sites.

I think we have a lot of choices actually! We should do our own thing rather than copying Discogs. If we just copy Discogs then it will be hard to become an alternative.

I haven't had time to read the posts made during the last 48 hours, not all of those anyway. I agree with you that we can come up with a lot of interesting ideas just by brainstorming for a few days now.

I think this will be much better designed because of what we can learn from the other site and our experience of its weaknesses and strengths and decisions - I'm not sure how well we'd do without it.

Stormbringer wrote:

I think we have a lot of choices actually! We should do our own thing rather than copying Discogs. If we just copy Discogs then it will be hard to become an alternative.

I haven't had time to read the posts made during the last 48 hours, not all of those anyway. I agree with you that we can come up with a lot of interesting ideas just by brainstorming for a few days now.

We are already planning things differently, since we've learned from the mistakes of that other site : different fields in the submission form, possibility to enter all data without using a mouse, different modding process, different display options in artist or label pages, better search-function, and many more. We will have to see how many of those great ideas we will actually achieve in practice. But it's not that we're trying to copy that other site.

I'm curious to hear your solutions for the Artist (X) and ANV issues. But when it comes to credits, I strongly disagree with you, credits are an essential part of a discography site, especially one with genres like jazz or classical. I encourage any improvement to get releases in faster, but without compromising on data quality and/or quantity. Let's not fool ourselves, even if we don't allow credits, it will still take long before we catch up with that other site. We will only be able to convince people to come to our site, by offering higher data quality and better functionality (display options, search-function).

Horoma wrote:

credits are an essential part of a discography site, especially one with genres like jazz

Agreed.

We must get free of Discogs and everything we don't like about it (all the wiki part of it, 100% votes, no sub limits, dictatorshit, etc.) but there's a great deal of knowledge that comes from that other site that can be used in our new project.

This forum can now be accessed through:
www.discographydb.com
www.discographydb.org
www.discographydb.net
www.discographydb.info

Stormbringer wrote:

Yes, but a lot of things could be done a lot smarter imo.

The submission form is too complicated for a green cogger. Both the "Artist (X)" and the ANV rules are hard to grasp in the beginning. I have an idea how to avoid the number after the artist that I'll explain later.

Things will be done 100 times smarter. Don't worry.

I agree the submission form is very complicated for newbie users, that's why it was brought up that there could be two submission forms: one for newbie users, and one for advanced users. Here's the post by DJPC:

dj_purity_control wrote:

That being said, there's always the possibility of having two submission forms. I brought this up on Ogs in the past when the submission form expanded to its current bloated state, but nothing much ever seemed to come from it. We have a basic version of the form, comparable to a "wizard" view in many Windows programs, where it holds your hand for you step by step. Lots of dropdowns, asks you questions instead of having obliquely named fields, so on and so forth. Then, for the advanced users, we have the advanced version, comparable to the classic submission form where nearly everything is a freetext field, optimized for those that know what they're doing and want to do it in a speedy process.

Stormbringer wrote:

Not being able to list labels/companies/distributers/manufactures etc. properly is something I personally find very annoying.

Everything's open to discussion here. When you have some time, open a new thread in the proper sub-forum about this subject, and propose your solutions. I agree this particular problem needs to be solutionned ASAP.

Stormbringer wrote:

Releases with many credits are something that also complicates both the submission process and the moderation process, but credits aren't that important really if you just want to catalog the audio media and not all artists involved making the relase. What do we want "our" database to be? Is it really realistic to think that we can do exactely everything that Discogs does and do it better? I don't think so.

We could drop the credits alltogether actually if we just want a swift and easy way of submitting and moderating correctly. That would also mean that "our" database could grow fast and be an alternative to Discogs much faster than if we try to just copy the Discogs concept.

Some things that Discogs doesn't handle at the moment could then be added to better catalog/list the releases (I have a long list!) so that we offer something that Discogs lacks. I'll go into more details later why I think we should consider NOT to add credits.

With all due respect, that's probably the last idea we should consider. To be honest, the cross-linking of artists throughout credits is probably the greatest feature on Discogs. That's what made me join Discogs in the beginning. I wanted to be able to follow the work of my favorite Hip Hop producers. I'm far from an electronic music fan, but I thought that cross-linking remixers for the majority of you was one of the most important part of the submission process. Isn't it so? Without the ability of adding credits, I fear we wouldn't be able to compete with Discogs, and I would not particularly be motivated in resubmitting my modest collection. And AFAIK, adding credits will still be optional, won't it?

Iron_Fist wrote:

I agree the submission form is very complicated for newbie users, that's why it was brought up that there could be two submission forms: one for newbie users, and one for advanced users.

This may sound very elitist, but I believe we shouldn't care for newbie users. If it's difficult submitting at the beginning, be it, guide them into learning how to submit properly (we can make a guide for submitting). Let's not lower our standards to the newbie user, but keep a very high, professional standard at all time.

We must think from the perspective of the data, not the user.

Iron_Fist wrote:

And AFAIK, adding credits will still be optional, won't it?

Still needs to be discussed... I personally prefer making them mandatory. In fact, I'd like to see all possible information mandatory (except images). I would not like to follow Discogs' footsteps: when releases are added, they must be added good; quality above quantity.

Anyway, this is my personal opinion, I propose we discuss this in a seperate topic.

dmaxx wrote:

This may sound very elitist, but I believe we shouldn't care for newbie users. If it's difficult submitting at the beginning, be it, guide them into learning how to submit properly (we can make a guide for submitting). Let's not lower our standards to the newbie user, but keep a very high, professional standard at all time.

We must think from the perspective of the data, not the user.

But if no user bothers to contribute to the site because it's too complex and non-attractive, what would be the point of building a new site? What would it look like? A database with a bunch of unrelated releases here and there... I agree that data accuracy should be our main goal, but we must find a way to attract people too so the DB becomes something big and reputable.

dmaxx wrote:

Still needs to be discussed... I personally prefer making them mandatory. In fact, I'd like to see all possible information mandatory (except images). I would not like to follow Discogs' footsteps: when releases are added, they must be added good; quality above quantity.

Anyway, this is my personal opinion, I propose we discuss this in a seperate topic.

But to what point do we make credits mandatory? To the point where it takes 2-3 hours to add all credits on a big release? Do we only make certain roles mandatory? I personally don't mind adding all information on a release, even if it takes me 10 hours, but I think it would be self-centered to think everyone here on this forum or anyone else in the world woudn't mind doing so... Like I stated before, I think credits should be optional, maybe with the exception of certain roles (remix?), but it should be STRONGLY RECOMMENDED to add them.

I agree, let's continue the discussion somewhere else... I just couldn't hold myself commenting on your thoughts.

Iron_Fist wrote:

I agree, let's continue the discussion somewhere else... I just couldn't hold myself commenting on your thoughts.

No problem mate.

New topics launched:
- Make credits mandatory?
- Complexity of submission form.

Cheers.

Personally I find disbugs a better teacher than discogs if you all know what I mean.