Credit for this newsletter goes to corne_mo, thanks!!
The online version can be found here: http://www.discographydb.info/index.htmNewsletter December 2008In this newsletter:
- What has happened in 2008?
- Development progress
- Database structure
- New polls
- Volunteers needed
- Greets
Dear DiscographyDB members,
The last newsletter already dates back to september so we thought it would be time for a new one!
In the last week of the year (and/or the first week in the new year) you always look back to what has happened the last 365 days. So why should we do otherwise?
Further in this newsletter the current state of the DB and the interface, a request for volunteers for different jobs and the announcement of a couple of polls in the forum.
What has happened in 2008?
January 2008: The DdB forum was created.
March 2008: The most members joined the forum in March due to the changes on discogs.com that were forced by the discogs management and not approved by the majority of the old-skool discogs members, moderators and editors.
April 2008: The first signs of an organisation appeared. A Steering Committee was formed with 11 members. In this committee 4 sub-committees were formed. The SC and SSCs had two months to form a global view of this new website, new community and its purposes and goals. To reach this goal a weekly chat was planned.
May 2008: Already in May some people got tired of talking and wanted to see a working website. The SC and SSCs however were still discussing all kinds of views and ideas for this site.
June 2008: The SC and SSCs-setup doesn't seem to work. Due to professional obligations, different timezones and a lot of other good reasons the discussions grind to a halt. At the beginning of July the first term for the SC will end and a proposal is posted to end the Steering Committee and to start with three managers. Hopefully this would lead to more involvement of the forum members.
July 2008: The SC is disbanded and three community members (corne_mo, dmaxx and deejsasqui) are appointed as managers.
The forum was re-arranged, the SC discussions were moved to the archive and a Development Zone was created. Here a tasklist topic is opened. In this topic all community members can volunteer for different tasks. A lot of these tasks were described in the wiki.
August 2008: It seems that the new setup works. The task list topic is used and a couple of people volunteered for some tasks. A very first website design is created and displayed for all to comment.
September 2008: Unfortunately there are only 2 amateur-programmers to program the database and the interface for this complex website. A lot of ideas can be found all over the forum and if all ideas need to be implemented this website will become very complex. Luckily someone was found who was willing to gather all ideas. Some volunteers however left our community leaving tasks unresolved.
As there are a lot of ideas, but there is no physical website to talk about, the forum gets more quiet by the week. Also the weekly chatsessions are visited less frequent by less people.
October 2008: Slow progress is made by the programmers. A lot of progress is made, although everything is done behind the scenes and invisible for the community members. Most of the DB design is done and the programmers started with the first interface ideas.
November 2008[/u]: A very quiet month at DdB. Some progress is made behind the scenes, but due to obligations of one of the programmers elsewhere, the interface is not further developed. Checking the communities opinion is difficult due to the fact that most people visit the forum irregularly.
December 2008: And there we are, in December 2008. The database setup is almost finished and the interface design re-started. A lot of issues have still to be resolved though, like the whole genres/styles issue, the credits, the label/company/brand issue and a couple of others.
To be expected in 2009: We hope to finish DiscographyDB in 2009. Depending on the amount of volunteers that can be found for the different tasks to be done, the beta version of the site can be online in the first half of the next year.
Don't forget: DiscographyDB is an open-source project that needs the input of as many people as possible, so it also needs your input!
Development progressThe progress of the programmers can be seen in the development zone of the website.
The DiscographyDB devel site hasn't changed much in the last couple of months, especially not if you're not logged in.
Behind the scenes a lot has happened though, for example a first edit artist and moderate interface is implemented. Log in to check it out and if you want moderator access contact corne_mo or schneckl. Mind that the moderator access will only work in this stage of site-development and can be used to check the functionality of the site. Maybe not everyone granted mod-access at this stage will become a mod when the site opens.
If you detect any bugs or security flows, please post them
in this forum topic.
Database structureAs said above the database setup is almost finished. For those interested a description of the database and its features can be found in a PDF document on the server. For more info contact corne_mo or schneckl.
New pollsA couple of new polls have been created this last week. they all have to do with the final! setup of the artist page. Well, final, for the beta version final that is. But of course we want it to be as close as final as possible.
*
Final artist handling procedures proposal. This topic gives the hopefully final proposal of the artist name structure. This topic was posted a week ago and some very small changes are made, but the info in this topic is still correct.
*
Final artist page display poll. This poll deals with the display setup for the artist page header (the part with all artist info). It is related to the information from the topic above.
*
Artist page release list double occurence. Should releases be listed in different sections of an artist page? For example a Genesis release with Phil Collins credited for both Vocals and Drums. Should the release be listed in both sections of Phil Collins his artist page?
*
Show/don't show "yellow turts". Discogs shows the "yellow turts". Should DdB have this option or not. Please read the topic for more information.
Please take your time to read through these topics, vote and give your opinion.
Volunteers neededCurrently two amateur programmers and a handful of other volunteers are working on DdB. Because DiscographyDB is set up as a community build database we can still use volunteers for all different kinds of tasks.
To be able to continue the development of this site, some issues have to be resolved for which no programming knowledge is needed. If you love music, have some insight in the music industry or some discogs experience you can already help. Who are we looking for currently:
* Community members who want to make a final label/company/brand proposal. How should these be defined and how should the different entities be handled on the site?
In the forum there are two members who seem to be knowledgable. Although they seem to have a different opinion, it looks like we should be able to find someone who can do this.
* Community members who can make a credit role proposal. Should all credit roles be fixed roles, like on discogs? Or should only the groups be fixed (Drums, Vocals, Guitar, Strings, Keys etc) and the credit roles be entered as on release?
Part of the task is creating a list of credit roles and credit role groups, as far as necessary of course.
* Community members who can come up with a final genres/styles proposal. Should only genres be defined and styles be added to a release on a per user basis? And how should they styles be listed on a release page? Which genres and styles are we gonna use?
* Community members who can sort out some financial issues. Who's gonna pay for the url and server? Do we need generated income from sales, a monthly usage fee, advertisement?
* Community members who can sort out some legal issues. Currently the url is payed for (and thus owned) by dmaxx and the server we use is provided by Asylum27. Of course everything should be community property without the oppertunity that any one of us (or someone else) can call it its own. How can we sort this?
Of course we are also still looking for programmers:
* First of all we need someone who can check the programmed pages for html and CSS mistakes. Also updating the CSS and moving style elements from the pages to the CSS will be one of the tasks.
* Especially for the more difficult parts like the submission form and the search engine we need more experienced and/or professional programmers who can help us with the further development of DiscographyDB.
If you are interested in helping us, or if you know someone else who is, please contact one of the managers or use the
task apply form in the forum. We don't expect you to promise anything. Every hour you can put in this project would be one step forward.
GreetsBefore we wish every one a very happy new year we want to address that it would be greatly appreciated by the volunteers, who are working hard to get this project up and running, if all community members keep visiting
the forum and the
website in progress. Nothing is more encouraging then input, sympathy and enthusiasm from the community you're working for.
Thanks for reading and please keep contributing to DiscographyDB.
And last but not least: A happy new year to all of you.
The Managers.