Sometimes I Don't *Get* Discogs

[Harry]

I've cataloged a decent portion of my collection in Discogs, and I've entered a number of releases that I have that weren't there, and I've submitted scans for quite a few albums, singles and CDs.

Every so often - usually every day, I get emails about "changes were made to releases in your collection" messages. So dutifully, I'll go in and see what was being changed, and some of the changes are so minor and seemingly unimportant that I'm puzzled. I'll give a couple of recent examples:

The last couple of days, a member, I'll call him "Captain Styrene", has gone into seemingly every single in the Alpert/Mendes/Carpenters canon and added the word "Styrene" to the Format field. OK, I can deal with that. It's a further descriptor that some may find helpful. It just seems to be this guy's mission.

I remember adding one of my earliest entries and put "stereo" in the format field - and was roundly chastised for putting that in there. "Not necessary" was the reply. Today, I'm seeing people adding "stereo" & "mono" to some releases. I don't get that.

I see a bunch of listings were entry #xxxxx was merged into entry #yyyyy by majority vote. Who is doing this voting? Where and when does that take place?

Then there's the image jockeying. I specifically added an image to a copy of Herb's "Sandbox" where the artist was misprinted with Herb Albert. Today, someone nuked that image in favor of something else without the misprint. There doesn't seem to be much policing of the image area.

There are other things that make me go "Huh?" but I can't think of them at the moment.

 

[Rudy]

I have no idea where the changes are "voted" on either. I've fixed a few glaring errors but, memory being what it is, I can't remember which titles I submitted edits on. Some clueless individuals also upload a release that is not tied to a master release, and it is sometimes a version that already exists. I just report those as best I can, and move on. I've occasionally reverted what I thought was a bad edit (the edit history is easily viewable) but again, have never gone back to see if it has been changed.

Where I really notice errors is on album information when I use Discogs as a data source through MP3Tag to tag files that I have ripped, or to populate information for needle drops. A couple of the glaring errors were the ones I edited above but otherwise, I don't have enough time in the day to bother. (Same with MusicBrainz--they have a lot of low-quality data, yet there's no incentive to ever fix it.)

I did once get AllMusic to alter a music review in the past two years--it had a small amount of incorrect factual information, and it was quickly corrected. But, that was after decades of trying to submit other data (even filling missing data they had for albums they've listed), and never having had success.

 

[JOv2]

...seems akin to Wikipedia where some of the so-called editors are not editors per se but merely autocratic gatekeepers whose actions at their worst are seemingly based on subjective whim. (For example, after making numerous gallant attempts at adding value-added content to an entry, I concluded I could never satisfy the continuous "moving targets" of one such editor -- and so I said the hell with it and left that e-headache in the e-dust!)

 

[Rudy]

Wikipedia is also occasionally the target of edit wars--it's like two warring parties deciding which content belongs there or not.

I know in colleges today, the instructors always warn students about using Wikipedia. (In other words, it's not acceptable.) I used it, but mainly to get links to the sources used in the Wikipedia entry, not for the text itself. I occasionally use it for information about automobile models and generations but again, will check it against the linked resources if it seems suspect.

 

[AJF]

I edit on Discogs rarely, and am usually only moved to do so when I see a factual error. And I pretty much only use the disc/sleeve itself for information - not my outside knowledge, unless it's something like "Columbia only changed to that label format in 19XX, so it can't have been issued 3 years before that". Sometimes I know that a favorite artist is on a record - it's why I'm looking at it - but if I can't show evidence of it in the liner notes I don't add that in.

I will say I find mono vs. stereo very helpful in Discogs listings, as that is a variation in releases that I am often looking for. The problem is that in general very few CDs are clearly marked as one or the other, even if their source material comes from the long transition period of roughly 1958-1970 or so. And many LPs are labelled stereo when they've used some kind of sketchy mono to "stereo" processing, but honestly (accurate) Discogs listings help me figure that out.

I only really edit on Wikipedia when the language/grammar writing is awful. "Myself and him went fishing", there-their-they're, your-you're-yore, for all intensive purposes, that sort of thing.