This is an utterly ridiculous thing. There is a site called Discogs.com , where people enter various info about the music, artists and releases by those artists. Somehow, i came accross this site, and found out that Minimal Criminal, the project i am the webmaster and a partial member of, was listed there. The listing was wrong, more particularly, the names of the artists were wrongly listed. So, i contacted Discogs.com about changing the names to the correct ones, but, they refused, saying that their names are public domain, and they will not change it.
So, if someone wrote that my name is, say , Miss Dingleberry, and i found out about that, they wouldn’t change it, since Miss Dingleberry would be the first entry to the page, and this is public domain - so, sorry, Omega, you have to go and change your real name to Miss Dingleberry in your passport. Since the source is the source!!
Well, i contacted Dj Zhyin, the member of Minimal Criminal, and let him know what was going on. But, guess what? Even after the artist himself wrote to the administrator of the site, he had doubts and said he is going to inquire about the “correctness” of the info. And that, also, after i have provided the guy with all the possible links and even the wikipedia article on the artist. Do the artists have to scan their passports or go live on the webcam with the admin so that he can finally believe this is the artist himself talking ? Really, WTF?
I thought the real artist was always the source, and also, how silly of me, the designer, who reads a lot about web 2.0 interactivity and so on, to believe that the interactive sites are made with the purpose that the users can enter and IMPROVE the information, if it is wrong. Also, the well-known sites, like Wikipedia , etc, check the correctness and reliability of the info before letting it go online, so that there is no abusive or incorrect entries.
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"Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves." - The Buddha
Hi, you've come to my blog for some reason. I am a web-designer, i sing in a band, and i am also a linguist. I like music, art and travelling, and I want to have a giant african snail. If you want to say something to me, go ahead.
Thank you for your time.
10 Users Responded To " Discogs.com does not believe the artists! "
Baxter Tocher (1 comments) said,
6-14-2007 at 17:40:32Hey, I know Discogs. It’s a real shame if they’re not prepared to take on board info from the artists themselves, given that the website started off listing electronica only, and almost everyone at that point was pretty obscure (or still is!).
Either it wants to be encyclopaedic or not. It’s a shame if it’s the latter.
omega (74 comments) said,
6-15-2007 at 21:35:08yea, it is a shame, hope they will improve….
madgoose (1 comments) said,
6-25-2007 at 15:55:46discogs is an extremely useful resource for a pedant such as me. a lot of the time the submitted artist info is taken from the published music (whether it be vinyl, cd, mp3 etcetera) and there can sometimes be typos on the sleevenotes. i have had my own run ins with the admins/moderators from discogs and part of the problem is that they range from draconian through to completely incompetent. in the case
on a separate note, discogs is not web 2.0 ;¬)
Jayfive (1 comments) said,
7-6-2007 at 14:48:19Hello there, Im one of those nasty moderators on Discogs. I dont recall seeing your update so I cant comment specifically. But the reason for rejection could be just as much about the incorrect method of updating/correcting the info as the info itself.
All users adding or changing information in the database are required to provide evidence of the correctness of changes - we dont take anyone’s word for it, even an artist. After all it could well of been someone pretending to be you.
Either way, contact me via the contact button at http://www.discogs.com/user/jayfive and I can help you with whatever needs changing, adding or removing
Cheers
J.
omega (74 comments) said,
7-10-2007 at 14:08:59i surely agree it is a useful resource and a good idea of a site, but i also agree with you about the moderators and web 2.0
theuser (1 comments) said,
7-17-2007 at 18:16:34if the information is incorrect, simply submit an edit to the submission or page. you just need to make a reference to show that the information is indeed incorrect for the edit to be accepted. it sounds like you are either lazy or uninformed to me.
omega (74 comments) said,
7-17-2007 at 18:35:48i guess if you weren’t lazy enough to read my entire post, you would see that i did the edit of the submission etc etc. i wouldn’t make an issue out of this , unless i was informed. As you could see from the post, if you have read it carefully, i even contacted the artist about the issue.
omega (74 comments) said,
7-17-2007 at 18:51:51@Jayfive -
Thank you for the comment. I will have the artist contact you directly. I, personally, do not wish to try to update anything on discogs.com anymore, since it’s such a big pain… I tried updating some other info as well and nothing came out of it, the moderators never answered me. For example, on one of my bands releases, the male ex-member is listed, saying that he does vocals in the track, when the vocals are clearly female vocals, and so on and so forth…
Delinquent Dialect (1 comments) said,
8-8-2007 at 08:12:33Yeah several of my mates and I get the same problem all the time with that site. It is rediculas, theyre just chumped up nerds that feel all important and love wielding their virtual power.
jimthing (1 comments) said,
9-3-2007 at 03:46:11I am a big user and submitter to the Discogs site for a few years now and it has many many users and many serious record collectors, musicologists, and recorded music enthusiasts who regularly contribute rare and not-so rare releases to the site. That is its clear purpose: to document as many releases as possible direct from the media source.
It must be made clear that ALL release info is taken directly from the sleeve and media (vinyl/CD/cassette/etc), and not generally “i’m the artist, the vocalist was Joe Bloggs on track 2 on the CD, not Mike Figgs” type updates. So that is the source of the data held on the site, ie. discographical data source; hence the name of the site being the shorter “Discogs”.
If you, say as the artist, wish to correct a piece of data on a release, which the release itself either had wrongly or didn’t have at all, you CAN update the release by the normal methods we use on the site and providing some links to help verify the data you give. Normally if the release is wrong or has the data missing, then adding in square brackets the word Uncredited, eg. “Vocals [Uncredited]“, helps those users who may have your release themselves to understand where this extra piece of data comes from and why it doesn’t appear on the copy they own and see in front of them.
As all public-built database sites, it isn’t perfect and never will be, but by keeping the site to MODERATED releases and UNMODERATED releases (those highlighted in yellow, and not checked-through and accepted by a moderater yet), the data can be kept clean and direct from the only source a member of the public has about an artist’s work: the recorded work itself.
Any problems, then please contact the forums where mods (including Jayfive) are nearly always happy to help artists and band members help sort their releases out better on the site: http://www.discogs.com/forums . Thanks.