[mb-users] A few thoughts ...

[Elliot Chance]

Hi everyone,

I know a lot of people don't like to do a lot of reading so I put a Summary
version at the bottom. :)

*takes deep breath* OK here we go...

I'd like to add my view and suggested solutions on the ever growing issues
surrounding MusicBrainz. The first being all the little bits that just get
left behind or skipped because of the lack of information and/or time.
Secondly, getting more people voting and hence higher accuracy of data.

What can we do to get people to do all that hard-to-find editing that most
of us would rather not do? It can be quite difficult to multitask when
editing, when you follow a process methodically (such as adding a VA
release). It's not uncommon to have to add new artists during the release
add, however all those new artists usually never get a second look because
you want to get the release added and not distracted on another set of
edits.

What about having a kind of 'lucky dip' artist editing system, where the
user can request a random artist (perhaps a criteria of only choosing small
artists with few edits) and the user can spend his/her time finding and
filling in as much as possible for this little artist. This would solve
multiple small issues at once, first is obviously that all those small
artists that people don't look for or normally check up on would get a
thorough clean up. Second is that it opens up a new path of editing and
discovery in diversifying one's knowledge and MusicBrainz editing skills.

The issue of getting more people to vote has been around for pretty much as
long as MusicBrainz has been. People generally like to make edits rather
than vote on them, maybe it's the hunt to find those edits, or that people
don't like looking at list after list and doing what some would call 'some
one else's research'. A few ideas have been put into place already to try
and combat this problem, such as the Collaboration of the Month and the
'inline' voting. I'm not saying that these aren't successful at all, in fact
many of the ideas have proven successful.

>From a statistical point of view, the majority of people that make edits are
correct, and very few people will deliberately make edits that they know are
wrong for whatever reason. So mathematically the voting process isn't that
bad. I myself have seen edits voted Yes on by multiple users before someone
realises that something is wrong and everyone changes there vote to Abstain,
and some of those edits that are wrong are never properly checked so they
just get through anyway. So how do we find those few edits that are wrong
effectively and efficiently? One solution is to get as many people voting as
possible. More people checking data = more information sifted for mistakes.
However this is turning out to be a difficult task. Another solution is to,
1. lower the amount of open edits so the task doesn't seem as daunting, 2.
try to get some of the correct edits out of the voting process, hence
leaving behind a higher percentage of incorrect edits.

I think the idea of 'promoting' users that build up a trust that was
suggested a while back is a brilliant idea. At the moment with the current
hierarchy of 'users' and 'autoeditors' isn't enough for managing a database
of this size. The idea of building up trust and responsibility in an ever
growing system or department has proven to be effective for thousands of
years. There are a lot of users out there that are very good at what they do
in there area, however there edits are mixed in with the edits of thousands
of other uses that are not as trustworthy with there edits and sources. If
at least some of those editors that make good edits were promoted to a
status whereby some of there edits didn't have to go through he voting
process it would minimise the amount of voting needed to be done and
concentrate the already stretched resource of the voters on where the real
mistakes may exist.

The idea of a 'ranking' editors to give them certain permissions and
privileges is a long and difficult task, and would require lots of
communication before it could be implemented. So that another conversation
in its self. However the idea of the random artist editing may seem more
feasible at this point in time, who knows it might even work. :)

SUMMARY VERSION:

2 problems; 1. get more people to vote, 2. get more people making edits in
areas not usually payed attention to.

First, the voting process is only in place to attempt to stop incorrect data
entering the database, if we were to take out a lot of the edits made by
trust worthy editors then already we have mathematically increased the
chances that a voter will spot a mistake.

Second, what about having a kind of 'lucky dip' artist editing system, where
the user can request a random artist, and the user can spend his/her time
finding and filling in as much as possible for this little artist.

-- 
Elliot (chancey)
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