[mb-users] Open request for documentation review; ReleaseTerminology

[Fred Marchee]

A reply to both this and the one about boycotting the release events,

I think that a note stating the source of your knowledge, even the non 
linkable ones (books), also be can seen as very reliable. Never forget 
that "we" (the MB community) are mostly a very reliable source of 
knowledge, we are fans!

Thanks,

Fred (fred576)

Chad: your work on the Wiki is great, thanks.

Chad Wilson wrote:
> Johannes Dewender wrote:
>   
>>> so yeah, go to discogs, find the release, look at the update history
>>> and see what the source is, and then use that if appropriate. far
>>> more efficient than actually searching for the primary source
>>> yourself!
>>>     
>>>       
>> My experience with discogs is different: There is almost never a source 
>> given for release dates. This might depend on the styles you look at, 
>> though.
>> In this context I would not encourage people to use discogs as a source. 
>> They will do anyways, but now they can say, that the docs say discogs 
>> IS a source.
>>
>> Checking the cat# on the label page is sometimes an interesting thing to 
>> do. This is only possible if many of the dates are correct already (I 
>> don't think so) and the cat# are not re-used for later releases. This 
>> is mostly the case, but not always.
>>
>> You can do things like that, but only people that are aware of the 
>> problems should do that, so we shouldn't explicitely list these 
>> possibilities, because they will generate many edits we have to fix 
>> again.
>>   
>>     
> This is ridiculous. In being perfectionist about sources you are 
> forgetting that the engine that drives MB's core data growth is 
> thousands of mostly-inexperienced and mostly-casual users. Getting them 
> to supply /any/ link is difficult. And you want us to remove from 
> citation any data source that may possibly have errors? Well, let's 
> remove Amazon, AllMusic, all retail stores, Discogs, Wikipedia.... oh 
> wait, there's no list left!
>
> There are NO GOOD SOURCEs by your summation. Period. Even the cover 
> itself is not a good source; it doesn't have a release date on it.
>
> How can I go onto people's edits and say "Please provide a link to 
> evidence/tracklistings for this release?" if there are no acceptable 
> online sites for evidence? Perhaps you want to change that sentence to 
> "Only a cover scan and a statistically significant sampled average of 
> release dates across 30+ online stores is suitable evidence?".
>
> That's just silly. We are putting possibilities out there; noting that 
> they all have weaknesses. We are trying to help new users understand 
> what is the generally-accepted practice for evidence provision. Discogs 
> and other sources, with appropriate human judgements on their accuracy 
> will remain an acceptable source-for-evidence for some time. They are 
> all bad in some areas; but for many obscure releases there are NO 
> perfectly reliable sources for release dates, and Wikipedia and Discogs 
> may be all you have.
>
> The line very clearly notes that "To be sure you may often need to 
> cross-reference between several stores or sources". I think that's 
> enough; and given the release date is the one piece of information that 
> is never on a CD liner, we owe it to our users to explain to them all 
> the options on where to find it. It is up to the individual and voter to 
> make a human judgement on whether it is reliable enough.
>
> Chad / voice
>
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