discogs.com: what's going on?

here's the skinny from help.discogs.com:

SERVERS DOWN

Dear Discogs User,

As you will have noticed, Discogs has been offline now since yesterday. We experienced a cascade of problems with the servers yesterday that ended with the whole site inaccessible to everyone including the system admin's. Since then, we have been working hard on a solution to getting us up and running again. Thankfully, this server that hosts the help.discogs.com site has been revived, and this may allow us to get the whole site running again. However, this is an extremely technical job, and may take some time to complete.

As sod's law dictates, we have four brand new servers already ordered and will be installing them by the middle of July. These should ensure we don't experience an outage such as this again.

We apologize, and ask you all the be patent while we try and figure out a solution. In the meantime, if you need to contact me or another Discogs user with an urgent matter, please use the form below, and I will try and help.

Yours Sincerely

Nik | Discogs Community Manager

searching the google cache = way inadequate!! DUD DUD DUD.

RYM could do with more electronic / dance music enthusiasts!

i was here this (above) morning and it's still here!
unless i'm goin mad, there's every chance. is this just an old page or sumthin?

gosh i hope it isn't gone it's invaluable!

one thing i really wish they would do is list the year of release on the main discog list for each artist.

xp

also i really wish you could click any track and hear a 20 second sample.

From wikipedia:

....this system was abandoned on March 10, 2008, with the launch of Discogs v4. In v4, new submissions and edits take effect immediately, and there is no longer any distinction between pending and approved edits. Instead, new items and items subjected to edits are flagged as needing "votes," (initially, "review," but this term caused confusion). Any item can be voted on at any time, even if it isn't flagged. Votes consist of a rating of the data's correctness & completeness, as determined by users who have been automatically determined, by an undisclosed algorithm, to be experienced & reliable enough to be allowed to cast votes. An item's "average" vote is part of the release, artist, or label data.[6]

However this has caused controversy with many users and former moderators suggesting that this has substantially reduced the reliability and usability of the database.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Discogs&diff=next&oldid=198928165

that place is in a shitstorm. i hope it works out but i've been seeing homemade mp3 mixes popping up in the database so i'm pessimistic.

so i've been diligently cataloging all of my records in discogs, and i'm wondering who else here uses it. i've got about 800 records (mostly crappy) so it's taking me a while, but i'm enjoying the mechanical process. has anyone else done this, or use Discogs for selling/buying records? i'm guessing not too many people actually catalog their records, since a universally-owned record like Rumours is only in about 5000 people's collections on Discogs. is anyone "friends" with anyone on Discogs? i'm Discogs friends with my gf, and that's it. i'm not sure what the purpose is, other than just being able to peep at other people's collections.

anyway...Discogs!

there's a unique feeling of existential dread when you pull Thriller from the shelf. you know tracking down the exact release of this is going to suuuuuuuck

one kinda neat feature is the ability to look at the min/median/max prices for each of the records in your collection. it calculates them by looking at the records on sale on discogs itself, so it's not perfect, but it's a nice rough measure.

i'm assuming that this will be one of those sad revives, so let it be known for ilx browsers of the future that come upon this thread, on October 23 2012 i had ANOTHER thought about Discogs:

could be useful for insurance purposes if something ever terrible happens to your collection - you could just point to your discogs and be like "hey it says the median value of my records was $XYZ"

I think the price calculation is based on actual sales through discogs, so while it's still not perfect, it does show you how much people have *really* paid for the record.

this archive is still wonky, but i like how specific the entries are about details (tagging producers, players, etc.).

i'm on there as well: http://www.discogs.com/collection?user=drew.deboy&sort=artist,asc

the guys i know who are serious record dealers online seem to love discogs and use it almost exclusively, except in cases where something really rare or valuable might go to ebay, because i think the ceiling is higher there, but for the routine stuff discogs is way easier

I'm currently diligently cataloging my collection - I did the vinyl a few months back and I'm about halfway through the CDs. I'm not really sure why I'm doing it, but I do quite enjoy the process, just to pull out another batch of 17 CDs and add them

emil.y, I added your album the other day. It needs a vote. When do I get a vote?

Hmm, I'm not sure about voting. I will have a look and see if I can vote.

Um... I am very confused about submissions and voting. Was going to change the artist page to add myself & the other missing members, but I can't even work out how to do that.

yeah, there was something i was looking at the other day that needed a vote and i couldn't figure out how to do it either. *shrugs*

http://www.discogs.com/help/voting-guidelines.html

So looks like only an elite can vote. Which makes sense to a certain degree, but at the same time is definitely pissing me off right now. I just looked back at my account information - I share an account with the mister, and we've added a few edits over the couple of years that we've been on, and NOT ONE of them has been voted on. If there isn't a 'recent edits' page for the people who have voting privileges to look at, or if it isn't used very much, then voting needs to be widened out or else their database will remain incomplete. GRAH SMASH.

I've been using discogs since 06 or so, I haven't added all of my collection, but I've almost added all of my collection on RYM. I like adding to the database on discogs, scanning the cover and labels. I have a stack of records I need to add, been slacking off. I like selling on discogs way more than ebay, although patience is require.
http://www.discogs.com/user/lolvalstein

x-post Yeah, I thought it was something like that. I figured once I'd added enough stuff, or I turned 18 in discogs years, I'd magically get a vote.

The adding band members process is so annoying.

Been buying and selling on Discogs for 5 years or so, not huge amounts, just shifting records I don't want anymore. Had about 500 orders in that time, but I work from home, so popping out to the Post Office is normally quite welcome.

I find Discogs really good for discovering old music, it's so easy to listen to surf through labels, artists or the recommendations at the bottom and then listen to the youtube links on the side of the release pages.

Discogs has been decent for shifting stuff that doesn't sell on Ebay and it usually goes for more than I was listing it at. You have to wait a while though if you've got a lot of stuff to sell.

On the other hand their whole voting/submitting system kinda sucks. I've been banned from adding new releases because one of my changes was voted as Entirely Incorrect. Despite the fact this was overturned by mods because it was actually correct. I even emailed the database mod and he just replied yeah I can see that, sucks to be you.

sounds like the voting/"elite user" thing blows, which is too bad because in my brief fling with discogs i had hopes that maybe it would be a nice wikipedia/crowdsourcing kinda thing.

I had a friend of mine who (I think) quit Discogs over this very issue after making tons of validated entries.

I have also been spending all morning trying to remove a negative feedback, it went like this:

sleeve: (orders LP)
sleeve: looks on seller profile, it says "contact me for shipping costs"
sleeve: sends a message asking for shipping
seller: ignores me for 3 weeks
seller: asks me for feedback
sleeve: roll my eyes, Paypal the price of the record, and say "let me know how much shipping is"
seller: cancels sale, refunds payment, says "no payment for 22 days", leaves negative feedback
sleeve: contacts seller with specific dates of when I requested shipping quotes, ask for removal
seller: says "oh, I didn't realize it would do that, sorry"
sleeve: has to enter the most innocuous reason for removing negative feedback, which is "message contains links" (a complete lie, but THERE IS NO OTHER MECHANISM FOR RESOLVING THIS JESUS FUCKING CHRIST)

then I wait and hope that seller removes negative feedback

It was almost enough to make me quit the site.

I think that's more of an issue with an idiot seller isn't it?

yes, but it frustrates me that their system defaults to negative feedback that cannot be removed without buyer and/or seller admitting some kind of (fictional) wrongdoing.

Can't say I've ever been put off selling to someone on Discogs with a less than 100% buyer rating though. Under 75% I may get worried, but that would probably be for a good reason, or they're new and have had bad luck.

Sorry that last sentence is very clumsy, but unless you're worried about stats for stats sake don't worry sleeve!

May as well plug my list of overpriced good stuff and hundred of pieces of shameful past purchases while I'm at it eh?

http://www.discogs.com/seller/Chewshabadoo

sounds like the voting/"elite user" thing blows, which is too bad because in my brief fling with discogs i had hopes that maybe it would be a nice wikipedia/crowdsourcing kinda thing.

Z S what you want here is musicbrainz:

http://musicbrainz.org/

What is insane to me is that Discogs is using its own TOTALLY DIFFERENT database to catalogue EXACTLY THE SAME INFORMATION.

Ouch, that database desperately needs a better interface. It's painful to use. Are there any out there already?

yeah, the web site isn't great but the data underneath it is. it's just the sort of wiki-style anybody-can-edit-it stuff that Z S is looking for and they have a very active community of editors. it powers music info at the bbc and the guardian, just to name two. but yeah the interface could use some work. i mainly just use the search box.

That's kind of what I mean, you just get a very flat list of results, it's hard to see what you're looking at. It's like stepping back over a decade in what can be down to present search results.