I started the discussion here:
http://www.metal-archives.com/board/vie ... 302#494302

Here is my suggestion:
I will explain in the follwoing how I think the locking or the 'stable' status of albums shall be implemented. The reason why I suggest that is because there are a lot of album that are not necessary to be updated as they exist for a long time and there hardly any new information are expected to occur in the future; perhaps a new re-release, but that is something different.

The problem is to know WHICH album is qualified for a 'stable' status. As in the MA are a lot of albums the total quality of the information presented is not obvious to the recipient of the information. By locking an album this would be possible to achieve. In order to reduce the total amount of work loaded upon the admins and the moderators it is necessary to use knowledge of the users who update the pages day per day; to add more information and to point-whore.

Each user is to some extend aware of the quality of the information that is added to each album. This might be through the possession of the record or elsewhere; there are a numerous sources of information on the internet as everyone should know. If someone thinks that the information is correct one should be able to report it. As a first step I would suggest a button for reporting that the information is correct. This report would go to a queue in which the albums that are possible to achieven the status 'stable' are listed.

perhaps this way:

Metallica - Ride the lightning (1500) (100, m-k, 199 m-n, 200 m-h, 25 v, 15 m-f)

m-k: mallcore kid
m-n: metal newbie
m-h: metalhead
v: veteran
m-f: metalfreak
etc.


or this way:
Metallica - Ride the lightning (1500) (0, 199, 200, 25, 15, 0, 0, 0, 0)

with a legenda (ranks)


It is perhaps better to have some shortcuts to make it obvious, who voted for an album. This can only be done while being logged in to prevent massive voting by 'users' who are not logged in. The queue should be visiable to all users, but I am not sure if this is necessary, but perhaps this would encourage some to see if they can add information to another album in order to get it into the queue. Furthermore one user can only vote ONE TIME per album. This can be done with an entry in the database that prevent this.

But how to get to the votes? As the ranks represent in a way the degree on identifies with metal and that what some people know of the music, the votes of higher ranked user are more reliable than those of a 15 years old user that has one point and listens to metal for one or two years. So the more user vote the more the information gets reliable; especially, if the users of the higher rank vote.

Perhaps the points for each rank could be this way:

Mallcore kid - 1
Metal newbie - 2
Metalhead - 5
Veteran - 25
Metal freak - 50
Metal demon - 100
Metal lord - 250
Metal Goddess - 500
Metal God - 500

There should be a level each album has to reach to be considered for this status; 1500 or 2500 points. If that is reached, the changing of the status should only be done by users of the rank Metal demon or so; relyable users.

Ok... but what if there are information occuring that MUST be added to an album? To promote the discussion about it, there should be another forum in which this should be done; mainly because I have no idea how often this will happen and how many discussion will be about this topic. It should not be done via 'error report', but via a posting in this forum so that one has to prove that he/she is right with that what he wanted to add to a locked album.

This would reduce the possibility of adding false information to the MA and furthermore the 'fanboys' of some bands would like to see the band's albums to be 'stable'. It is a way an attempt to use the 'swarm intellegence' to increase the overall quality of the entries here at the metal archives; I know that SI does not work 100%... yes I am aware of that.

This is my suggestion. Questions?

Too complicated.

I did not understand anything

Same here.

I think I get the general meaning of it.

But it's pointless.

Some discographies are already locked by moderators : the ones with the most fanboyish (or whatever you call it), the classic split-up bands (Bathory for instance)...

Anyway, why having a poll system ? Mods can lock an album when they think it's stable (when all information, except maybe Additional Notes are present), no need to ask the people to vote.

And then, is it really needful to lock more things than it is on MA ? Only Veterans can make corrections, and the Point-Whore topic helps to prevent morons and trolls from becoming Vets, so...

He's proposing a simple calculus whereby the collective perceptions of the site's userbase could be used to determine whether or not the information presented for a given album is complete (and presumably of optimum quality, as far as the release image, lyrical formatting, and the like are concerned), meaning that the album could be locked so as to prevent further meddling by all but the most highly ranked users/staff. It would involve a voting system; the weight of one's vote to be determined by one's rank.

Apart from some glitches in the machina of the suggestion itself (I assure you that there are more than a few patrons of the site who possess both considerable amounts of points and comparatively little experience with metal, for example), it seems rather an overblown and labor-intensive solution to a comparatively simple/minor problem. The proposal for a whole new (sub)forum dedicated purely to maintenance of such a tertiary feature is particularly outlandish.

The effort is nonetheless commendable, I suppose.