1. Isn't the way to check that to copy the old number after the question mark into the URL and replace the new one? I have a vague memory of trying that a long time ago and seeing the differences like you mention, such as low quality being replaced by better. But with the ones I've tried in this case, there are no changes at all.

2. Another way to know that is that some of his recent updates are on releases that I've recently added myself, such as

http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/E. ... ic8/549951
http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Cr ... oan/549658

and there is no to me visible difference at all.

On the question of worth fussing over. Look at how many he's doing this on, if it is the case that I'm correct in point 1 above. He seems to be doing that update on every release he updates. So if such a quantity doesn't count as point whoring worth fussing over, then I don't know what would.

Whatever the case, I've banned him just now for ignoring several warnings about copy-pasting promotional texts. Hopeless...

Az banned him per my recommendation after I saw other, unrelated shit in his edit history. Worthless contributor, and no real loss.

So thank you for pointing this out, because it indirectly led to his riddance.

A notice should be sent to http://www.metal-archives.com/users/Inriri%20Nativo, who added many "Jewel Case" to version description: http://www.metal-archives.com/search/ad ... re=#albums

Warned by Diamhea on the 26th.

Someone just added the album without any real title of the tracklists. Is it acceptable to do that?
http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Sx ... ion/554456

It's not. I'll delete it and warn the user. EDIT: Okay, turns out that's actually how the split is structured, two longer songs consisting of smaller parts and titled like that. False alarm.

There are actually have all the title, but I decide not to fixing it, inform you to know would be better.

Here:
http://pluterasrecs.blogspot.com/2012/0 ... on-en.html
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yeWpH9dQ6aA/U ... ortada.jpg

aargh, okay then, feel free to modify that. The user isn't really to blame, though, some download blogs have it listed that way.

Block this IP address:
http://www.metal-archives.com/report/vi ... 4/show/all
He/She's spamming the report queue. NWOBHM doesn't seem to sit well with him/her as a genre.

As per HellBlazer, if he isn't really disruptive/doing any real damage, an IP ban is too much. Just keep closing those reports.

Are you fucking kidding me right now... over 400 reports of this spam.

Great cleanup task to wake up to.

User AsTheCrowFlies adds many DooLittle links that go nowhere.
http://www.metal-archives.com/users/AsTheCrowFlies

http://www.doolittle.se/

Literally just shot him a notice. Caught him adding label-only links to band pages too.

http://www.metal-archives.com/users/IcarusX

Is it considered point whoring to change band logos from their classic colour to white with no improvement in other stuff, like size or background? Is there any purpose to replace the classic coloured logo of bands like Annihilator, Kreator, and Sodom, that's been on the site for many years, or any other band logo with plain white? It's not like there's a site preference that logos should be white.

See a bunch of examples around 2015-10-18, but also some later, at least...

Warned.

since he's been brought up, I've been keeping an eye on IcarusX, too... he does a lot of work, but the lineups he adds for.ex are not from official sources... I confronted him about one, where I knew it was incorrect, and he lied. I've contacted him again on a couple of occasions, but whenever he gets the message he disappears from the site for 2 days, then goes back to the same.

also, either his english is really poor, or he's an idiot, because he changed "Originally the band was put together by Mike Varney for a David T. Chastain solo album." to "Originally formed by Mike Varney for his solo album."
http://www.metal-archives.com/history/v ... ilter/data

not saying it's all bad, but he seems intent to amass points, not to flesh out correct information on the site...

He's actually been warned about that sort of stuff, using another account (EmpyreusX). Cursarion's had issues with him ignoring messages as well. The IcarusX account is sort of a second chance (undeserved, it would seem). I don't really doubt you, but could you give a specific example of him knowingly adding incorrect lineups? *readies ban hammer*

I have only checked a few of his lineups, because he adds them from a decent-enough but not 100% on source (I'm guessing discogs) and can only counter-check if I actually have the CD... the one that started it all was the last subsignal, I had already added the flutist with a notation for the track she played on, and he removed it. the rest is here: http://www.metal-archives.com/report/view/id/540191

Incorrigible. Banned.

http://www.metal-archives.com/users/Krister%20Jensen

They went through and changed the capitlization of the second word of several of the songs and the album title.
http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Be ... kot/548828

I changed the improper capitalization, it's Slovak and as any other Slavic language it should not be capitalized like English despite the stylization or whatever. You can translate the titles via Google, nothing uncommon about them really. If you don't trust we can ask some Slovak user here.

Seems to be a stupid vandalism?

http://www.metal-archives.com/users/heilgash

Yes, should be banned.

Banned.

In my world of technological solutions, whenever I see a process that involves a lot of manual effort, I start thinking of ways to automate it. Is there a way to prevent some types of point whoring? Seems like you guys spend a lot of time on this crap. My pet peeves are:

1) Changing tracks lengths by a few seconds. This doesn't add any new information, really. Can you prevent length changes if they're say only 1-3 seconds?

2) Changing the indentation of lyrics without actually changing any content. Trickier to root out, but maybe you could raise the rank required to change existing lyrics?

These are pretty silly and hard to enforce. Nothing wrong with at least attempting to clean up the disaster that is the lyric fields as a whole. and changing timestamps is something that is hard to wave away as a pointless generalization without checking it out on a case by case basis. If it results in an "edit war" then I'd put the kibosh on it.

Can someone stop this person?

http://www.metal-archives.com/users/Dr_Zed

He adds a lot of unnecessary links.

http://www.metal-archives.com/users/Dr_Zed

He's adding links in the links sections that aren't managed by the bands.

I have stopped adding anymore links that were deemed unnecessary by Diamhea since last week. I did not know from reading the rules that more than one Youtube link was unnecessary, but now I do since Diamhea told me so. I use ALL Youtube links for most bands, so I thought I was helping other users do the same, but it has been stopped. However, I did put multiple Youtube links on some bands before it was explained to me that more than one Youtube link was redundant, so users will find some of these. I thought that other users would like to hear more than one song by given bands as I do, yet this may not be true, so it has been stopped.

Very few of the links in the Related Links section are managed by the bands. Most are managed by somebody else such as Record Companies, etc. It seems to me that if all Related links were managed by the bands there would hardly be anything there! Perhaps, I do not fully understand the comment, but I do not think EM wants ONLY links in the Related Links section to be managed by the bands. Perhaps, I am wrong and can be instructed about this rule that I must have missed.

Please let me know if I misunderstood the questions and I will try to re-answer.

Thank you,
Dr_Zed

It is beyond the realistic scope of MA to post multiple Youtube links for a band just from a convenience standpoint. People can run a Youtube search if they so desire, and if it is linking to vids uploaded by anyone other than the band, it is stretching into point whoring territory. It causes more confusion than it eliminates inconvenience, if that makes sense.

For example, you uploaded this Youtube link as "Full EP 2007" and put it under "Official:"



That wasn't uploaded by the band.

Plus you are adding Discogs pages as "official merchandise." The hell is that about?

Stop adding links, because I know you are trying to rush to 1000 points (veteran) so you have more access, but I can just as easily take those points away. Start making more constructive edits. Help us out with reports, add missing album versions, or hell even cleaning up version descriptions is a better use of your time. The links section needs an overhaul IMO, and misuse like this is one reason why. I'm going to go through and clean these up, which means removing most of them. Not the way I wanted to spend my Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps I misunderstood your comment above, but any EM user can easily search the Internet or Youtube themselves for ALL links in ALL Related Links sections for ALL EM bands. Thus, it seems using the pure logic above the ENTIRE Related Links section is useless throughout EM.

I will stop putting Youtube links as "official" whether they are created by the band or not (How can one tell when only the name of the link creator is on most of the Youtube pages?). I have hardly ever seen Youtube links created only by the bands, but if that is what official means that is the way I will use it. I can not find EM rules to tell me what the difference is between official or not official but hardly ever saw any Youtube links outside the Related Links Official sections for the last 1000 bands I looked at, so I followed the suit I thought was accepted by EM and its users.

Sorry, but the Discogs link was a drop-down menu on the Related Links EM Form until a month or so ago on ALL Related Links sections for ALL 1000 bands I looked at. Thus, I thought EM wanted users to know where they can buy a band's releases so I started using it think it was an accepted EM contribution. There are many EM users posting to Discogs and even posting to several Record companies or online record stores that provide a band's releases, even for different versions of a release! I thus did not invent the Discogs link, it was put there by EM, so I thought EM wanted people to file links from Discogs. That is the ONLY reason I used it; I did not make it up. It is NOT within my power to make the Discogs Related Links Form drop-down menu I only used what was there.

Dr Zed.

Well, technically yes, in most cases the links could be found by searching. A Google search would probably return many results you don't care about though. It makes sense to consolidate the interesting links related to the band on its MA page. YouTube is a far more focused site, usually searching for a band name (and maybe song/album title if the band name is a really common word) will get you what you're looking for in the first results. A couple links is OK, but if the band posts tons of songs, it kinda clutters the link section. Maybe we should have an "official video" category... but then people would probably constantly post videos uploaded by just anyone.



Well, exactly. If the uploader has the band's name, then it can be assumed it's official.



Hmm, sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Discogs in a drop-down menu? Do you mean the auto-complete thing when you type the link name? I can assure you that Discogs has never been listed there. Maybe it was your own browser's suggestion, because you typed "Discogs" in that field before...?



HellBlazer.

not out of the gate pw, but http://www.metal-archives.com/users/Ratsui has been adding lineups and birth dates, and it might be good if someone asked him for his sources early on...

Not so sure if it's worth mentioning but the user In_hora_mortis re-capitalizes Spanish titles against the rule.

Notice sent.

Dr_Zed, you keep adding unauthorized full album youtube streams to the related links. Even if you mark it as "unofficial", what's the point?

Isn't the "YouTube" supposed to link to the official band's channel?

Hi Insidiae,

Can you point me to where it says only official band channels are supposed to be for Youtube links on the Related Links Section? It seems like everybody has a different idea of what Youtube links to use for Related Links and where to put them in the Related Links Section (Official, Unofficial, and now only if they are band channels). I have asked several other EM users to tell me where to read about this, but nobody ever directs me to ANY written section that I have tried to find myself but could not.

The EM WebMaster suggested there be a video section to solve the differing opinions, some users have told me to put the type you disagree with under unofficial unless they clearly are officially from the band, since Youtube band Channels are not all from the bands! Others have different ideas of what official means, but where is anything on this written? Several users have told me to put the link-type you discuss as Unofficial, but now you seem to have yet another view on this issue. I am not arguing you are wrong, but I am at a loss when several people tell me I am doing it wrong but users differ on how to do it right. I only want to do them all right, I have now other interest.

I want to add ONLY accepted links to the Related Links Section, so I started putting Unofficial on Youtube links after several EM users complained I was putting them on official and they said these belonged as Unofficial. Please help me find the section to read about this, I want to know where it is written so I can do it right every time.

I am sorry you have to flag me about this, but I keep asking yet nobody gives me the written part they all think is the right way.

Regards,
Dr Zed.

Common sense.
Like the Facebook link points to a (un)official page, and not a post;
Like the Myspace link points to a (un)official page, and not a photo;
Like the Soundcloud link points to a (un)official page, and not a track stream;
Like the Reverbnation link points to a (un)official page, and not an upcoming show;
Like the Twitter link points to a (un)official page, and not a random tweet;
Like... you are seeing where I'm going with this.

Even if one only links to official videos, imagine if one starts adding every official Metallica clip from the official Youtube channel... the link section would be cluttered and it would look horrible.

I'm no authority of any sort (not mini-mod also), but from a point of view of a common user who likes to access reliable info in a quick and clean way, things are really neat this way, IMO.

Btw, last week I went through your modifications and I discovered unofficial facebook pages linked to official (always check "about" section); dozens of youtube/soundcloud/even facebook search queries into (un)official links (!?), and funny thing, multiple links to the band's Metal-Archives.com page itself under the aforementioned link types, so be careful with the copy-paste.

It looks like something has to be written on this into the EM rules.

Outside of the copy/past mistakes that I did not know I made, I thought I followed ALL the Common Sense you list above with most of the links I added to Related Links, and for the AGOURO link you deleted today. I like to listen to a whole LP BEFORE I buy ANY CD, one or two songs is not enough, so I added the AGOURO complete LP from my own "Common Sense" logic and listed it as Unofficial as other EM users said it should got there, yet you disagreed with them and me and deleted the link.

I own 3000 LPs, I ONLY buy those for which I can hear the whole LP, so I used that logic as my own Common Sense to let other EM users hear AGOURO that require complete LP's be heard before they buy a CD. IMHO I would require complete LPs for all the Youtube links since single songs are not good enough to tell if the whole LP is good enough to buy. I thus added more than one Youtube and that got EM flack (so I stopped adding them), where the users said only one Youtube link is allowed, again without pointing to any rules.

I guess that is why there are written EM rules, everybody's common sense may be different. I cannot argue with any of your list above, yet I still do not know why the unofficial AGOURO was deleted!

Dr Zed.