Tbh I prefer the old style. This new one offers very little improvement and in some ways takes a step backwards. I'd like to see a Light style from a usability point of view as it will be much easier to read. The band info pages etc are also quite sluggish as you must click on all the different tabs etc to find information we could previously do in one click.

It seems like the site profile (where you can see reviews, collections, bands submitted, etc) is now completely separate from the forum profile? You can still find this info by doing a user search on the main site, but I think it would be great if they were somehow linked again.

Also, I've noticed that in my collection some of the discographies appear out of order after the first page. This only seems to be an issue for non full length releases.

And speaking of pages, is there a way to make collections listed all on one page instead of only 100 albums per page, like in the old site? It's confusing when half of a bands releases are on one page and the other half are on the next, as well as when i am trying to find a specific album or band.

Thanks, and great work with V2 so far!

Some clearing up for the Split albums. As most of you noticed that there is no breakdown of which band is responsible for which songs...it actually is there. Sometimes the band is listed next to each song, or check the Additional Notes tab. That will show the band assignment to song thing.

I still wish it was above the album info, but this will do.

Hope this clears things up for some of you.

\m/

I felt this way the first day the Beta version was out, but once I was acquainted with the navigation and functions, the entire process became much easier to me. The possibilities offered through version 2 already (even with the Beta version), to me, make M-A easily the most versatile heavy metal website today. To all lovers of heavy metal M-A usually proves interesting, and as a basis for encyclopedic information pertaining to the genre it is practically inexhaustible.

Would it be possible to have the "clear lyrics" option back in the lyrics section (like we had in V1)? That was a very useful tool.

Ctrl + a + backspace

I'm loving the new forum layout, much easier to use.

Not sold on the band pages layouts though, but may grow on me in time.

But it's looking good so far guys, good job with updating the forum, the last version was a bit outdated and needed to be upgraded.

Of all the things on the band pages, I really don't like "Members" being a tab, rather I liked all of that readily displayed on a bands main page on the old version probably moreso than the list of albums and all the other stuff. I'd think displaying the main/current members of a band on the band pages would be nicer than how it's setup currently, and then maybe have a dropdown menu below detailing other/past members. Although with the tabbing it condenses the band pages making them smaller and maybe nicer at a glance, it's just extra work to have to click on the tab to view that info. Heck, make the tab "Previous Members" or something instead.

I think this setup would effectively utilize the band members profile pages a lot better and quicker than how it is now. View a bands main page, check out that list of artists, and you can instantly click on them to see their other connections. The way it was on the old version was always very helpful for quick referencing, but now, it's just an extra unneeded step to get there. I'm loving a LOT of stuff about V2 so far, but I think it should definitely be stripped down a bit and revert to a little more simplicity in some areas.

I also definitely have the same issue with albums having a "Lineup" tab. Again, I think this was much better when it was just simply text based info displayed directly above the track listing. And again, this would rock even more now with the band member profile pages available.... if it were setup the old way. As of now, just a bit too much clicking.

Bands aren't bands without the people, obviously, so let's show that.

Only a matter of formatting. Instrument per field (from the list of suggestions) would provide consistency. People will type multiple instruments per field differently.

By the way, is it possible to link to artists? Would be extremely handy for example for the people with same names to mention "not the same person as link:X". Similarly, would be nice for biography too, for friendships/relationships/marriages/whatever.

Also, can bands be linked in artist biography/trivia? And I suppose at least the non-MA bands could/should be mentioned in either of those fields?

I just woke up so I didn't check yet (for today), but are there any guidelines with comprehensive examples about how to use the new features (preferedly linked somewhere visible)? If people don't get something, they won't enter the information as you would prefer.


[edit:]
City of origin means the city artist was born, rather than where he currently lives? Current whereabouts belong to biography?

not sure if this has been discussed already, but regarding similar artist voting; shouldnt votes for similarity count both ways. for example, on the slayer page, dark angel is listed as similar with 15 votes but on dark angels page, there is no similar artists listed.

so im saying that if i vote that BAND A is similar to BAND B, then i should also be voting for BAND B being similar to BAND A

Guys, your site is now complitely awesome, but I've got question about section "Similar artists". Maybe you'll try to take lastfm's base that's already complete? X)

http://209.59.186.200/~metalarc/report/view/id/309848 - Morri or HB should take a look at this.

@ Ins_: nah, I don't think it's a good idea as the MA fanbase's tastes are quite different from the general crowd.

Indeed, that's not good, though you should complain about the forum in the other thread.


Really? I checked your collection and it looks ok.


In the future there will be an option to change the number of results in a list.


Most of you? You were the only person who complained about it.



Soon that will be possible.


Not at the moment.

Yes, you can mention the non-MA bands there.


There is the rules section.


Yes. It's explained in the rules section, under Adding New Data -> Line-Up / Artists


Some people agree with that, others disagree. We'll see how it goes.


No.


I've forwarded it to them.

FIXED BUGS


01.
Fixed.

02.
Fixed.

03.
Fixed.

04.
Fixed. I changed it so that it writes "-?" instead of "-present" if the artist is a past member, OR if the band is not active. I think that should take care of all the cases?

05.
Fixed.

I posted this in the other V2 thread, and it got reported. Still got one question about it: do we ignore the bug (and thus keep scoring those double points), or do we wait with updating those tabs until the bug is fixed? Artists can be added without saving the tabs, but if you want to add some more instruments or data you need to save the tab. Just asking because I don't want to end up as a pointwhore...

Ignore the bug.

But the bug with apostrophes in non-metal bands' names in splits still remains?

Yeah, and linking to labels could be handy too, with people owning/working for labels.




Looks like there's nothing about adding artists to lineups, for example about how to add year ranges, use aliases, etc. The ideal way of doing it hasn't been crystal clear, which is why people have added stuff in different ways.




Only country of origin is mentioned there btw, though yeah, it should be understandable as it now is too. I spotted few current locations entered in city/country of origin already.

Also, Galder was initially added as "Galder (Thomas Rune Andersen Orre)" or something. The display name was apparently changed, but looks like I can't change his name in Dimmu Borgir, which is still "Galder (Thomas Rune Andersen Orre)". If I change it, the form is sent normally and it shows a message about succesful changes, but when it reloads, it's back to previous text.

I haven't checked. Please check and post here.

EDIT: Actually, it should be fixed.

Just a general question, hoping that someone can answer:

The Swedish band Villainthropy (formed in 1993) had a bass-player called Kim Carlsson. Currently, he's linked as the black metal musician Kim Carlsson (Hypothermia etc.). However, is this actually correct as I've never seen this link before? That is, Kim is normally listed as the guitarist and / or vocalist in his black metal projects and this link did not exist in Metal-Archives 1.0

It might be obvious of course, as they share the same name, but just for clarification

Yes, it works now. I've just re-fixed the three splits with apostrophes I encountered and reported yesterday.

Bug reported.



If they aren't the same person, you only need to send a report.

Yes, I've tried to change it to "Galder", but it remains "Galder (Thomas Rune Andersen Orre)".

Thanks. By the way, on the same page the instruments of his album appearances are apparently shown in a random order:



Ordering them consistently would make the listings look clearer. Although, they are shown in the order they were added?


[edit:]

Peter Wildoer's session performances look weird too. Dunno if it's browser dependant, but at least on Chromium it looks like this (screenshot).

http://209.59.186.200/~metalarc/albums/ ... omo/147539 - there's a bug with this split: when I try to add End Of Green (which is on the Archives) from the pop-up window, the pop-up window doesn't close and although the band now appears under the "Bands on this split" section, it doesn't appear in the pop-up menus to the left of the track titles.

How about some sort of messaging system?

If not a complete system, at least some way to get a notice when a report that you made (or replied in) has been replied to or resolved?

I just noticed while browsing the site that the site can be searched the old way again.

I just wanted to say... THANK YOU!

It was a bit of a pain to search and forget the wild cards, because sometimes a particular phrase occurs in the middle.

It also returns results a lot faster than it did yesterday.

Hi,
Ive noticed that the line-up of the bands that moved to the new version are not showing up on their pages, i can only see them if i click on the legacy line-up. So i dont know whether we have to add them once again or just let them maybe they can be recovered automatically!
PS: I'm sorry if this problem was already posted on the forums. I'm not up to date with what changing in EM lately and all of the new version features.
Thank you.

Hello, I still have to get used to the new database but I think it's a general improvement, congratulations!

Now I have a little complain that could easily may be corrected. On each label's page there is a year scroll to choose its foundation date. Well, there are actually labels in the database that were formed before 1911 (which is the earliest year it is offered). I think Columbia Records is the oldest of them all, founded in 1888.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Records

There is the answer. Black Sabbath or Judas Priest might serve as an example.

First of all, the new MA is awesome, thanks for the hard work! I kinda agree with Xeogred on lineup thing, I think the current lineup as well as the main one (excluding guests and misc) should be on the main page of each releases. But otherwise, I like all this tab thing, it helps make pages neater and more practical. The artist page is definitely one of my favourite additions, that way you don't have to open every release page in order to know on which album a particular dude played.

Otherwise I have a question also in regards with the lineups. I noticed as far as the current lineup goes, you can't list the members in the order you want and they seems to be ordered by the years of being active. It's okay with a band where every member has the year they got into the band, so they are listed in order of time, but those which you don't know it are listed first. So when a band in particular has only the main member which you know the year he got in, he is listed last which feels kinda weird, particularly when all other members are new ones.

How exactly is the guest/additional musicians and miscellaneous staff feature intended to work? It's not like a piano player the band phoned in for an album would have a page on MA, so how are we supposed to add them? What about staff? Surely we're not expected to create pages for producers and audio engineers.

Huh?

Sure, all the above can be entered normally. Of course, the piano player for instance would have very little information on his page other than the fact that he played on whatever album, but that's not a problem.

Also, I think I found a bug, or maybe it's intended to work that way. Anyway, I realized past band members who still contributed to the band after they left (and the year is written) have their contribution listed in their past bands tab, rather than in the misc or guest one. Also, what about artists who contributed the artwork for splits? You can't list him to both bands or none.

I'm also wondering is the site will support non band links and at other places than a band's additional notes. If a certain member is the owner of a particular label, it would be nice to click on the label page when reading this for example.

the "more" button for the new bands list is broken.

The username and password field are far too long in Firefox4 in Ubuntu 10.10.

I like the other stuff, especially the skin new

If a page is reported, the tab with "reports" can "fall down" to the next line if the window width isn't wide enough, as shown here:

[/i][/b]Can anyone tell me about the members page.
The line-up doesn't appear in the members section. Only we can see the line-up in the legacy line-up part. What's the point of it???

Legacy line-up is the line-up list from the old Metal Archives. All members has to be re-added for V2. The old was just plain text, while the new is database based.

I see..that will take lots of time..