I’ve Found the Worst Discogs Seller Ever

Discussion in 'Marketplace Discussions' started by JoshM, Jan 27, 2019.

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  1. QuestionMark?

    QuestionMark? 4TH N' GOAL

    Location:
    The End Zone
    Yes, I see. That makes more sense than he couldn't answer your question. I have had people correct something I have misstated in my listing and after I investigate and find it to be wrong, I change it.
     
  2. Yamahaha

    Yamahaha Sir Pepe of LePew

    Location:
    Alberta, Canada
    Discogs is the once pretty young thing of yesterday, 30 years later with zero upkeep. Everythings mess, the catalog, doubles, just plain wrong release info and a whole bunch of junk dealers who rate everything NM and just "pick one" of the several releases of the LP they are selling with no regard for anything.

    Its up to Discogs to correct this. My last experience with an overgrader of epic proportion was the last time I will buy on that site. I will enjoy the fun of eventually finding things at real stores/shows
     
  3. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    Yeah, I'm holding my breath on that one.
     
  4. Yamahaha

    Yamahaha Sir Pepe of LePew

    Location:
    Alberta, Canada
    When people stop buying, they will care. Have to hand it to them. The site is entirely built and catalog maintained by users. All they have done is keep the back end running and collect a percentage. Probably was just scraping by until they let the Ebay junk dealers run wild. Now they are likely rolling in a nice profit that will go away if they actually press for quality. So they wont, UNLESS people stop buying. Then they will have to. As always we the people always have the power. Just have to exercise it. I've already saved myself plenty $ as I dont go there anymore thus no impulse buys. All because of the over grading problem. Works for me.
     
  5. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    See my comments above. Individuals may decide to stop buying there, but I don't see the buyers leaving in droves any time soon. The combination of deep-pocketed buyers looking for specific high-ticket items, and casual buyers who just want some copy of some album and aren't too picky will keep them in business for a long time, IMO.

    And even if you're right, and people start abandoning the site, I don't expect that to result in any significant changes. Turning that site into a professional-quality database and e-commerce site would require hiring experienced software developers to replace (or manage) the amateurs they have working there now, and the owners are unlikely to spend that kind of money if revenue is dropping. They'll probably just cash out (e.g. sell it to DeepDiscount or someone like that) and walk away.
     
  6. GentleSenator

    GentleSenator what if

    Location:
    Aloha, OR
    i agree that as a company, discogs needs to find a way to better manage things. especially in the sales arena. but you have to remember that the site is based on user contributions. if you see problems, join in and help fix them. you'll be part of the solution. the community there is quite robust and full of super knowledgeable folks. just like the one here at SH.
     
    Myke likes this.
  7. Yamahaha

    Yamahaha Sir Pepe of LePew

    Location:
    Alberta, Canada
    Ever try to do that? You get slammed by "moderators" who wrongly "correct" what you try to set right. Its a complete zoo that database and the perfect storm of power hungry mods who will attack any outsider who tries to correct mistakes. Tried it, got attacked, went away. What I say about discogs is not out of ignorance. I gave them every chance that can be given. Its not a site or system I enjoy, they exhausted my patience and good god no, no I will not wipe up their messes for them FOR FREE while being attacked for it. Nope, not a chance. I'd be better off trying to clean up a Frat house at 12pm on a Saturday night.
     
  8. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    Came here to post something very much like this. Think this is an exaggeration? Try suggesting that two different types of cassette shell (which aren't even manufactured by the duplication plant) shouldn't really be enough of a difference to warrant separate release pages.

    "If you see problems, fix them" also ignores the problems that are inherent in the design of their database and UI design.
     
  9. GentleSenator

    GentleSenator what if

    Location:
    Aloha, OR
    sigh.

    yes, i do contribute. regularly. you clearly just need to learn more about how the process works. it was frustrating to me when i was new to it, and i was routinely corrected, but there aren't "moderators". there are experienced users who have demonstrated that they are capable and therefore now able to help a bit more in the quality control department with enhanced "voting" rights. after making it a priority to follow the rules and make valuable contributions, i am now one of said users.

    i'm not sure what you mean by "suggest". if you have a release/version that isn't listed and qualifies as a different version, why not just submit it? the goal with the site is to be as comprehensive as humanly possible.

    i won't disagree with you that the database, etc. things are problematic, but i was referring to the submission creation, edit, etc. process.
     
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  10. Yamahaha

    Yamahaha Sir Pepe of LePew

    Location:
    Alberta, Canada
    My only is point is I am a grown man. Middle aged at that. I dont have time to be on little committees or fix peoples problems for free. I've been on strata boards etc and thats annoying enough when you get the busy bodies wanting to speak for speakings sake. But to fix someone elses for profit website for them and put up with nonsense ... no thank you. And I mean this respectfully. If you are into it good for you, I wish you well. But for me, Its not presenting any value. This is the same reason I wont spend money there either. It presents no value to me as it is.
     
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  11. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    With respect, your perspective is not that of one who is aware of the mechanics of Discogs.

    1. How many thousands of people do you believe contribute to the website? Discogs does not have the financial power to hire hundreds to oversee these contributions, edit, and create new releases all day. Not a chance.

    2. If you correct a release or create a new one, you're not fixing it for Discogs' sake but rather its users. I've contributed and my corrections made it far clearer, provided additional information, and will therefore assist sellers looking for the correct pressing to categorize their offering in and buyers looking for said pressing. The fact that Discogs makes a profit off a sale is beside the point... which brings me to my next one.

    3. Servers and bandwith cost money. Where does it come from? It needs to come from somewhere. I'm guessing you've never seen bills for bandwith usage and server maintenance. A small cluster of a few dozen or maybe even a few hundred people using it wouldn't be that much of a financial burden but you can bet the house that it costs plenty to run a website used the world over every single day by thousands upon thousands. Way, WAY more than you think.

    4. Do you have any idea what goes into even just designing such a database, much less implementing it? And then adding a GUI for users to navigate through it? It's an unbelievable amount of work. That is why there is no better alternative out there. If it were that easy, there'd be tons of other websites that'd likely easily outdo them... but lo & behold, there aren't any.

    5. The laws of economics are completely different than what you assume. If no money is coming in, there is not more productivity but rather less. People get let go, strategies are implemented to tighten the belt and responsibilities are redistributed throughout the organization which tends to refocus their energy on staying afloat rather than address database maintenance issues.

    This might give you the idea that I don't sympathize with you nor understand your POV. They have some merit but only to a degree and when faced through the deeper level of context than you're familiar with, the fixes aren't so obvious or easy.
     
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  12. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    It's now 50 out of 51, with that one in transit.
     
  13. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    I dunno, it sounds like he nailed to to me, but I've only been writing computer database software for thirty years and collecting records for 45 years, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

    I have, I believe, a very accurate idea of exactly what goes into designing and implementing such a database, which is part of the reason why I can't abide their horrible, unusable user interface and idiotic data design decisions. The reason there is no better alternative out there is that they did it first and have first-mover advantage and a huge amount of data (which they present in the worst possible way in almost every case).

    That's great, but as mentioned, many times when you try to edit an entry to make it clearer or provide additional information, you are attacked by the legions of amateur content cops that monitor the place, and often are told that you must change your entry to conform to some ambiguous, poorly defined and poorly implemented guideline that doesn't actually serve either the collector community or the "scholarly" community (e.g. Exhibit A: Discogs Forum - Guideline change: "Main Artist" is most prominent artist on cover, not all ).
     
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  14. GentleSenator

    GentleSenator what if

    Location:
    Aloha, OR
    color me impressed!
     
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  15. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    That's why when all purchased have arrived, and it'll be a while before the next, I say a small prayer of thanks, and lay low for a while.
    I've never forgotten that purchase from an established online retailer, a vinyl copy of a Hendrix reissue, bent completely in half, and broken into three pieces.
    Just today, I thanked my postman who brought 3 albums to my door, and he said " well us older guys know these are records, and we treat them accordingly."
    :winkgrin:
     
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  16. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Well, a professional of your experience should therefore keep in mind the following context (there's that word, again).

    Discogs was created over 18 years ago, by a single programmer in his spare time, positively with no idea that it would last near 2 decades and, as with any project of this magnitude, notable unforeseen negative consequences related to the design decisions of yesteryear are quite likely to be near impossible to resolve at this juncture without a complete rewrite of the whole database... which actually occurred in 2004.

    Again, as somebody who's made a living performing these duties, you are certainly well aware of the fact that rewriting it all while ensuring backwards compatibility of all features and options on top of addressing all the concerns you and others have would be a monumental challenge. Certainly more involved, complex, and much bigger in scope than you've insinuated.

    Poppycock.

    The first ones to create a solution very rarely get it perfectly right. That's OK if we're talking about cars and new ones come out every year to replace the old model but that is far different than doing patchwork to introduce new functions on a Ford Model T while keeping what is liked about it intact.

    There is and never has been a better alternative in existence and not because they were first. Being first doesn't count for much if superior alternatives are discovered. MySpace users migrated to Facebook regardless of the fact they could not port their data onto that new platform. Since then, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest, and a host of others have popped up and are proof that by providing a database-based service in a format that is positively seen by users that they'll use that service.

    Other databases have failed or are now rarely used, at least in contrast to Discogs ; GEMM, MusicStack, CDandLP, etc. You can't barge into a market dominated by one player and present an inferior search engine and release layout but that's what keeps happening. The result is therefore predictable. Meanwhile, Discogs has over 443K users. I'm all for superior alternatives to appear as I have no vested interest in Discogs reigning supreme but since nobody has published something better, I thank my lucky stars it's there even in its current format.

    The nature of Discogs is such that the obsessive types and invariably control freaks will want to ensure things are framed in the way they wish them to be. Since it's near impossible to get consensus on anything, the way you picture it working would quite likely not be universally accepted as being wholly superior to the current version of the website.

    Next to all guidelines on the website could be taken apart and debated for months without an obvious solution supported by next to all. Since that is typical behavior when a bunch of people who all have their strong and different opinions on how things should be run congregate, I stay out of it as I find it not only terribly boring but a tremendous waste of time. There will always be those types. I've seen power-hungry moderators on msg boards, for instance. Those types are everywhere. I just shake my head, chuckle at the pettiness, and move on.

    In 2004, Discogs got over 15K contributors. I can only imagine the number they got last year. That amount of people editing and re-editing releases is bound to ruffle some people's feathers regardless of the intention behind it.
     
  17. Dave S

    Dave S Forum Resident

    There hasn't been any moderators since the mid '00s.
     
  18. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    That's what I've been led to believe. Until fairly recently, though, I thought it was just a marketplace. I dare say there are many people, buyers and sellers, who believe that. If you are looking to buy a particular hard to get album, and you trawl the internet for it, sooner or later you are likely to get a hit on Discogs. When you follow the link, that's what Discogs looks like - just a marketplace like Gumtree or eBay, except for music only.

    Maybe Discogs should put a bit more effort into changing the look of the site, describing how they started, and particularly pointing out to sellers how important it is to get all the details right, details that the seller may not even realise some buyers care about.
     
  19. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    I have never bought anything on impulse from Discogs. Anything I have bought from them has been the result of "I want this, I can't find it anywhere, I wonder if it's on Discogs?"

    Lest you think I am being smugly superior about this, I HAVE been guilty of impulse buying in the past, but not on Discogs.

    As for Discogs cleaning up their act when people stop buying - oh yeah, I can just see SHF members doing that. Tell me how it goes.
     
  20. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    As you point out, it is completely normal and predictable for developers on a project of this scope to encounter problems that they didn't anticipate when originally designing the database. This is a problem that software developers have been grappling with for as long as there has been software, and it's a problem that competent software developers have been solving for almost as long. Fixing the data-design problems that plague Discogs certainly won't be easy, but it's also very, very far from "near impossible". It's the sort of thing that experienced software developers deal with all the time.

    Dear God, they've actually been through one rewrite? That just shows how clueless the people in charge are.

    Yes, it's a big job, but again, it's far from impossible. They have developers on their staff. They have millions of dollars in annual revenue. They could fix this, if anybody in charge wanted to, but instead, they choose to have their developers spend their time working on projects like redesigning the "Collection" page (which everyone hates now) and adding an unusable "Tracks" feature that adds garbage data to the database every day.

    Why do you think Ebay is still the number one auction site when everyone hates it? Because they were first, they have the user base, and they have the listings. It's exactly the same with Discogs.


    Yes, well, that's exactly why you don't crowdsource your data-design decisions. You get a couple of power users and a couple of database programmers together and you hash out the details.

    None of this is mysterious or obscure. This is what competent software developers do every day. Discogs' owners could do this if they wanted to present a professional-quality piece of software to the world, but as long as people keep buying stuff in the Marketplace, they've got no incentive to.
     
  21. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    Officially 51 successful transactions of 51 total.
     
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  22. GentleSenator

    GentleSenator what if

    Location:
    Aloha, OR
    better start a positive discogs thread!
     
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  23. Peter_R

    Peter_R Maple Syrple Gort Staff

    Location:
    Montreal, Canada
    Folks, let's leave the bickering & personal attacks out of this, OK?

    Please focus on the discussion at hand.

    Please & thank you.
     
    Strat-Mangler likes this.
  24. LC2A3

    LC2A3 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    vancouver
    THe vinyl boom has definitely had a lot of negative effects in the marketplace...this being one of them.
     
  25. InStepWithTheStars

    InStepWithTheStars It's a miracle, let it alter you

    Location:
    North Carolina
    I've been really lucky that I've never had a truly bad Discogs experience. I had one product delivered which was wrong - and the only difference was the catalog number, the seller was more than likely using the barcode (which was identical) to find the listing. They apologized and refunded me fully, and let me keep the disc (which I later gave as a gift). On another occasion, a CD which was described as "near mint" had some water damage to the booklet. And most recently, one described as "perfect condition" had a hole through the UPC. Beyond that, though, no problems.

    That said, I almost exclusively buy CDs. I think I've only bought 5 records online, and only three through Discogs. One was an LP which the seller offered me a discount due to overgrading, one was an insanely rare 7" single which arrived perfectly, and one was a new/sealed 10" which also had no issues. Oh, and then 2 in a sealed multi-format box set, which I haven't played. So there's a decent chance I've only had good luck. LPs are definitely more difficult to ship, they're harder to differentiate than CDs, and buyers are usually much more specific.
     
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