Discogs - The Level Of (Passive) Aggression Gets Worse.

Is it just me....or is the level of aggression - passive or not - by group of 'favoured' members reaching new heights? Or is it 'lows'?

Inconsistent interpretations of their own rules, unwilling to accept anyone's opinion or information but their own, calling people names with moderator appeals being rejected only to subsequently find out that they are close friends with the culprits.

It remains the best cataloging website AFAIK but the community seems to now be largely controlled by what I can only describe as 'incels' = a term I hate but still seems fitting.

Does anyone else see this or is simply the musical genres I favour?

 

Some examples would help.

Like anywhere else, there are good users and bad users. It’s not a perfect site, but any time you get passionate and obstinate people in the same place, things always get heated.

 

as would some context. I don't really have any idea what the OP is getting at.

 

I have not made the same experience.

 

I would rather not list specific/named examples to avoid drawing more attention to some of them.

But, in general:

A listing I raised that was of a CDDP CD gifted by the product manager in charge of a release programme who I am unable to name or evidence cannot be classed as a 'demonstration' disc, a 'test' disc and all references to the CDDP nature have been stripped because it cannot be evidenced and is considered 'conjecture & word of mouth'. However, a) it cannot be proved to be untrue & b) the people involved have credited their own releases with unverifiable information.

In other examples, formats are randomly changed to suit the interfering person's personal whim & interpretation of the 'rules'. Even when rules are contradictory or vague the level of aggression increases.

Another example: a friend of mine who is somewhat to the right of the Autism spectrum and who can be pedantic as a result has been called a 'freak', '****ing mental' and a 'retard' by some of the aggressors. Reporting these comments has seen the complaint rejected and the privileges of victims removed.

 

No idea what you are talking about. I have sold thousands of items and bought hundreds. I like the site.
I would advise to avoid the discogs forum.

 

uh what

 

Nothing to do with buying or selling: I have very few issues with that: it generally works very well. My point concerns when you create a new or edit an existing release on the Discogs database.

 

ok that last one seems crazy and hard to even believe sorry

People always seem to have an axe to grind about discogs but I am a heavy user and just never have these problems…knock on wood
I am sure there might be some bad apples.. I only deal with people with 100% feedback and in 4400 sales I have 100% feedback with 5 neutral

 

ok sorry to hear

that’s unacceptable

my kids are on the spectrum so this hurts to read

 

Thanks - as previously mentioned, it isn't the buying or selling which is largely a good experience. Instead it is the overly parochial approach of some contributors who resort to trashing other people's views.

 

Mine two - plus my niece & nephews. I couldn't believe it when nothing was done.

 

As a buyer I've found that you can't trust the listings. I've had way better luck with eBay. Never visited the forums there. Had one jerk to deal with when editing a listing, but otherwise haven't had really any issues with that.

 

I only use Discogs as a catalog and sales/purchase platform. I don't consider it a community, so I don't find the community to be good or bad. In the cases where I've created listings, I have had people change/correct them, but those changes seemed to be honest and reasonable.

I do wish that all the zillions of slight variation listings would go away or get hidden, but that's a general platform issue, not one I attribute to particular individuals.

 

Agree with the OP that there is an underlying vibe of vitriol and holier-than-thou; nitpicking can get completely ridiculous. I've chickened out of Discogs once or twice simply because of the arrogance from a handful of people. At least as a contributor. As a buyer/seller I have luckily 99 % of the time met either cordial or sometimes downright appreciative people.

It comes and goes. By far and large nothing happens but if anybody goes out on a tangent because of a scan you made that was two degrees too askew or feel too superior to correct a simple typo you made six years ago - there's no time for that bollix.

 

Aside from staff, all other contributors are simply site members who can be wrong or right with their actions. If you think that you are being trolled, offended, abused, or simply that rules are not being respected, you can always file a support request. My advice is to not take anything personally.

However, if you contribute, you are required to give verifiable evidence, if its is not stated on the release itself. It doesn't matter if you are the best friend of the producer of the release, or the producer hinself.

And the rules are sometimes ridiculous.

 

I can only speak for my experience - I added a live CD/DVD a few months ago (which contained a track banding/mastering error, which I replicated) and got a whole bunch of unpleasant interactions from people that clearly take the site far too seriously and - even though they did not have the release - could not believe the banding was incorrect and it must have been my stupidity.

Since it was my first time listing, I don't bother anymore. If someone's first interaction is unpleasant, it's normally the last.

 

This hasn't always been my experience. I created a 180g release page for a Classic Records album I own and bought in the '90s. There weren't any other Classic Records releases for the album at the time. The next thing I know, someone changes it to 200g. Why? Because they think they know better, I guess. I know what I bought. But someone is too lazy to create their own page for their record.

 

I have never had any issues buying and selling on Discogs.

However I once went on one of the forums, I can’t remember which one, but I had an issue Discogs and asked for advice.

I am a very thick-skinned person and I love to have a bit of banter with friends but the reaction I got on this Discogs forum was unbelievable. I was told to f### off, called quite a few names and wondered what the hell I had gotten into, it was a bloody madhouse!

I was an electrical engineer in the coal mines and used to extreme language, often used by myself, it was give and take and a lot of great humour. This load of lunatic keyboard warriors on Discogs were demented and I wasn’t getting involved. I did wonder how the Discogs Admin let them get away with it and I can understand why the OP @Alone With Strangers started this thread.

 

There's a community on Discogs?

 

Why didn't you revert that totally incorrect change?

 

You mean a forum where people are allowed to create and edit minutiae has attracted folks with nit-picky and holier-than-thou attitudes? Who would have thought?

Back when I was entering my CD collection into Discogs, I came across some variants that weren't already there. So I made a good-faith effort to read the instructions and make entries as I thought were needed. Some were retained; some weren't; some modified, some left alone. And for one I actually got some kind of suspension from creating entries because I did something wrong.

My most immediate reaction to that one was that it wasn't justified, but I quickly developed an "Do I *really* give a f--- about this?" response. First of all, I think that - thankfully, IMO - someone was reviewing the user-generated entries with a fine-toothed comb, so it made me feel more secure about their database in general. Secondly, it meant that I could stop taking the time out to do extra work - I just made notes of the remaining CDs I had without entries and figured I'd just look again in a year or two and see if someone else made entries. And if not... who really cares, unless I want to sell them? Before I started entering my CDs on Discogs, I had nothing logged there. After doing so, I had everything logged there, minus a relative tiny handful . That was still a good thing, in my book.

In short, it surprises me none that there are favored individuals on Discogs who also happen to behave like a-holes. A simple way to to not let it bother is just don't get involved with creating entries. I really can't think of any in way in which my life is worse because I stopped taking the time to create Discogs entries.

 

i once had someone change a track listing of a disc I contributed to all caps because that is what shows on the back cover. My response was WTF. He or she changed it back.

 

I just don’t like the default “relevance” search…..it’s just dumb….just put everything in order by year it came out….

 

If you think the Discogs onsite forum is toxic; visit any of the Facebook pages dedicated to it.