What are your Discogs pet peeves?

What are some of those changes they might make?

 

I've had a slowdown in Discogs sales the last 4-5 days. Must be that summertime and getting outside is needed at this time. The usual summer slowdown, and it should pick up again in the fall as it usually does.

 

• Not being able to filter for-sale listings by country of origin, but I can filter by "genre" when I'm scrolling through several dozen copies of the same album.
• Not being able to filter by multiple values (e.g. "VG+ or NM" or "LP and Mono").
• Having to enter multiple pressings to my wishlist one-at-a-time because the only other option is to add every single version in every format that was ever released in any country.
• Getting search results that consist of a dozen listings with no visible differences, so you have to click into each one.
• The huge amount of duplicates and inaccurate or ambiguous/unverifiable data in the database.

 

The staff member wasn't specific unfortunately. They just wrote that they are making some changes that users have requested.

 

Many folks would want to enter / add just a few certain pressings to their want lists and not any others. Most people want a LP from a certain country, and maybe an original or the second run that is virtually an original without a poster, etc. I don't see it is as a drawback to get you just exactly the few issues you really are interested in.

 

Guess I'll add a new pet peeve. Made an offer on an item in Discogs. The seller refused the offer and then modified his listing so no offers can be submitted. My guess is when he listed the item, his price wasn't that great but there are currently only 4 other sellers offering the exact same pressing at similar prices so when he checked and saw there wasn't a huge discrepancy, he performed those adjustments.

Not a big deal in the end but seems kind of petty considering my offer was a mere $5 lower than his price.

 

1. When you say "country of origin", do you mean by where the pressing was manufactured or where the sellers are located?

2. Nothing can be done about Mono but if you use the Discogs Enhancer plugin a generous member created for Chrome, you can do just that. I set mine to NM so that I only see NM and M when listings are shown. No need to use the filter in the left column. Highly recommended.

3. Guessing you're suggesting having checkmarks next to each one so you can enter them in a batch?

4. Wonder what you mean there. Have you used the Advanced Search function?

5. That is the nature of user-submitted databases which is the same complaint made about Wikipedia, for instance. You are not paying for the accuracy of the info in the database. It is provided to you for free. Some are thorough users who knows what they're doing while others aren't. Par for the course. Feel free to identify and address inaccuracies you spot. I've done so myself a few times.

 

Be weary of the guy going by Rarecdman. My friend got scammed by him.

 

Why do you assume that it's only a "few" issues? Let's say I want an LP copy of Close to the Edge that was pressed in the US in the 70s... I have go through 20+ different "Releases" and select them all individually. Are there really a lot of collectors who only want a Monarch pressing and not a Pitman pressing? Even if I restrict it to 1972, that's still 17 different "Releases". And then if someone adds a new "Release" later, it won't be on my wantlist, and I probably won't even know that it exists.

 

Even as a buyer this seller is not great lol

 

I guess he didn't use PayPal?

 

The first thing I do when looking at Discogs for sale listings is use the "Ships from" filter on the left to restrict it to US only. Same as on eBay. I can't afford international postage.

 

Where the seller is located. The mobile app allows this but the desktop app doesn't.

That wouldn't hurt, but the smart way to do it would be to give users the ability to enter selection criteria in their wantlist rather than specific issues, e.g., to use my example from above "LP copy of Close to the Edge pressed in 1972". Like a "saved search" in Ebay rather than just a list of specific "Releases".

This is what I mean... let's say I go to the Master Release for Close to the Edge and click "Find My Version". If I look for catalog number "SD 7244", pressed in 1972, I get 16 different results. Some of them say "Club Edition" or "promo" but most of them look like this:

With nothing to indicate what (if anything) distinguishes each from the others. To figure out which version I have, I have to click into each entry, often clicking from there into the individual images, and even then it's hit-or-miss (depending on the album) whether I'll actually be able to definitively identify the version I have.

There's no comparison between Wikipedia (which is actively curated and generally accurate) and the mess that is Discogs' data. If I go to some band's discography on Wikipedia, I'm not going to see radio promo discs and bootlegs included with their studio albums because some random user decided that was appropriate one day.

 

That filter doesn't exist on the desktop app. I usually filter by currency, but you still get a lot of foreign sellers who use US dollars.

 

I just counted only 7 different pressings from 1972 once I eliminated all Record Club and promo pressings (and other countries of course). So yep this is an unusually large number of pressings to weed through, but I'd consider that a good thing because it means your chances of landing a NM or M copy in greater.

Originals of this album are not that expensive due to it's high number of pressings and sales. Look for textured cover, green inner, and a nearly unplayed, and be willing to drop $15 plus $4 for ship.

 

I just looked at his history. Looks like he got worse over the last 7 months and just started trying to hold onto people's money without sending the records. Then hoped the PayPal complaints would not catch up to him. He currently has nothing listed for sale. So it might be all over for him. And he did buy and never pay server times. Scummy.

 

Using your analogy, you should be annoyed with wikipedia for having too much information about a band in general then..."why did they list all the members of the band, past and present and not just the present members?"...is basically what you are saying.

The whole point of the database is to list records, official and otherwise. Those radio promos and bootlegs are suppose to be listed just like the information pertinent to a band would be in Wikipedia whether you are interested in that information or not.

The database isn't really sophisticated enough to do much of what you are asking and I do get your point. Try finding your version of Dark Side of the Moon! Even if it was sophisticated enough, if the data is not submitted, you can't filter on it anyway.

I think just by monitoring sellers submissions they'd be able to clean up a fair bit of the nonsense. A lot of the "errors" I find are deliberate ones made by sellers. I remember one seller was replacing photos with his actual items and then pointing out that his items were the ones pictured, he especially liked doing that with autographed records he was selling. If it were my site, any seller doing that would be given one warning and then banned if it happened again.

 

Never used the mobile app as I personally find it's a clumsy way to navigate through a huge discography but it's interesting that this is offered through one but not the other. Thanks for letting me know about this.

Discogs Enhancer can allow you to blacklist certain countries so you never see listings from sellers located in those locations. Something to think about.

The two obviously are constructed in very different ways and there are certainly plenty of advantages to both platforms but it's unfortunately impossible to pick as if it's a buffet all of the advantages of both. I wouldn't even call it a deficiency in this case ; merely the way each platform opted to operate. eBay is great if not specific pressings are wanted and Discogs is great if there's a specific one you want. I do business on both.

I see, now. You can filter through label on the left pane. Otherwise, I don't exactly know what you'd like to see displayed on that screen.

Everybody likes to complain but few have solutions. Though I understand your frustration, you should come from the perspective that we're lucky to have Discogs at all. What's the alternative? Let's say it's wiped off the face of the earth tomorrow. What then?

It's a huge database impossible to manage for even 100 people doing the job simultaneously and it's a community-driven database. You'll just have to accept that it is imperfect and live with it, same as I do. If you have a better idea or feel you could implement this better, no one is stopping you from creating your own Discogs alternative but I can't see that happening due to the massive scope of such an undertaking. Moreover, everybody has different opinions on what should be done and how. No matter what is done, there will always be someone who isn't thrilled. As someone who works with the public, I can assure you that it is commonplace to have people believe that even their very specific (and occasionally unique) wants are very important and shared by many when it is not always the case.

 

It exists when you look at Discogs on a desktop with a browser. I don't know what the desktop app is, or why I would use it if it doesn't work right.

 

That's not an "unusually" large number for a popular rock album, in my experience. And I'm not sure how that's supposed to increase my chances of landing a NM copy. The same number of copies are out there, offered for sale, regardless of whether they're listed under one "Release" or seven.

Thanks, but I already own two copies of this LP. I was just using it as an example.

 

Obviously they should be in the database, but they shouldn't appear in the main list of 'Albums' in the discography page. The problem is that (as always), Discogs' guidelines for what constitutes an "Album" are vague, subject to multiple interpretations, dependent on external information that is rarely available to someone entering an album, and unrelated to what anyone in the real world calls an "Album".

If you think it works great, fine, but when I want to see a canonical list of an artist's "studio albums", I go to Wikipedia, not Discogs, which, IMO, represents a major failure on Discogs' part, given that that's one of their primary reasons for existing.

Exactly. But there's no reason why it shouldn't. It ain't rocket science.

 

Yes, this is a thread for complaints.

 

Disappointing that this is all you could come up with.

 

Perfect. In that case, it should be a piece of cake for you to set that up for them. Look forward to the results.

 

Ah, you know what, I just found it, way down at the bottom, under "More Filters." Thanks.

Why that's given less prominence than, say, "Genre" (when I'm searching for a single album) is another mystery.