What are your Discogs pet peeves?

Oh, I could come up with more complaints, if that's what's bothering you. I've been restricting myself to pet peeves involving the actual application design, and not even considering the toxic user culture that exists over there.

 

Thanks, but I already have a job. If they're hiring, and can beat my current salary, I might consider it.

 

I'm sure you could. After my longish message, if all you could conjure up is that this a complaints thread, there's not much context that you're allowing for discussion so that ends that.

Since you think so highly of yourself and how simple you judge the job to be, they'd be lucky to have you. A shame out of the millions of competent database managers and programmers that not a single one was able to figure this out but you... and without any access to their code, either. I tip my hat off to you and invite you to contact them, pronto!

 

I dunno... I'd go back to collecting records and CDs the way I did for ~40 years prior to my discovery of Discogs? It wouldn't really affect my life that much one way or the other, except that I might spend a little less money on mailorder.

And yet Wikipedia is a community-driven database that is both larger than Discogs and far more successful in presenting clear, accurate and authoritative information, in the majority of cases. It can be done.

In case you haven't noticed, I am a Discogs user, and I do live with it. I don't have to love it though, and I don't have to make excuses to justify its shortcomings, certainly not in a thread about "pet peeves."

I do have a lot of specific ideas for how Discogs could improve their data and application, based on my 30 years as a software developer and 40+ years as a record collector, musician and occasional producer, but you're absolutely correct that it would be a crazy idea for me (or anyone else) to try to build a new, improved version of Discogs from scratch, because of the massive scope.

Discogs already has the database, and they have an application that's reasonably good at some of the things it sets out to accomplish. With a smart team of experienced software developers, they could turn it into a brilliant application that's orders of magnitude better than it is now (in terms of ease of use, accuracy of information, etc.). But the owners obviously aren't willing to put in that kind of money because it wouldn't result in a similarly large increase in revenue from the marketplace, so, here we are.

This is a false dilemma. I'm not under any illusions that it would be possible to "thrill" everybody who ever uses Discogs, but there are plenty of industry-standard approaches to data design, UX/UI, and, I presume, application architecture that could turn Discogs from a slightly souped-up hobbyist website into the professional-quality commercial website they apparently aim to become. But it wouldn't be cheap.

 

Again, I already have a job. And I'm nobody special. Anybody with a similar level of experience would undoubtedly come up with a similar list of obvious improvements that could be made. If the owners of Discogs actually wanted to improve the database part of the website, it wouldn't be difficult, but it would cost money.

 

If you don't care about specific pressings, it would definitely affect you. Otherwise, I agree it likely wouldn't.

Wikipedia is routinely mocked for being inaccurate. Info is also out of date in a lot of cases. Again, the scope in maintaining and overseeing something this big is frankly a losing battle. Some things can only be accepted.

 

Yes, but (a) that's based on public perception, which doesn't always align with reality, and (b) it's still way, way more accurate and reliable than Discogs.

Discogs is not a particularly large database extremely small by professional standards (less than 13 million Releases by 7 million artists).

It's not the volume of data involved, but rather, the way the data is defined, collected and presented that makes it a losing battle in this particular case.

 

My most recent pet peeve is that (as far as I can tell) there's no search by seller. I was trying to see if one of my local stores had anything new listed and couldn't figure out how to do so.

 

Go to marketplace -> All Items and there's a seller search way down at the bottom on the left.

 

LOL I just tried that out and it presents a list of sellers rather than a search field. Functional!

Nonetheless, you can still find what you're looking for if you know the username of the seller but it's kind of a kludge. You're probably better off searching on google (for the seller's name) and using site:discogs.com to restrict search results to Discogs.

 

Yes, and only the top 30 or so, ordered by number of items listed.

 

In any case, the link to a seller's profile is: https://www.discogs.com/seller/#########/profile, where you replace the # symbols with the seller's username. I don't know of an easy way to to get to a particular seller through the user interface.

 

He did. He should be able to get his money back.

 

it absolutely baffles me that there are so many sellers that submit scores of half-baked entries en masse just so they can quickly sell their wares. seriously, how hard is it to see that the more accurate the data, the more satisfied the customer in the long run? and i'm not just talking about picky audiophile customers either.

 

They don't do as well as sellers as the ones with more detailed listing or the more helpful info. There has to be the lower-level dealers so that the better ones stand out.

eBay has those sellers that just list their item as used, or good condition and nothing else. Sometimes a picture. I've actually made a few great scores buying from incomplete listings of LPs. Spelling errors can be a very good thing for a buyer at times as well.

 

Some eBay sellers are worse. How many times in the last few months have I seen "Condition : used" for a record? Boy, is that ever the absolute most pointless sentence.

 

There appears to be a proliferation of those type of listing recently. Maybe I'm just noticing them now, but it sure feels like that.

 

Its probably so the buyer can't dispute the grading since there is none. But how many buyers will bite on an ad like this?

 

The seller, particularly the vinyl sellers, now include a lot of people who know absolutely nothing about music or vinyl, and they are just on the latest gravy train.

They go to Goodwill, look up titles online, and buy the stuff they think is worth something. Then they plop it on eBay and hope for the best. They couldn't grade properly if their life depended upon it. They don't know the difference between a promo and stock copy, or a reissue and an original. It's all cans of peas to them.

And so they dump it on eBay and hope some sucker buys.

 

I just received a box set off of Ebay today that was marked "Condition: Used". The box is beat-up but the records look unplayed.

 

For records listed on Ebay, for some reason there is "Condition" and there is "Record Grading". When I list a record on Ebay, for "Condition" the only options I am given are 'New' or 'Used'. Because all my items are used, and because I am required to choose one of the two, my only option is to select 'Used'. This is what appears on the item page above the price. Listers can then write a "Condition Description" which then appears on the listing in quotation marks under the "Condition". This is not a requirement, and many sellers leave this blank. (For a 45, I might write, "Record plays VG+. Writing on label.") Listers can then indicate a "Record Grading" (this is not mandatory), which then appears under "Item Specifics", for which Ebay gives listers options such as NM or VG+ etc, or listers can write anything they want.

 

sellers who wrap your records in shrink wrap/cling film/whatever you want to call it.
it's a pita to remove

 

??? Sales tax is unfortunately there. How is this a discog issue? The only option is for individual sellers to figure out what tax is owed. Amazon fought this for years. And lost. Buy or don’t buy. Your choice.

 

VG+ records are 75% VG-.

 

Sellers constantly spam relisting the same damn albums over and over and over and over again day after day. Usually they'll be sellers I wouldn't want to buy from in the first place due to bad feedback or bad past experiences, but then my daily message for items in my want list being listed for sale is just full of this crap. Makes those messages worthless when they can actually be quite useful if you're trying to grab some sought after records quickly before others get to them.

Oh, and the overgrading. Easily 60-70%, probably more of the used VG+ records I've bought on discogs over the past 5 years are G+ due to groove wear, or maybe low VG. I send back almost as much as I buy.