When Were You NOT Corrupted by PA?

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   The PA database is a resource to use. How you use what you take from it is entirely up to you. 

The subgenres and categories are just to make it simpler to navigate, they make finding the one needle in the haystack of 38,000 albums 20 times easier to find (or some such made-up number). The genre descriptions are just there to guide you on your way, they are not the definitive history or any attempt to being anything grander than a brief summary based upon some of the bands that made that style of music or there abouts, they certainly are not an opinion, a critique or a commentary.

While may we choose collaborators because of their knowledge, that is not the deciding factor - nor is it something we can judge beforehand - there is no entrance examination where applicants must score >70% on their progknowledge skills - enthusiasm and the ability to work in a team count - mavericks and lone-walkers need not apply. Sorry, but that's the way it has to be on a collaboration site.

The genre descriptions and the artist biographies are thumbnails and not intended to be anything more than that and the discographies are as accurate as those who contribute to them can make them - we permit anyone to add a missing album and (while the backroom boys may huff and puff over data-standards) we don't really get that upset over the occasional mistake in the track-listing or anything. Those in themselves, while being as factual as we can make them, are neither the be all and end all of the PA, nor are they le raison d'être for the site. We are not the discogs.com or the gracenote.com of Prog - we may like to be but we don't have the resources.

What the PA is not is an encyclopedia. And it really doesn't need to be one. Wikipedia does that, for better or worse. 

If you want a history, read a book; if you want a narrative, read a book; if you want a critique or a commentary, read a book  - the PA is none of those things. And it really doesn't need to be any of them.

What makes the site are the things that anyone can contribute - the reviews, the interviews, the threads in the forum and all the polls, posts, comments and opinions in those threads - all of that with the minimum of editorial control, direction or interference. They are the raison d'être and they are why we're here, if that is our corruption then so be it. The PA is not what a few selected people dares to write, it is what anyone and everyone cares to write.

And none of that "belongs" to anyone person or group of people - not to Max, the Admins and Collabs - no cliques nor cadres or cabals - it belongs to the people who contributed it. It's their PA. 

Any corruptive influence they brought with them.

I'm wrong occasionally, but not today.

Edited by Dean - October 21 2012 at 18:14