Prog Archives History

Hey, i'm just curious about the history of this website and i'd be interested in hearing from some of the members and admins who have been here from the beginning.

First of all when did this site officially launch? Somewhere around 2004 i surmise.

Did you build the site before it was launched or was a team recruited on the site and then it simply grew?

Why did there used to be a top 500 album page but now only 250?

Are these things changeable? Like could we make a top 1000 album list for example?

Would be cool to get some stories about the trials and tribulations of building such an amazing database.

I've heard a story here and there but thought an actual thread would be interesting.

Yeah...not too many around from those really old days at this point. 

I can only guess at your first question (I believe the site started in 2003 and the forum came into existence in 2004) which doesn't really add much which is why I didn't say anything. I believe 'dude' was the first official member (beyond the founders, obviously). 

Upon further thinking, I can add that Heavy Prog, Eclectic Prog, and Crossover Prog were added when it was deemed 'Art rock' was getting too unwieldy (although I wasn't a collab at the time so I don't really know the particulars). Same deal with the three metal subgenres. IIRC, Phillipe wanted the Indo Prog/Raga Rock sub, again for a reason I don't know. There was some contentious debate about changing Italian Symphonic Prog to RPI, but clearly that change went through. (I think there was also contentious debate about ISP being a separate category at all, but that was well before my time.) Prog Related and Proto-Prog I believe also had some firm detractors, but I think the tightening of the reigns of admittance helped there. 

I remember a radical forum redesign at some point with separate subforums for each subgenre, which then changed to what we have now. It's sometimes fun to go through the waybackmachine and look at the site in it's infancy and various stages of growth. 

Another thing I recall is when you entered an album's page the band's discography would appear in the right side which was very useful, to bad this feature was dropped.

Hi,

I imagine that a "database" is not about a history at all ... it's just stuff and more stuff and more stuff, and then someone makes sure that this stuff is listed somewhere so it can be found.

It's not about "history" per se since no one is keeping tabs, although someone might be able to tell us when it started on a small hard drive on a 286, and finally became a behemoth ... and the number of bands, like the first bands added in and then the rest.

I think PA as it is today is cool, however, I'm starting to think that too many bands are being added because they sound like, and I'm not sure that they are being spun and heard properly to make a good definition, and then, the worse ... their next album is somewhere else because the previous one did not do so well, so progressive becomes metal ... or otherwise.

I think that if we had an alternative selection, instead of top of the pops, things might be more interesting ... like the admins/collaborators top 100 choices for "progressive" and these would be BANDS ... not albums, because too many bands have too many different things that would not even be considered at PA in general ... but they are here because that band had one album ... tatatata .... that kind of "duplication" is what I would like to see gone, however, a database is about DATA ... not people ... and therein lies the problem ... everyone's preference is in accordance with the database's simplest code possible, and not about anything else up to and including possibilities ... as such, databases are going to be interesting in a couple of years, when there is way too much nothing in them to be useful ... sort of like the Encyclopedia Britannica (or any other Encyclopedia) that ended up making itself useless because not only there was so much, it was only organized in one way that mixed everything and made it harder for you and I to find conclusive details about something or other. The same uselessness will befall a database, because the ability to lead it into a better organized process is not there.

In this sense, I guess that WIKI is doing this better, but PA is 10 years behind the time, I think when it comes to putting together useful and more complete information. I find it really sad that I can find more information about a band in WIKI than I can on PA ... because we're either lazy, or PA has not the better choice of Admins to help along. Admins that spend more time posting insults instead of cohesive and creative commentary, just shows the kind of "geek" that is not going to help PA grow very far ... and the database continues adding band after band, that does not help the "progressive" definition anything since most of them are just another cookie cutting band ... with very little originality done with it ... and it reminds me of Ian Anderson's comment on the interview with RW ... "everything that can be done in rock'n'roll has been done!" ... and here we are ... not knowing where to go and what to do ... as the man once said ... we've lost our father!

siLLy puPPy wrote: So when is that tired ass pic of Arjen Lucassen gonna change on the front page? Nothing against him. I love Ayreon. It's just time for a new photo of either him or someone else! How about a prog artist of the week wearing that totally fashionable T-shirt?

 

We have to get to them first. Is that shirt even still being made anymore?