We have some serious problems

This is an excellent website, but I have recently noticed some very serious problems, some of which need to be correctly immediately.

First of all, the Avant-prog, Krautrock and Canterbury descriptions are blatantly stolen from allmusic.com with no credit given whatsoever, as was that awful neo-prog definition before the neo-prog team finally got around to changing it. This is disgusting and completely unacceptable. It's bad enough to use allmusic's definitions (when, as a separate, resource we should have original content to provide people), but to plaigarize is just...I don't even know what you guys must have been thinking when you did that. In addition, someone should write something for the Post-rock description because it looks really weird when it's the only one that uses Wikipedia's entry. Really, we are the number one result for "prog," we should be able to have something up without having to use Wikipedia. There's some broken HTML in the spacerock description.

Secondly, some of the bios need to be cleaned up. As an objective resource, statements such as "there is often a gap of 5 years between each studio album, but they are always masterpieces", "you'd have to be primordial ooze not to think this is brilliant", or the breathless praise given to Neal Morse really should not be tolerated. What's possibly even worse are the bios that say "they remind me of Band X" or "I recommend album X" (I don't remember any specific examples of the latter at the moment) because besides that use of first person is unscholarly and unprofessional in a resource, the reader usually has no idea who is speaking since a lot of the bios are uncredited.

Lastly, I have no problem with the front page referencing micky and GR, but it's pretty damn stupid when the link goes to a thread in the collab zone that the vast majority of the visitors to this website are unable to see...
How do you think a new visitor is going to feel when he clicks that link the for first time and finds that he does not have permission to view it, even after he signs up for a forum account? What will he think that says about us and our website? Especially since he likely will not even know about the existence of the collab zone.

Edited for grammar and slight additions.

Edited by Ghandi 2 - April 18 2007 at 00:15

Those are all problems, that last one pisses me off the most though. I clicked it the verry first time I came to this site.

Actually, I recall the Spock's Beard biography being extremely biased.

Assuming you are right about the plagiarism (I don't have time to check it all out), then I agree with you 100%.

About the band biographies, the Tool and Thinking Plague ones are definitely too biased and even offensive in the case of the latter, but I don't see much wrong with the Neal Morse one. Yeah, it praises him too much, but unless I missed something egregious, it doesn't seem like it really requires editing.

About the wedding link, well, I agree that it just looks odd on the front page, particularly since clicking it brings the average person nowhere. It's just confusing to the average person who doesn't understand what amounts to an inside joke, and I agree that it should be taken off, but I don't think it's a huge deal.

Overall, good rant, you bring up some important points.



Edited by enteredwinter - April 18 2007 at 00:23

Just wondering - how do you know the descriptions were "stolen" from allmusic and not vice versa?

I agree about the micky and GR reference (sorry guys). I assume it's a temporary reference and will be removed eventually.

"What's possibly even worse are the bios that say "they remind me of Band X"

TheProgtologist wrote: "What's possibly even worse are the bios that say "they remind me of Band X"   Just to clarify something,one of the requirements when writing a bio for a band is that we mention bands that have a similar style.

perhaps the statement could be rephrased to something that doesn't look like personal point of view. something like 'this band has similar sound/style with...' or such

I thought the wedding link was funny

Some good points here Ghandi.

Maybe some extra help is need? Eh? Do you collaborators need another one? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, know what I mean, know what I mean

As Assaf said, we plan to rewrite the RIO/Avant-prog bio eventually.  I have been busy this week, but I'll have a look at it and see if I can write a draft.

Again, as Assaf said, be patient, things will be put right eventually.