Guidelines

jimbobhickville

Tyrant in Distress
A few things I feel the need to re-emphasize or make a note of for the first time.

1. Fill in track lengths. If you can find them, fill them in. I know I have some left to do, as do most of you. It's the most tedious part of the site, but it's a useful feature for the visitors.

2. A, An, and The go at the end of the name. No longer true, just make sure the 'Alphabetical name' doesn't contain articles like A, An, or The (or equivalent in other languages, like Die in German, etc). Please leave the Name field exactly how the band name should be spelled.

3. Look to see if the musician is in the list before making a new one. It's easy to do on the lineup editor. Just put in a first name and or last name and hit the enter key (or click 'Search'). The list will be populated with possible matches. I suppose I should add some sort of preview option that lets you tell who each one is, just in case it might not be the same person. I'll put that on the list for future enhancements.

4. Don't go overboard on genres. One disc in particular was a technical death album labeled as technical black death thrash. Most of you have been fine about this, but if you're putting tons of genres on everything, please try to narrow it down if you can.

5. Utilize the time-saving features when possible. The CDDB Lookup feature is pretty slick. If you can think of other ways to make things easier or more automated, let me know.

6. Multi-disc albums. This is easier to do now on the album edit page. Just click 'Add Disc' and fill in the necessary info. In the CDDB Lookup screen, you can put disc numbers in and so long as the disc titles match, it will automatically combine them for you.

7. Albums without a label. The label "Independent" is for those type of releases. I've noticed some people leave it blank and others add new labels (such as "No Label"), but the proper one is "Independent". This should also be used if the label releasing the album is just the band's own label (sometimes they come up with a name).

That's all I can think of at this point that I've noticed. Sorry to be nitpicky and all, but the rules are there for consistency throughout the site.
 
9. Multiple bands with the same name. If there are two bands that have the same name, differentiate them by specifying a 3 letter country abbreviation or 2 letter state abbrevation in parentheses after the band name. For example, Alchemist (AUS) and Alchemist (WI) differentiate between Alchemist from Australia and Alchemist from Wisconsin. I'd like to eventually remove this dependency and have the site automatically detect such things, but it isn't gonna happen anytime soon.

10. Cover images. If you can't find images, please ask for help. I'm pretty good at digging them up online or someone might have it and be willing to scan for you. We want every album possible to have a cover image in its entry.

11. Bands that haven't recorded. If they have a release and you just can't find enough info to add it, then I can make an exception, but don't add bands that haven't yet recorded anything. I deleted several that were added before.
 
12. Bootlegs: As a general rule, I'd skip them. If we're to include them for one band, it would make sense to include them for everyone, and if we do that, where do we draw the line? Metallica, for example, have hundreds of bootlegs, many of which are the same with just varied tracklistings or different names, and they aren't the only ones. So I'd prefer they were left out.
 
13. Re-releases and reissues: Meant to include this one before. Generally, don't include re-releases or reissues in the discography. I'd prefer it if the details of a re-release are added into the original release's information, for example, putting a note in the "Opinion" field about any added tracks and what year the album was re-released/reissued. If the cover is different, you can add the new cover alongside the original. When you open the album entry, you will see both covers.

14. Re-recorded albums: Occasionally a band will re-record an earlier album, eg. Dimmu Borgir's "Stormblast" or Dungeon's "Resurrection". As these are technically new albums, these should be included in the discography.