(Below proposal originated in this thread: tarantoga to start a separate discussion)
I have read on several threads that Discogs management is increasingly moving towards the idea that the Discogs community themselves should be in charge of how the Guidelines should be shaped. Management has repeatedly mentioned that for changes there should be consensus but sadly there are no real tools available to provide transparency on the decision making process or to actually measure what the consensus is.
If the community is to guide the structure of the database and the way it is meant to be used as layed out in the Guidelines then first we urgently need to get some structure in place for the following:
1. to request an addition to or change of Guidelines a vote has to be proposed by a member of the Discogs community and that member in itself has to have voting rights. That proposal has to be undersigned by an additional number (to be determined) of Discogs community . The proposal should clearly lay out what exactly is proposed, its repercussions for the current entries in the database and what exact changes need to be made to the guidelines.
2. once that has been achieved an official Voting Procedure on this change is started and an invitation must be send to ALL Discogs . This invitation should be something no one can opt-out from in their settings. Also, the full proposal text should be quoted in the invitation so there is no extra step involved in reading the proposed change.
3. Voting Procedure should last for at least 30 days but maybe even 60 days would / could be preferable. That leaves ample time for the proposer / undersignees to campaign for the change.
4. I think a threshold requiring a minimum number of votes should be in place but for the rest it would be the majority vote 'wins'.
5. If a proposal doesn't make it there should be a provision in place that a similar proposal can't be made within 12 months of the previous proposal.
I like ChrisEfterklang's proposals very much.
I would change at least one detail though:
ChrisEfterklang
2. once that has been achieved an official Voting Procedure on this change is started and an invitation must be send to ALL Discogs .
I think only voters should be able to participate in such a voting system. This will still be a more than large enough number of s. Not to discriminate the non-voting s, but voters usually have more experience and should be better able to judge the issue at hand.
ChrisEfterklang
1. to request an addition to or change of Guidelines a vote has to be proposed by a member of the Discogs community and that member in itself has to have voting rights.
Are the insights from none voters regarding the guidelines not as valid?
ChrisEfterklang
2. once that has been achieved an official Voting Procedure on this change is started and an invitation must be send to ALL Discogs .
As above, the 'none voter's' can vote on proposed changes..... but can't propose change?
ChrisEfterklang
This invitation should be something no one can opt-out from in their settings.
What about those s who simply don't care about or wish to take part in the process?
ChrisEfterklang
5. If a proposal doesn't make it there should be a provision in place that a similar proposal can't be made within 12 months of the previous proposal.
I can see where your coming from.
This would prevent repeated annoying requests for the same idea.
What would happen however if 'new evidence' comes to light which suddenly makes a recent proposal, which was voted down, make sense within your 12 month window?
The_Beatles.
Are the insights from none voters regarding the guidelines not as valid?
The_Beatles.
As above, the 'none voter's' can vote on proposed changes..... but can't propose change?
You have a very valid point and I actually agree with you on that point. Maybe we could change it that the proposer doesn't need voting rights but the undersignees do? What I am thinking of is to have some kind of vetting process going to sharpen up the proposal so we have a good solid thing to work with. I am thinking that the first stage of this whole process should be an open discussion.
The_Beatles.
What about those s who simply don't care about or wish to take part in the process?
(FYI: here in the Netherlands you don't have to to vote, once you reached the age 18 you automatically get a voting send to you when there are elections, national or local)
One click and that invitation is gone. But they can never say that they didn't know about a certain change to the guidelines, just like you can't say you don't like the president that has been chosen because when you didn't vote. (P.S. I am not trying to make a political statement here)
The_Beatles.
What would happen however if 'new evidence' comes to light which suddenly makes a recent proposal, which was voted down, make sense within your 12 month window?
In that case I would say that it is up to the discretion of the Discogs management.
I like it. Seen a few guidelines that need sharpened/clarified that got stuck in the forums.
PS. Would like to know why they (discogs) stopped this procedure? Anyone know?
TopCats45s
Seen a few guidelines that need sharpened/clarified that got stuck in the forums.
Before starting to discuss this in detail, I'd like to have a stated green light from management.
We would have to know first if the results of any such discussions could actually change the guidelines.
Right now, we are not authorized to do that.
It would certainly be interesting to see if we could finetune some of our beloved RSG.
We first need to know that the procedure outlined in my first post is something Discogs management sees as something worthy of implementing. I bet that are a whole bunch of technical issues to solve to get this up and running and only then we have something to start working on the actual guidelines.
ChrisEfterklang
We first need to know that the procedure outlined in my first post is something Discogs management sees as something worthy of implementing.
TopCats45s
Seen a few guidelines that need sharpened/clarified that got stuck in the forums.
Indeed, I've been involved in such discussions myself, spending hours and hours, days, weeks and months on a topic only to find it leads nowhere, even though persons like nik was involved. If there was a way to actually get those proposals to updates of obviously flawed guidelines through, I'd certainly it.
electronic_beat
They should also implement a separate procedure to update the guidelines (since that involves no engineering effort - just broad community consensus). Something similar to a git pull request, so that instead of s bickering back and forth, each could write a patch and have it accepted or denied by Staff (and forked and improved by other s until it gets accepted).
marcelrecords
Before starting to discuss this in detail, I'd like to have a stated green light from management.
We would have to know first if the results of any such discussions could actually change the guidelines.
Thanks ChrisEfterklang for starting this thread.
I like the general direction of the proposal.
I wouldn't forbid discussing a certain thing again, but maybe add some more hurdles. Otherwise errors couldn't get corected when new evidence comes to light. But it shouldn't be a back and forth all the time.
Earjerk...
We would have to know first if the results of any such discussions could actually change the guidelines.
There are some parts of discogs that are easy to change. Guidelines, artist credits, possibly more.. Other parts are difficult to change as it requires development work. (voting system, company credits, LNV etc).
It will probably make sense to focus on the former first as then a community decision could easily be done without much effort/cost/money by staff .
Discussion regarding the not so easy to change things should also be possible but would result in a feature request, or wishlist by the community.
If any such separation is used, staff will have to lay out what parts are easily changed and what isn't.
^^ yes, this discussion is just focussing on getting a fair, able system in place through which the community can shape the guidelines that are currently in place governing the use of the database.
Sadly, so far no response from Discogs management wether this is something that might get the from them. Actually, I can't see why they wouldn't it. If not they really should become more hands-on again on this subject.
Ok, cool to know that my bit of work so far hasn't totally gone unnoticed. FYI, I am in it for the long haul as I really feel we need a solid system in place to govern the guidelines.
Diognes_The_Fox
What I am basically looking at for a guideline update thread:
1) First post in the thread shows the old guidelines and the new proposed ones with links to relevant examples.
2) Allow a period of a week or two to allow people to voice positions on the subject matter.
3) Allow another period of a week or two to allow people to vote yay or nay on the proposal, taking into consideration comments.
4) If an agreed upon percentage is met (80%?), staff is notified and the guidelines updated as necessary.
Another leg of this process is to break forum decisions out of the forums and document them in an organized manner in Reference. I think this would eliminate some of our collective frustrations and help standardize best practices. I intend to get that project started next week, workload pending.
This project is high on my radar and I think it needs to be attacked from a few different angles. Some of it is finding out what problems absolutely require staff interaction and which ones can be solved autonomously and what needs to be done to iron out those processes to make it easier on everyone involved.
It's a weird situation for me personally because I'm also a heavy contributor here and there's nothing I want more than to show off at every possibly situation.
Ultimately, though, my knowledge becomes extremely sketchy outside of my areas of expertise and it really shouldn't be expected of myself or other staff to be able to match the level of experience and knowledge that some of you bring to the table. Even among the threads I can address and work with, there are also often more than possible to address reasonably by one person. This should not be a roadblock to being able to grow the database, which is why I'm pushing towards standardization / automation of the process.
Here's the link to the project to document existing forum decisions in a central location to reduce the potential need for redundant threads / arguments due to poorly documented situations: https://www.discogs.sie.com/forum/thread/722072
This is an interesting proposal. I enjoy this website, and the open source principle where new s (like me) can make changes, although this means a few bad apples can sometimes cause chaos, but only to individual releases (and collateral artist pages).
For guidelines, I don't think they should be given over to democratic control. Democracy, as UK and US s will be fully aware in 2016, can lead to some weird ends. Majoritarianism isn't always just. Having forums to campaign for changes is very good - and even voting to clarify weight of opinion - but I think the decisions should be left to staff. Having a few staff with a godlike power over the database is a good idea, ordering chaos, enforcing control, and curtailing squabbles.
in.spirit
Having a few staff with a godlike power over the database is a good idea, ordering chaos, enforcing control, and curtailing squabbles.
Problem is that Discogs staff has been retreating from governing the guidelines for the database and has mentioned that this governing should be taken up by the community. But sadly they seem to have no interest in actually setting up something so that the community can actually do that in an open and transparent way.
ChrisEfterklang
Discogs staff [...] mentioned that this governing should be taken up by the community. [...] setting up something so that the community can actually do that in an open and transparent way.
My fear is that opening guidelines up to all s would lead to an ever increasing complexity, and a change of ethos from guideline to rule. The extant guidelines are relatively simple, but still took me ages to get to grips with. Some ambiguity must always remain, with the infinite diversity of releases.
There are some internecine squabbles on the database (e.g. argument about classical composers as artists). If all s are invited to amend guidelines, would you not end up with factions making tit-for-tat changes?
If management want the community to oversee guidelines, I would advocate restricting this to an appointed board: a small number of interested s, maybe selected from the top 1000 contributors. They could represent both collectors and sellers, with interests in a diversity of genres. The whole community could be consulted through forums and polling.
But maybe the guidelines work okay as they are. How many bad entries are there? Anecdotally, as I add my collection, less than 1% of the releases I encounter are completely horrible. When encounter 'bad' contributors who won't change their ways, they can be reported for CIP.
Diognes_The_Fox
I'd like to consider adding forum guidelines for resolving more debated threads through voting. I want the database process to be as democratic as possible. For example, amending guidelines would require X votes, and Y percent of those votes required for something to . Once the community es something, staff can amend the guidelines or whatever is needed by you all.
I don't think the guidelines are the problem. Guidelines - to be useable and cover all releases - must remain ambiguous. The problem, and the frustration in resolving issues is in the forums. I would suggest tackling issues on a release by release basis:
- Discuss a single specific release in a single forum thread
- Keep on topic, no hijacking, no spiralling discussions
- Hijacking to be flagged (change of title [hijacked] by OP) and reported / punished
- Debate the release, poll within the thread, change the release (tit-for-tat reversions reported)
- Don't beg for staff rulings all the time, it's not sustainable in a growing database
- Don't insist on resolving a general issue, fix the single release
- When a specific release thread suggests a general principle / issue, start a separate 'issue' thread
- If an 'issue' thread highlights a (rare) guideline problem put it in a guideline thread
Discrete guideline threads - one for each guideline section - could be created as stickys. They could stay open permanently, to make cases for change (with examples). Being limited in number, these could be monitored and considered by staff. If it looked like a change was useful, and there was some consensus, a poll could be taken.
If you turn the guidelines into rules you'll get more people enforcing weird changes (e.g. people who insist on putting weird blobs and squiggles as ers, because it's 'as per release'). Right, I'll shut up now, and try not to bang on again in this thread.
