Best Ever Albums

Re: Future album three month limit

albummaster — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 03:04:52 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 10/14/2025 07:04

Rhyner wrote:

albummaster, you've reiterated multiple times that BEA is not intended to be a comprehensive database of all albums. Discogs and RYM exist already, after all. This is a site for ranking albums in charts. If an album is never ranked in a chart, what's the point of it being on the site?

The fact an album has been added at all, means it's already in a chart (and others here have already said they don't want their albums being deleted), so whose albums shall we delete?

We've had thorough debates in the past (very interesting discussion where a lot of current policy was decided) and will continue to do so (this present discussion is very useful in that regard).

The site has had a 90 day policy for over a decade (which has mostly been working fine accepting the huge load) but only in the past few days is one person questioning it. I thought we'd reached a conclusion a few posts posts ago, where we spoke about the suspect period in addition to the 90 days period, which I thought people were content with (it's how the site has functioned for a long time and the site has always been a bit lenient with future releases if they are a few days over (coincidentally, linked album also an example of where a title was changed prior to the release date, demonstrating there is data maintenance of future releases).

Rhyner wrote:

But regardless of your ultimate decision on whether to delete albums with no activity, I still think data moderators should not feel compelled to spend hours tidying up and making presentable albums that will ultimately fade into complete obscurity.

There's no need for anybody to feel like they have to do everything (no matter how amazing their contribution). I've been in that position before (it's how the data on the site got seeded for the first six years before the admin pages were created and then opened up after thousands of albums had already been added). It's a struggle when you're the only person, which is why data admin tools were added in the first place, but there's a collective of people here, and it's the collective that can help (if they want to get involved), and that goes for all aspects of the site and not just data admin.

Rhyner wrote:

The solution could be as simple as redoing the "Newly Added Albums" page to hide--well, not exactly hide, but make harder to find--albums that have a high likelihood of never really deserving to have their data fully moderated. Maybe such albums (unreleased albums, and released albums on no points-bearing charts) would only be findable on the "Newly Added Albums" page under a tab on the "View albums" drop-down menu that only appears to level 8 members, and maybe only in red font or something, to indicate that there's no expectation for anyone to bother moderating them until they're actually ranked on a chart. You could also add an obvious warning on the admin page for these albums that says something along the same lines. (Eg. "Warning, this album has no chart points! If you want to moderate the data on this album, consider ranking it on one of your year, decade, or all-time charts first. You are not expected to do data moderation work that may ultimately be in vain.")
..
I still think albums that get added to the database and then are ignored for the rest of time could be deleted without causing any issues. You could even make the rule ridiculously forgiving, something like "If an album is in no points-bearing charts and has seen no rating or chart activity for five years, it gets flagged for deletion."

Those ideas are great (and practical) and could definitely help with the existing setup; and if these kinds of changes are successful, maybe that's the catalyst that helps ease the burden (takes the pressure off) and allows rules to become more relaxed.

Re: Future album three month limit

asimpkins — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 15:16:08 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 10/13/2025 19:16

I would be disappointed to see completed data get deleted even if it had no points. Sure the primary purpose of the site is the charts and the rankings, but if it wants to draw the attention and traffic that supports that purpose, there needs to be at least a little flexibility for other album related endeavors. Albums might be on my chart and fall off, but still have valuable ratings, comments, and flags set. Or maybe I'll change my mind and want to bring it back. I have to-do custom lists of albums I plan to check out eventually. And custom charts allow for other fun ways to group music that provides more reasons to come to this site and contribute.

Not to mention that already completed albums are not driving the heavy workload. If anything deleting completed albums just opens up the door for them to be readded and reprocessed over and over again.

But older albums that get named dropped somewhere with no details? How notable can they be if they've never showed up on a recognized chart? How notable can they be if not one single champion has bothered to add and fill in the details for the last 20 years? What could be more "not all albums need to exist on BEA" than something like that?

Re: Future album three month limit

Rhyner — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 14:54:00 GMT

Author: Rhyner

Posted: 10/13/2025 18:54

albummaster wrote:

Track lists help validate whether an album qualifies for the site (or not), and so are a by-product of allowing future releases (and track lists are pretty useful for site visitors).

asimpkins wrote:

Another downside I see to this is that the original contributor might often not return prompty to add the tracklist on release day and now the moderators are looking at finishing the tracklist for dozens of albums. It seems much easier to me to let the tracklist be added when announced (or any time after) and then the moderator only needs to verify on release day (and occasionally make tweaks). If contributors want to add data for you, then you should let them!

Good points. The idea of not allowing tracks for future albums is probably the wrong approach. I hereby retract my endorsement of that idea.
But I still stand behind the idea of treating albums differently (data-moderation-wise) depending on their release status, and whether they're on "points-bearing" charts or not.

albummaster wrote:

Additional reminders are definitely worthy of more thought, but I'm not a big fan of deleting albums & reducing the database. Some albums are late burners, nobody notices them at first and a while later they are acclaimed.

I don't know. If it's true that:

MadhattanJack wrote:

well over half of the albums that come in that way will never get a single ranking point

...then what's the point of having them in the database? If an album gets deleted for inactivity and later turns out to be a late burner, it can always be added again. Is avoiding that potentiality for the relatively few late burners really worth all the effort of data moderation for all the albums that are never added to points-bearing charts?

albummaster, you've reiterated multiple times that BEA is not intended to be a comprehensive database of all albums. Discogs and RYM exist already, after all. This is a site for ranking albums in charts. If an album is never ranked in a chart, what's the point of it being on the site? I say delete it from the database. (In the rare case that it turns out to be a sleeper, it can always be re-added later.) And if it's never going to be ranked in a chart, why bother putting in the effort to moderate its data?

Romanelli wrote:

I think that until more people decide to help out with data moderation as part of that group that there should be no new concessions to existing rules that add (even a little) to the existing workload of data moderation.

Bingo. Don't make Romanelli do admin for albums that no one cares about. Just delete them.

But regardless of your ultimate decision on whether to delete albums with no activity, I still think data moderators such as Romanelli should not feel compelled to spend hours tidying up and making presentable albums that will ultimately fade into complete obscurity. The solution could be as simple as redoing the "Newly Added Albums" page to hide--well, not exactly hide, but make harder to find--albums that have a high likelihood of never really deserving to have their data fully moderated. Maybe such albums (unreleased albums, and released albums on no points-bearing charts) would only be findable on the "Newly Added Albums" page under a tab on the "View albums" drop-down menu that only appears to level 8 members, and maybe only in red font or something, to indicate that there's no expectation for anyone to bother moderating them until they're actually ranked on a chart. You could also add an obvious warning on the admin page for these albums that says something along the same lines. (Eg. "Warning, this album has no chart points! If you want to moderate the data on this album, consider ranking it on one of your year, decade, or all-time charts first. You are not expected to do data moderation work that may ultimately be in vain.")

This would make those albums basically invisible to anyone who's not actively looking for them. Anyone could still find them by searching (which includes the search bar to add them to a chart), but maybe making them much less visible to the general user would make data moderators like Romanelli more comfortable ignoring their "unmoderated" status. (I don't know, Romanelli, what do you think?)
The data moderation workload would then be restricted to only those albums that get chart points. I think that would make things easier for Romanelli, and asimpkins and anyone else who wants to could still add future releases to their hearts' content. Am I missing anything?

I still think albums that get added to the database and then are ignored for the rest of time could be deleted without causing any issues. You could even make the rule ridiculously forgiving, something like "If an album is in no points-bearing charts and has seen no rating or chart activity for five years, it gets flagged for deletion."

Re: Future album three month limit

asimpkins — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:53:50 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 10/13/2025 11:53

Huh, well I think the point that restricting when albums are added has pretty much no long term effect on the number of albums added is pretty simple too. But I won't beat a dead horse.

On the subject of the "third group". I'm happy to help the site out, but I honestly have no interest in completing other user's half-assed entires that nobody else seems to care about. I'm diligent about making my entires as complete as possible. When I come across data issues on other entries I'm looking at, I try to report them. I've added a lot of recognized charts and done my best to fill those in. If there are other opportunities to chip in, I would strongly consider them.

But some random person on the internet that wants to dump a bunch of obscure titles and then take off? No way. It goes beyond not wanting to do the work to not wanting to incentivize that type of behavior. It's like if my kids walked into the kitched and dumped their finished meal on the floor. Sure, I could clean it up, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to setup a precendent that I will do your work for you.

Of course, if other people are okay being part of that dynamic, that's fine. But as MadhattanJack mentioned above, I suspect that's probably a big part of the reason why you aren't getting much extra help in this area.

There also seems to me to be some incoherence here. I hear stuff like "BEA has never been the place where every album needs to exist" as the justification to not make multiple other requested changes. But isn't this situation the perfect place to apply that foundational thinking? You sound seriously overwhelemed by this task. Do these obscure albums that were mentioned once by someone who didn't care enough to add any details really need to exist here? Could your time be spent more productively elsewhere?

Re: Future album three month limit

MadhattanJack — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 20:15:26 GMT

Author: MadhattanJack

Posted: 10/13/2025 00:15

Romanelli wrote:

I think that's fair.

For what it's worth, I agree completely — I tried being in the third group a few months ago for about 3 weeks, and it was OK at first, but the problem (in my opinion) is that well over half of the albums that come in that way will never get a single ranking point. It's a bit frustrating.

I'm not saying it's a complete waste of time or anything like that though, since (also in my opinion) it's good to have more-obscure records already there in the database in case someone eventually wants to rank them somewhere. (Or maybe not, I don't actually know!) But the backlogs — which I realize aren't always that extensive — would definitely be a lot smaller if people had to add new albums without artwork and tracklists to "point-bearing" charts.

Which actually reminds me of another suggestion I had, by the way: Every item in a single-year chart, even #100, should be worth at least one point. I know that will cause a lot of reshuffling in the "middle of the pack," probably in favor of more-recent releases, but I actually think that might be a good thing.

Re: Future album three month limit

Romanelli — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 11:22:32 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 10/12/2025 15:22

The more albums added, the more work. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

Some users do the work on albums they add. Those users tend to not work on albums they didn't add.
Some users add albums (lots of them) and leave them to be worked by others, and do not work on albums added by others.
And some people (maybe 3) add albums, do the work on them, and do the work on albums that other people add.

Speaking for the third group, I think that until more people decide to help out with data moderation as part of that group that there should be no new concessions to existing rules that add (even a little) to the existing workload of data moderation.

I think that's fair.

Re: Future album three month limit

asimpkins — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 07:38:31 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 10/12/2025 11:38

Quote:

maybe unreleased albums shouldn't even have the option to add the track lists yet.

Quote:

This is part of the reason that a big pool of future releases on BEA is so high maintenance. Albums are already checked manually every day (by myself and others) to see if official release dates have been met, and release dates adjusted if not (leaks do not count as official releases). On Fridays (the most popular day, by far, for new releases to happen), this is a massive time hog.

It's not important, but I still am having trouble understanding this part, and it might be why I'm having trouble seeing the value in a date cutoff in the first place.

I assume you don't literally check every future release every day to see if the release date has been met? I assume you run a query to see what unverified albums are scheduled for today (or prior to today) and then verify those?

If it's the former, that seems like a crazy amount of work and maybe you shouldn't do that? If it's the latter though, I still don't see why delaying when an album can be added changes how many you ultimately have to verify on a release day. It doesn't matter if that Gorillaz album is added months in the past or months in the future, you will still need to verify it one time on 3/26/2026. There seems to be a belief that a temporal rule will lead to quantity outcomes that I'm not understanding.

Re: Future album three month limit

albummaster — Sun, 12 Oct 2025 05:38:12 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 10/12/2025 09:38

Rhyner wrote:

It could still make sense to add the album to custom charts, such as "Future Releases I'm Looking Forward To" or similar, so that would be allowed, and really should be the only way that future releases are added to the site anyway.

Thanks very much for all your thoughts, but as far as I'm aware, that's the only way a future release should be added right now as they don't qualify for other types of chart (people might try and add these albums to other types of chart, but they won't be awarded any points and they'll have limited visibility).

Rhyner wrote:

And then, since rating unreleased tracks makes no sense, maybe unreleased albums shouldn't even have the option to add the track lists yet. (And anything other data moderation aspects that are consuming Romanelli's time.)

In the distant past, it was decided to allow this as albums are 'leaked' ahead of release and people wanted to be able to rate them (Smile Sessions might have been one of these). Track lists help validate whether an album qualifies for the site (or not), and so are a by-product of allowing future releases (and track lists are pretty useful for site visitors).

Rhyner wrote:

Users who have unreleased albums on custom charts could receive a notification when those albums' release dates arrive, and then they would have the option to add them to charts that contribute to the point scores (and add the album's tracks to the database). If, however, an album is never added to any points-contributing charts, it could exist in a sort of limbo where its unmoderated status doesn't show up the same way in the "Newly Added Albums" tab (and thus Romanelli doesn't have to add a track list), and then after some period of time (perhaps six months or so?), if it still hasn't been added to a year, decade, or all-time chart, it is flagged for deletion. At this point, perhaps another notification could be sent to any users who have the album in a custom chart, to give them one last chance to add it to their other charts and make it a permanent database addition.

Rhyner wrote:

And if an album is leaked early, someone could flag it as such and a high-level moderator could manually switch the album over to be in the released state, so users can add it to charts and rate tracks, etc.

asimpkins wrote:

In the absense of this dedicated source field, would moderators find it helpful if I left a source URL in the admin comments when adding a future album, or would that just be messy and/or an innappropriate use of that feature?

Anything like that is always helpful, thank you (and a perfect use of the comment field).

Re: Future album three month limit

Rhyner — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 14:51:58 GMT

Author: Rhyner

Posted: 10/11/2025 18:51

Here's a suggestion.

It doesn't make sense to add unreleased albums to year, decade, and all-time charts, and it doesn't make sense to rate tracks of an unreleased album, so if an album's release date is in the future, then these things simply shouldn't be allowed. It could still make sense to add the album to custom charts, such as "Future Releases I'm Looking Forward To" or similar, so that would be allowed, and really should be the only way that future releases are added to the site anyway.

And then, since rating unreleased tracks makes no sense, maybe unreleased albums shouldn't even have the option to add the track lists yet. (And anything other data moderation aspects that are consuming Romanelli's time.)

Users who have unreleased albums on custom charts could receive a notification when those albums' release dates arrive, and then they would have the option to add them to charts that contribute to the point scores (and add the album's tracks to the database). If, however, an album is never added to any points-contributing charts, it could exist in a sort of limbo where its unmoderated status doesn't show up the same way in the "Newly Added Albums" tab (and thus Romanelli doesn't have to add a track list), and then after some period of time (perhaps six months or so?), if it still hasn't been added to a year, decade, or all-time chart, it is flagged for deletion. At this point, perhaps another notification could be sent to any users who have the album in a custom chart, to give them one last chance to add it to their other charts and make it a permanent database addition.

To guarantee future releases are properly flagged, perhaps it should be a requirement that a release date is entered when adding an album to the database. (Year at least, and if that year is the current year, then the specific date as well.)

And if an album is leaked early, someone could flag it as such and a high-level moderator could manually switch the album over to be in the released state, so users can add it to charts and rate tracks, etc.

Unless I'm mistaken, this would solve most if not all of the issues.
Data moderation would be much less of an issue, because only albums that are eventually added to points-contributing charts would ever need the full treatment of it, and albums that don't ever end up on such charts would vanish quietly.
asimpkins could add and track future releases without fear of their contributions being deleted.

I'm sure I'm missing something, but I hope this idea at least nudges the conversation in the direction of an agreeable solution.

Cheers!

Re: Future album three month limit

asimpkins — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:33:46 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 10/11/2025 17:33

Quote:

No it's not, albums are suspect for 30 days, so it won't be deleted straight away which basically means most albums already have a 120 day runway.

Ah! I wasn't aware of that. Well that's a huge improvement and greatly reduces the albums I'll need to worry about.

Also, I wanted to highlight this question in case it got missed:

Quote:

Re: Future album three month limit

albummaster — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:02:40 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 10/11/2025 17:02

baystateoftheart wrote:

If there is a compromise made, my suggestion would be increasing from 90 days to 120 days to more adequately cover the time in which track lists and album art are typically announced. This article is a bit dated, but it discusses a typical rollout, with advance copies sent 3-4 months before release, at which point in most cases the art and track list have been finalized. I agree with Hayden that we should avoid different rules for more popular artists.

BEA is pretty much already there with 120 days (if you count the suspect period).

Re: Future album three month limit

albummaster — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 13:00:58 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 10/11/2025 17:00

asimpkins wrote:

So I just wonder who wants to take up the time to look up if an artist is ranked in the top 2,000? Do moderators really want to do that?

Yep, rather do that than have to manage 2,000 albums in a holding pattern (and can be automated).

asimpkins wrote:

And also to give a fuller picture, there are plenty of albums by artists outside the top 2,000 that get hit by the 90 day rule. On my recently created list I have an album by Cavetown scheduled for 1/16. Not big by current BEA tastes, but an artists with albums including multiple songs with hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify, so hardly obscure.

No problem, let's scrap the top x artists idea as a non-starter. I was just reaching for a half-way house but obviously going to be ineffective/not enough (as stated by everyone).

asimplings wrote:

It's only intermittently being enforced.

No it's not, albums are suspect for 30 days, so it won't be deleted straight away which basically means most albums already have a 120 day runway.

Re: Future album three month limit

Romanelli — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 12:51:36 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 10/11/2025 16:51

The fact that you have 3 albums you can easily find that weren't caught speaks to the fact that we are talking about increasing the workload (even if it's minimal) of a small group of volunteers (mainly 2 to 3 unpaid workers) who are already not catching the ones slipping through the cracks.

The workload is already heavy enough. I have been doing the minimum for the past week because I am burned out. 90 plus sudden new releases per week (up from recently about 10 per week) is a lot of work. Plus all of the other albums that are added, plus the never ending work of verifying that the existing database is correct.

We have 3 different users here:

1) Users who add albums and do all of the moderation work themselves. These users, for the most part, do not do moderation work for albums they did not add.

2) Users who add albums and do little to none of the moderation work themselves. These albums have to be worked by others doing data moderation. The current number of albums in this category right now is in the 80's. It's been in the 100's for over a week...it went down because one user stepped in and worked about 20 albums today.

3) Users who do all of their own data moderation work, and who also take on the incomplete albums others add to the site. That list numbers about 3 people. That's why your album database is up to date. 3 people. One of those (Albummaster) is spending most of his time improving and keeping the site on its feet.

The point is this. We don't need a compromise for future releases right now. There's enough work to go around as it is, and there's not enough people doing it. We don't need to be adding to that with albums that do not officially exist yet, and the research that goes into that (which is mostly quite time consuming).

Sorry if that's blunt. I think it's kind of important for y'all to know what this work entails before pushing for us to do more.

Re: Future album three month limit

baystateoftheart — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 12:29:40 GMT

Author: baystateoftheart

Posted: 10/11/2025 16:29

If there is a compromise made, my suggestion would be increasing from 90 days to 120 days to more adequately cover the time in which track lists and album art are typically announced. This article is a bit dated, but it discusses a typical rollout, with advance copies sent 3-4 months before release, at which point in most cases the art and track list have been finalized. I agree with Hayden that we should avoid different rules for more popular artists.

Re: Future album three month limit

asimpkins — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 08:04:30 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 10/11/2025 12:04

Quote:

Most albums aren't given a 5-6 month runway anymore, let alone 3-4.

If you are saying that "most" albums have less than a 3-4 month runway, I'm not sure I'd agree. (But agree on 5-6 being definitely less than half.) I'll be paying more attention going forward. But we are at least talking about a significant minority that are impacted by the 90 day rule. If we include that recently added The Cribs album with the others I've mentioned, that's a snapshot of 6/14 of the future albums I'm tracking announced over 90 days before release.

Quote:

A three month threshold is... reasonable... but maybe extend it to an even 100 days

If there is a threshold, please keep it in terms of months or multiples of 30 (and allow some rounding). I really don't want to do the math required for something like 100 days! 😁

Re: Future album three month limit

Hayden — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 07:51:34 GMT

Author: Hayden

Posted: 10/11/2025 11:51

Quote:

Sure, here's a good example.
Joyce Manor - I Used To Go To This Bar
https://joycemanor.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-go-to-this-bar

This was announced (with album art and full tracklist) on 10/7 with a 1/30 release date.

The album that led to my discovery of this rule and prompted this discussion was The Cribs - Selling A Vibe. It was announced with full details on 8/18 with a 1/9 release date. I had added it back then (with artwork and tracklist) only to have it deleted and so I had to add it all again yesterday. Did this really save anyone any work?

The "best" example right now is probably the new Gorillaz album, The Mountain, which is scheduled for March 20 (over 5 months away) and already has a artwork and a tracklist.

Personally I would have been in favor of waiting until Dec. 20 or so to add it to the database, but that's only because I'd prefer it if Damon Albarn would help make more Blur albums instead.

Gorillaz
The Mountain (2026)

Geez that's a low-res version of the art. We gotta change that—

Anywho—

I only came across this for the first time very recently when I added Brian Jackson's Now More Than Ever (Jan '26 release) to the site, and I had no major qualm about the rule/rejection. Most albums aren't given a 3-4 month runway anymore, let alone 5-6. A three month threshold is... reasonable... but maybe extend it to an even 100 days (not all months are the same length, blah blah blah). Just something as simple as 'albums must have release dates within 100 days of being added'. I think that's cleaner, and it has a certainty to it.

Quote:

Could there be a case for allowing any future album by artists ranked 2,000 or higher (at the time an album is added to BEA) to create a sandbox and prevent flooding, and then everyone is happy?

I disagree with this though. This would be odd.

EDIT: 2 things: quotes on this are working funny— but, I just realized the actual rule is 90 days, not "3 months". So, yeah, whatever— I'm cool with that—

Re: Future album three month limit

asimpkins — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 07:26:28 GMT

Author: asimpkins

Posted: 10/11/2025 11:26

I appreciate any compomise here, and I'm also of course fine if the moderators just like the status quo! It's not that important, but I did feel that there were some really strong arguments to rethink this that I wanted to raise.

My mentality I think just runs towards simplicity. A rule needs to really justify itself, otherwise it's better to just not have a rule. Every rule has a cost, it requires time and space to process, it requires site real estate to advertise and explain (or in this case it's a hidden rule, which is probably worse). I'm not an anarchist or libertarian, but I do agree that it's nice to avoid needless bureaucracy!

So I just wonder who wants to take up the time to look up if an artist is ranked in the top 2,000? Do moderators really want to do that? I'll admit that I try to be a rule follower, but I'd be tempted to just roll the dice and submit. And other contributors are likely to be the same, or more likely to not even be aware of the rule! It sounds to me like it perpetuates an environment where there's a cycle of good data being submitted and then deleted.

And also to give a fuller picture, there are plenty of albums by artists outside the top 2,000 that get hit by the 90 day rule. On my recently created list I have an album by Cavetown scheduled for 1/16. Not big by current BEA tastes, but an artists with albums including multiple songs with hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify, so hardly obscure.

I checked my current list and I found at least three pending albums that I had added in violation of this rule that either didn't get caught or were tolerated. Only the first artist is in the top 2,000.

Whitney - Small Talk (added on 7/17, releases on 11/7)
Spiritual Cramp - Rude (added on 7/17, releases on 10/24)
Living Hour - Internal Infinity Drone (added on 7/16, releases on 10/17) (barely!)

This makes me think if I go back I'll find that I've added albums in violation of this rule all of the time. And I think that's another argument in favor of scrapping this rule: It's only intermittently being enforced. And the consequences of this rule missing the albums I mentioned above and many others is kind of... fine? It didn't seem to hurt anything to allow these entries to exist. Would the site really be better if these had been deleted as they technically should have, or would it have just created more busy work for everyone?

Anyway, I have tried to make the strongest case I can, but I'll be fine and do my best to adapt to whatever you decide works best for you.

Re: Future album three month limit

albummaster — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 03:37:17 GMT

Author: albummaster

Posted: 10/11/2025 07:37

Albums mentioned so far:
I Used To Go To This Bar - Joyce Manor (artist rank 1,549)
Selling A Vibe - The Cribs (artist rank 1,171)
The Mountain - Gorillaz (artist rank 100)

Could there be a case for allowing any future album by artists ranked 2,000 or higher (at the time an album is added to BEA) to create a sandbox and prevent flooding, and then everyone is happy? (can't imagine there'll be too many and then BEA will list notable future releases further in advance without needing to do constant housekeeping on a huge backlog of other albums). These albums would still be subject to existing constraints & require a published track list etc (maybe a 12 month limit instead of 90 days to prevent spurious entries). Just putting this forward as an idea (other users might also have some thoughts as to pros and cons). Might need refining, but something along those lines to put this conversation to bed.

Re: Future album three month limit

Romanelli — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 18:15:00 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 10/10/2025 22:15

Did it save anyone work? Yes. It saved me work. Because on that day, I was able to work more albums that actually existed.

The Gorillaz album has been flagged for deletion. Mainly because if I'm going to work on albums, they are going to be albums that, again, actually exist. I'm not taking the time to go through and verify the title, release date, album art, and 15 tracks of an album that's still more than 6 months from release. That's absurd. I don't care if the user added all of the available details. We still have to verify it. Who has wasted their time if Gorillaz decides in December that they're scrapping the album (IT HAPPENS)? The user who added it and the user who verified the information. No thanks.

The point here is this. Adding albums outside of the rule that exists (for reasons that have been well explained) causes a very small group of people more work. It's not a lot, but it's more work. That's UNPAID work. And yes. It's VERY much easier to delete it than it is to go through and verify the details if they exist, and search for and add the details if they don't, especially if it's six months in the future. As for the user adding it...very simply, wait for the 90 day window. You want to add it six months before it's released? It's gonna get deleted. That's double the work for you, not for me. Because that's the rule. Until it hits 90 days? Keep it on an excel sheet. Takes 1 minute of your time to add it, and one minute to check it. We ALL save time.

I say that because most likely, it's gonna be one of two people doing the verification. Albummaster or me. No one else is jumping in on a regular basis and working these albums being added to the site. It's bad enough we now have 90 plus new releases per week to go through (most of which will never see a chart, because MOST of them will be completely awful and no one will care outside of those racing to add every new release they can to the site). It's bad enough that we have to do future releases at all...but I understand allowing them. But there should be a limit. 90 days seems more than fair. Especially if you're on the trying to keep everything accurate and correct end of things.

I get that you want to have those future releases on site. Just be aware that asking for that effects the workloads of others on the site. Most dramatically, opening the gates for a possible flood of future releases with zero info greater than 90 days away because the rule is gone. Again...more work for us, even if it's just flagging for deletion. We don't get a lot of those releases now. It would be really great to keep it that way.

Re: Future album three month limit

Romanelli — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 18:09:13 GMT

Author: Romanelli

Posted: 10/10/2025 22:09

First off...thanks for posting that. It's been flagged for deletion. Mainly because if I'm going to work on albums, they are going to be albums that actually exist. I'm not taking the time to go through and verify the title, release date, album art, and 15 tracks of an album that's still more than 6 months from release. That's absurd. I don't care if the user added all of the available details. We still have to verify it. Who has wasted their time if Gorillaz decides in December that they're scrapping the album (IT HAPPENS)? The user who added it and the user who verified the information. No thanks.

The point here is this. Adding albums outside of the rule that exists (for reasons that have been well explained) causes a very small group of people more work. It's not a lot, but it's more work. That's UNPAID work. And yes. It's VERY much easier to delete it than it is to go through and verify the details if they exist, and search for and add the details if they don't, especially if it's six months in the future. As for the user adding it...very simply, wait for the 90 day window. You want to add it six months before it's released? It's gonna get deleted. That's double the work for you, not for me. Because that's the rule.

I say that because most likely, it's gonna be one of two people doing the verification. Albummaster or me. No one else is jumping in on a regular basis and working these albums being added to the site. It's bad enough we now have 90 plus new releases per week to go through (most of which will never see a chart, because MOST of them will be completely awful and no one will care outside of those racing to add every new release they can to the site). It's bad enough that we have to do future releases at all...but I understand allowing them. But there should be a limit. 90 days seems more than fair. Especially if you're on the trying to keep everything accurate and correct end of things.

I get that you want to have those future releases on site. Just be aware that asking for that effects the workloads of others on the site. Most dramatically, opening the gates for a possible flood of future releases with zero info greater than 90 days away because the rule is gone. Again...more work for us, even if it's just flagging for deletion. We don't get a lot of those releases now. It would be really great to keep it that way.