A case for guided data entry (part 1)

I just helped someone add a few releases to Discogs and it was, again, a quite frustrating experience, even though I have added releases to Discogs before.

Adding releases to Discogs is actually a lot of work. These are the steps I typically take for a 7" single:

1. see if the release is already there on Discogs.
2. see if the release I have differs from any of the listed releases
3. copy an existing release to draft, or start from scratch
4. fill in all the details that I am sure about
5. make scans, crop the scans, scale them
6. add scans

Adding a release properly, with all the details, can easily take 15 to 20 minutes, and then I still only have a fairly barebones release. What I typically don't get right due to lack of knowledge are things like:

• composers
• printing companies
• manufacturing companies
• pressing plants
• country specific peculiarities
• etc.

These usually require specialist knowledge about releases from a certain country, label or artist, which I simply don't have. Other contributors on Discogs actually do have this knowledge but this source of knowledge is hardly used. For some countries or labels or artists some information is gathered either in a forum (example: Spain), but when people start adding releases they are either not reading those suggestions (it is a lot of data, or incomplete, or scattered across various places) or not even aware of it.

Instead people are literally dumped in front of a rather complex entry form, with very little checks and the possibility to either screw up, or to miss relevant data. Then after the release has been added other people point out mistakes (instead of fixing them), and tell them to read the relevant forum threads or documentation, and so on which simply is too much effort for most. And I agree with them: the learning curve is way too high.

It would be great to somehow use this knowledge and guide people who do not have it to make sure that they are contributing good quality data, but without requiring them to become experts.

The release data entry form is great for experts who know what they are doing, but not for less experienced people. Guiding them through the process can help data quality a lot. For software programs using a wizard (or setup assistant) is actually very normal and I don't see why it would not be something for Discogs.


I don't know what the flow should be, but I could imagine something like:

1. enter country
2. enter artist
3. enter label
4. enter year
5. enter tracks
6. add images

and based on that information as well as information extracted from earlier releases on Discogs or domain experts to create a series of questions to gather the rest of the information. Examples:

• "Are there any run times listed? If so, please add them"
• "If you can find any numbers in the run out groove, please add them to 'Matrix/Runout'"
• "If you can find a barcode, add them in the section 'Barcode'" (which could be left out for releases from before barcodes existed)
• "Is there a manufacturing date in the form XX/1 or XX/2 on the release? If so, add to the 'Barcodes' section using the field 'Other'" (for Czechoslovak releases)
• etc.

This allows people to make fewer mistakes, but it also sets expectations of what would be minimally required to have a good release, also serving as a teaching tool, so people can later go to the expert form if wanted. For me it would be useful as these questions would serve as a reminder of what data to add.

I would not recommend automatically filling in values. This is fine if the data is actually correct, but not if the data is incorrect, as people will assume that it is correct data and leave it.