Curious to know how everyone feels about their editing habits, particularly those who edit a lot.
Obviously the editing itself is never bad, I’m more wondering about those of us who feel forced to edit by OCD, etc, or who avoid or procrastinate real life tasks or problems via editing.
Are your editing habits healthy?
Yes! It has a purely positive effect on my personal life
Yes. It has a mostly positive effect on my personal life
Sometimes. It is mixed, or I go through phases of good and bad
No. I regularly edit to the detriment of my personal life
No! I have a problem, my life is falling apart and I just keep editing
0voters
I myself have gone through phases. My first time with MusicBrainz. a long time ago. I used it as an avoidance mechanism for studies I was anxious about, and almost torpedoed my degree… now I really enjoy it. I reckon it is at least 80% healthy. I enjoy the process, the community, and it makes me feel fulfilled and like I am making a lasting difference. Occasionally I get stuck in an editing hole, an argument with another editor, or I use it to procrastinate something more important, and then it’s not great
Voting/subscriptions is maybe 30% healthy, it’s not very rewarding. But I try to do it anyway, on and off, for the sake of the database
I definitely go through phases, on most days it’s not something I think too much about, but sometimes I’ll stay up way too late editing stuff, like adding lengthy album credits, or trying to disentangle a messy release, or adding just one more release for realsies this time, just one more
I’ll go out on a limb here and hypothesise that editors who mainly add data will feel broadly more positive than those who spend most of their time reviewing/voting/improving/herding cats (cue me banging on about our incentive structure being flawed…).
Example of not healthy editing that often happens to me:
Splitting recording took me between 2 and 3 hours, for a recording I don’t really care that much, but I felt I had to do it.
Healthy parts of editing are all musics I could discover thanks to MB, and also the helping me buying the correct editions and avoid too many duplicate recordings, when I go shopping second hand.
A few years ago I dropped support for last.fm editing and picked up ListenBrainz instead. I listen to a variety of music, mostly for discovery purposes.
Everything that is not auto linked in ListenBrainz I go into investigation mode and import metadata to the MB platform.
This is my solution to healthy editing habits, where my contributions are consistent over time and I don’t go on a binge haha
Ah yes, I forgot to tell my solution to try to avoid being too much drowned into endless edits: Only subscribe to the collection of releases I own, and nothing else if possible.
Despite this, and because I have some VA compilations that share recordings with many other releases, I’m still often drowned into big fixes.
I do try to keep my editing healthy. I mostly only add my spotify feed + my missing tracks on LB. Sometimes I do go on binge and add a lot of stuff while listening to something on the side, but I do not do it often.
Although here’s my solution to not have healthy habits:
Try to add all the tracks on a 2013 music compilation, where 75% of the tracks have dead links, original upload deleted, and no wayback machine…
Adding yt link + name aliases to SiIvagunner music. I recently transferred the first of my SiIva playlists from YT to listenbrainz and… let’s just say it’s tedious. I probably added a few duplicates but I ain’t sifting through the whole discography to find that one recording that isn’t on the SiIva wiki.
I think mine stays relatively positive, there are definitely times where I can feel like the mountain of information that isn’t in MusicBrainz is insurmountable, and yes I can have my fustrations with editors who maybe don’t put as much time into things as I would like but I am generally pleased people are contributing and so long as they’re not making a big mess then more the merrier.
I am trying to focus on working on entities I have in my physical possession, as someone who buys a lot of music media I have to keep on-top of things otherwise I end up drowning in it! It is however fun to work on say reports or other little tangents now and then.
My favourite part is doing the research to be honest, sure inputting the data from the release or from other databases is fun and great but doing some boots-on-the-ground research is definitely a lot more interesting (what happened to this group?, did this producer ever mention when their birthday is on social media? or what happened to this record company. I’ve actually treated myself to another 3 months of the British newspaper archive to help with that.
Going through a sort-of OCD phase where I’m submitting every missing genre tag I’m inputting during the music library recovery process, but it’s because having those tags is really helping with this process. Still OCD-like though, and I should invest in a proper backup solution once this is done.
I personally find trackballs worse for RSI. Advice I would go with is learn more keyboard shortcuts, take more breaks, try out higher quality mice, get better chair.
Yep i try to do this as much as possible, it’d be cool if there were more natively supported by MusicBrainz of course
take more breaks
Certainly something I should do, of course being in the IT industry and having a lot of hobbies that align with using a computer this can mean I am at a computer for extended periods
higher quality mice
Yeah I just went from a Corsair gaming mouse (which the middle click failed on) to a Logitech G502 which I am enjoying. Not sure if would get on with a track ball
get a better chair
I think this is the big one, the one I’ve got now is ok and it’s meant to help with things like posture etc. etc. but I’m not really getting along with it too great.
I also sit like a goblin sometimes so that doesn’t help either.
Beware sales speak… I use a gamers chair as I can be at this desk for far too many hours of the day. Can’t beat getting into a store and sitting on some chairs. Check you can adjust as you need.
I have arms on my chair adjusted at a height I can take pressure off my wrist when I rest the elbow on chair arm.
A higher than average desk means minimising the wrist bending.
Monitors are on arms adjusted much higher above desk to stop me slouching.
Mouse is a Logitech MX (very like your G502) on a old glass “icemat”. Reducing the friction made a big difference to me. Similar with improving that mouse wheel took strain off my fingers. And using “click to scroll” on forums like this.
This is a big one I point people at. Catch yourself an hour into a session and see what has happened to your posture. And ask why? Look at and fix that issue.
Pain is a warning you have something wrong in your setup.
Trying to find somewhere in England that has a showroom where you can sit in chairs is mighty difficult! The only ones I have found in the last year were IKEA and B&Q. To be honest with you I sat in this chair as it was in a second-hand furniture store, I just didn’t gel with it as well as I hoped.
I got a mechanical standing desk for this exact reason, so i can have the desktop height at the right level for my chair
Yes mine are on arms too, but thanks to an old(er) 4K monitor that seems to weigh the same as a plasma screen TV (scarcasm) they don’t do too great… probably will replace eventually
I wasn’t clear enough. I meant that I use one device for a few weeks or months, then I switch to another. Remember: the “R” in RSI is for “repetitive”. Whichever device you use, if you keep using it too long, you’ll end up with some kind of RSI. So yes, of course, take breaks. But my point is that you can also change device, then some time later change again and so on.
I also have pains in the finger joints, maybe just plain old arthrosis, but I guess that if some joints and some movements involved in keyboard usage are more painful than others, it is because I use the keyboard so much, and some keyboard-related movements are very repetitive.
Pretty healthy here, I think! I read music reviews on nocleansinging.com and add tracks from interesting-sounding bands to a playlist. After I’ve listened to them, any that aren’t linked, I add the album - the aim is to have my Listenbrainz stats and art complete!
Possibly unhealthy - I’ve started going back through my LB stats (including Last.FM imports) to link / add any unlinked stuff. I’ve got back to June 2023, so only another 11 years to go!