I wanted to look up something about Edith Piaf when I found something puzzling
two release groups, same name, same date, but totally different tracklist? I started to look for it. And found nothing. There’s nothing there, no link, anything that supports the evidence of the existence of those releases. Now, if I search for it on google, it shows me one of the tracklists, but no label, no cover, no link, nothing. That’s why I think the data found on google is taken from here.
What’s your take on this? I know I might have searched not thoroughfully enough, but somehow this whole 2 releases on the same date with the same name sounds strange.
I would expect they are both real, but the first one has a dodgy date.
When looking on Discogs there is only one version listed, and that is a vinyl boxset
Dig more and there is a volume II with different tracks
Comically neither of those match the track listings at MB. Would not surprise me if the CD versions are a combo of the two.
The MB edit history doesn’t give much clue. They appeared within a few months of each other in 2008, both entered by noobs, with the same editor questioning the quality of the data in both cases.
With the dates - notice in the edit history that TEN YEARS after the data was imported to the first one we see an editor in 2018 copying the 2007-09-23 date and country across without ANY references. They are jumped on by an editor who states that this person doesn’t leave edit notes.
I would say that the date and country of the first one you list is very dubious. I would be more likely to trust the second one.
It may also be worth having a poke on EBay. There are CD copies there and you may be able to get to see a rear cover and fully confirm the track list.
It would not surprise me that there are loads of reissues of something like this.
I looked for it at amazon, now on ebay: nothing I can find. These LP boxes are from Canada, I didn’t find any reissues on CD, there’s no EAN on the discogs pictures, they should be much older than 2007. It’s twice 30 songs. Doesn’t match as well. Bootlegs maybe?
An artist like that will be repackaged many times. Those vinyl packages at Discogs are clearly very old. That demonstrates they have been repackaged a few times under that same name. So the versions here can easily be available somewhere on the planet in that track order. We can’t be sure.
Ebay does show up many Collection d’Or and Gold Collections for the artist.
I was not going to dig through them all looking for a match.
What are you trying to find out? Yes, there are scrappy bare bones copies of some data in this database, but that’s just the age of the data. Someone will come along one day and upload more complete details, or dig into more research on the versions. But for now, the two we have are better than nothing as someone out there has releases with tracks in this order otherwise they would not have added them.
Well, I would like to delete it. But I know, someone will come along and say “it probably exists” without any evidence. Ok, fine. But what about release date, place and “official”? I would like to remove those things, because, yes, we have a barebone, but we have no evidence and for me that’s just data for the data’s sake.
BTW i checked all those records at ebay. There’s nothing even remotely similar.
I just try to figure out what’s the “right” thing to do.
After searching for those CDs I really believe it’s some kind of private mixtape someone made. And that’s something that shouldn’t be in the database, at least not for me.
Crap data is worse than no data. Without going into this specific release, if there are serious doubts about a release existing and the original editor doesn’t respond to requests for more information or proof, it would be better to remove the release. But it is good to raise the topic here on the forum so that as many people as possible can weigh in on each case.
I am stepping away from this. Needs someone more official in here to respond as to MB policy. I’m just a fellow editor. So I have added a link to this question in the AE thread as that usually will bring in a few more eyes who better understand the guidelines.
IMHO bad data is fine as long as it is marked as “low quality”. Just because you don’t have a copy of this in your own collection it does not mean it doesn’t exist somewhere on the planet. Especially for an artist from before the Internet era. Not everything gets documented on the internet. And this artist has a HUGE number of compilations. (I guess many of her recordings are out of copyright now)
Trying to get an “original editor” to respond over 12 years later is going to be unlikely. People come and go from this site, loose email accounts, or just plain die. That should not be a reason to then delete everything they have done.
What makes me want to protect it is that there have been more than one editor work on these. So that shows more than one copy around. Or why else would people be adding dates? I would agree to take away that first 2007 date and country, but not the second one. With the second one the date and year were added with the initial track data. Even the official box was ticked in that same week.
Also notice loads of AcoustIDs. That also shows people must be matching these tracks and uploading data for it through Picard.
Have you considered that these may just be a single CD from a boxset? Older MB used to put discs in one by one. So it may be that these are from the same box which is why they are harder to trace now.
But bottom line - I’d still say no to deleting it.
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I can’t resist a puzzle Notice how there is ZERO overlap between the two track lists? I am suspecting more and more that these are two disks from the same boxset.
Depending on your definition, I might agree or disagree.
To me, wrong data is worse than no data. Stating something wrongful as truthful is worse than not stating anything.
However, badly formatted data, data with missing information, or other things that to some people are considered “crap” are, as long as they’re correct, better than not having the data at all. “Crap” data can be molded, refined, built and expanded upon into something “not crap”. It is not worse than no data. Knowing that a release exists, even if we don’t know the tracklist, release date, the release title is formatted improperly, … is still better than not knowing it exists at all.
For releases where there is doubt about which of the two categories it belongs to, I’d say it’s something to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. I didn’t look into the specific case brought forth here, so I can’t comment on that, but I do think it is not something there should be a general policy for. Each case should be carefully investigated and considered.
(Note: This is my personal opinion, as an editor, not an official MetaBrainz/MusicBrainz statement or me talking as community manager. My response here is no more and no less valid than any other editor weighing in here.)
