Richard Madenfort

Apparently this “artist” made wild claims about their career and edited a bunch of sites on the internet to back those claims. Most other sites already debunked the artist and removed all that info, now it’s our turn to decide if we should do the same.

@testrock started queuing edits to remove some of the info. At first I thought all of their claims had to be jokes, but by now I believe most if not all of it.
#edit59220619 is the one where you can follow most of the discussion.

There are three artist entities that are most likely BS:



If you look at their edit history you’ll see that all their info was only added by two editors. @pianoguyy is clearly only here on MB to add fake info about Richard Madenfort, while @justcheckingitout might just have sourced from the wrong websites at the wrong time - though some of the claims made on the Internet are so bold that they should have noticed something shady about them.

As far as I can tell there is not a single evidence to be found on any website that there ever was a person called Richard Madenfort or Rick Marty that ever produced a single note of music. So I’d say let’s remove all of it.

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I think most (if not all) of the Madenfort family tree should also be removed. It dates back to the 1700s.

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True. One of them even made it over to bookbrainz:

https://bookbrainz.org/creator/e8d307d9-d656-4f29-bc16-cd6963634ade

Also added by @justcheckingitout btw.

FWIW, I just cleaned up The Music of Nashville (season 2 vol 1) soundtrack, based on the uploaded cover art. Mostly this meant narrowing valid release-wide credits to only specific tracks. None of the “Richard Madenfort” credits survived validation against the art.

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We need a Hall of Fame for this kind of game - “It must be true, I read it on the Internet”.

This is like that guy from last year who set up those fake rock gigs.

It is fascinating how fakes like this can quickly build traction of “proof” when people except “proof” as some user generated web page. This one got too obvious due to the lack of actual scans and the small number of people ever editing this person. I can imagine similar must slip through being done by the artist’s agent.

What something like this needs is a request for REAL proof. Even if that is as simple as a scan of a CD \ Vinyl with an actual credit of the artist’s work. I can see this getting worse in the coming years…

MB needs a RED FLAG alert that can force someone to supply a higher level of proof than normal. If this guy was so famous, where are the photos?

Well spotted @paulakreuzer

I also assume that @justcheckingitout has just been equally duped here. Look at the comment on his page about it how he is tracing trees and relationships. I can see how that can get easily corrupted by a scammer like this. Especially justcheckinitout seems to never leave edit notes. He is clearly on a long term mission there to fill in data… just seems strange the lack of source references. justcheckingitout

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I queued removals for all relationships that were left, so the Madenforts will be auto removed.
I made all edits votable in case anyone finds an artist credit or link anywhere that looks to be real - which I doubt.
All the 450+ open edits (on all Madenfort artists and by all editors) can be found here:
https://musicbrainz.org/collection/cd34ad5d-ad0d-4052-b2af-004c5c20b112/open_edits

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Seeing as he even has his own ISNI and LC entries, they should be contacted regarding the removal of his entries if he’s really not a real person.

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Could you do that? I can’t/won’t access the ISNI site as it doesn’t support https.

I’ve reached out to ISNI. Now, it’s just time to wait I guess.

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What’s LC ? I don’t see something like this.

Library of Congress, of which he has an entry.

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Yeah but the LC entry looks hella fake:

Sources

  • found: Imdb.com, viewed 22 November 2018:Richard Madenfort (Richard Martin Madenfort (April 23, 1975), is an American musician best known as Rick Marty, the former guitarist for Alice Cooper and Dirty Looks. As a studio musician, he’s written and recorded with numerous bands, and has toured extensively throughout the world, backing many artists) nicknames (Rick Marty, Richard Martin)
  • found: His LinkedIn profile, viewed 22 November 2018:Richard Madenfort (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Area)

Change Notes

  • 2018-11-22: new
  • 2018-11-23: revised

Again if anything about this “artist” was real there would probably be more edits and more/better sources.

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I’ve reached out to ISNI. Now, it’s just time to wait I guess.

I’ve received a reply and they said that they are now discussing it. I could post the content of the e-mail if anyone wants it.

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I’ve received another reply on the 15th and they said that they have surpressed his records and it will no longer be accessible on the public database. They are also in contact with the Library of Congress regarding this issue.

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Looks like we have another possible case of hijaking.
User: https://musicbrainz.org/user/WarnerBrosMusic
Look at his edits.

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A combination of fake publicity and link spamming. There are a lot of them out there. IMHO, just like on a forum, new members should have first 20 edits moderated.

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“Matthew Edward Hall” added a bogus event - it isn’t listed on the website of the claimed venue, nor on the claimed support band’s site. I can’t see any way to remove an event, though.

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I’m guessing by removing it’s relationships: https://musicbrainz.org/edit/59676552

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Also check out https://critiquebrainz.org/user/b1a1e17a-110e-477c-a912-db0325110c81 that appears to be related.

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