[ARSCLIST] A wiki-discopedia?

[Jon Noring <jon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roger wrote:

> Well all I know,is when I have suggested exhaustively
> researched,and detailed websites,for ARSC award consideration,I have
> been given all sorts of meaningless reasons why websites are not eligible.

If we look at a number of published p-book discographies, most if not
all of them were published without any "vetting" by the publishing
company. They pretty much border on vanity publications.

So what is important is the individuals compiling the discographical
information, and how they are regarded by the record collecting and
archivist communities.

I believe that the best future discography would be compiled using a
wiki-like approach, since that allows continual correction plus
recording of disagreements. (Since discography is more database
oriented, it needs to be compiled in a special fashion.)

In fact, ARSC might approach Jimmy Wales and see if it can work with
Wikipedia to put together an allied "Discopedia". There are, I
believe, others working on such discographies of more contemporary
sound recordings so obviously ARSC should not be an "island" on this
matter, but work closely with other groups and organizations for
common benefit.

After all, the purpose of discographical information is to
interconnect it with other information, and the current view of
discography being an end-in-itself makes the discographical
information much less usable.

Jon Noring