Data quality: We want your feedback!

The release locking concept has been around for quite some time and has been debated at great lengths. After a couple of long calls Don and I reworked the concept into the data quality concept. The idea is relatively simple: Each artist and each release in MusicBrainz now has a quality indicator that shows the … Continue reading “Data quality: We want your feedback!”

The release locking concept has been around for quite some time and has been debated at great lengths. After a couple of long calls Don and I reworked the concept into the data quality concept. The idea is relatively simple:

  • Each artist and each release in MusicBrainz now has a quality indicator that shows the quality of the data: Unknown, low, normal or high.
  • Data that is marked with low quality should be easy to change.
  • Data with normal quality should take about the same amount of effort to change as it takes now.
  • Data with high quality should be harder to change, to avoid incorrect changes to good data.
  • Each edit type will define the number of votes required to pass, the duration votes stay open, what to do if an edit receives no votes, and if a vote is an auto edit.

This new feature will allow us to edit sloppy data faster, tune the editing system to fit better with how people use it and it will allow us to prevent accidental edits to good data. Now we need to your help in testing this system and giving us feedback about the various edit levels.

If you would like to help, please read the data quality wiki page, view the new edit information page and then test the new features on the staging server. Each artist and release page now has a Change Quality link that will allow you to change the quality of the artist/release. Once those are changed, the edit system will behave according to the values set forth in the edit information page. Please note that the change artist/release quality edits are currently autoedits, which will be changed once we’re done testing the bulk of this new system. For right now we’re making it easy to change the data quality for testing purposes.

To start testing, head over to the staging server. Add any bugs you find to the bug tracker. Or post your feedback in the comments.

Beta Period for Style Guidelines (aka Don's suggested new style evolution procedure)

In the last month the Style Council has worked on a couple of guidelines for classical music, and the first one of these is nearly ready: The OperaTrackStyle will describe how track titles for Operas should be written. There were also discussions about how to make the style-changing process simpler and less tiresome. Now Aaron … Continue reading “Beta Period for Style Guidelines (aka Don's suggested new style evolution procedure)”

In the last month the Style Council has worked on a couple of guidelines for classical music, and the first one of these is nearly ready: The OperaTrackStyle will describe how track titles for Operas should be written.

There were also discussions about how to make the style-changing process simpler and less tiresome. Now Aaron suggested to use “Don’s suggested new style evolution procedure” to make this new guideline official.

So, I suppose, I should explain a bit what that procedure would be. The explanation is attached as a podcast, since I still cannot type too much.

Direct bank transfers now possible!

Back in December I posted about donations to MusicBrainz and a number of people requested a way to do direct bank transfers. Unfortunately our bank wasn’t well set up for this purpose and I began seeking a new bank that could help us accept direct bank transfers without having to pay huge amounts of fees. … Continue reading “Direct bank transfers now possible!”

Back in December I posted about donations to MusicBrainz and a number of people requested a way to do direct bank transfers. Unfortunately our bank wasn’t well set up for this purpose and I began seeking a new bank that could help us accept direct bank transfers without having to pay huge amounts of fees. I’m pleased to announce that we are in the process of switching all of our banking over to Washington Mutual (WaMu)! WaMu has very kindly agreed to waive the incoming wire transfer fees (which are normally $10 per transaction) since we are a non-profit. With their support we can now offer direct bank transfers to all of our supporters.

If you’ve been wanting to make a donation to MetaBrainz, but weren’t able to do it previously, please consider sending us a donation now! To get our bank information, please contact us.

Also, I wanted to thank Jessica Rynerson of WaMu for her excellent help getting us set up and arranging for our wire transfer fees to be waived. Thanks very much!

UPDATE: I’ve removed our bank information since people immediately started to pass fake checks trying to rip us off. Fortunately the bank has caught all of these bogus checks!

Hardware wishlist

Our previous hardware wishlist is now fully checked off — thanks to Minor Ventures and Sun Microsystems for making that happen! But, as we grow we will always need more hardware, so I want to post a new wishlist for 2007. Here are the things that MusicBrainz needs: A 24, 32 or 48 port Gigabit … Continue reading “Hardware wishlist”

Our previous hardware wishlist is now fully checked off — thanks to Minor Ventures and Sun Microsystems for making that happen!

But, as we grow we will always need more hardware, so I want to post a new wishlist for 2007. Here are the things that MusicBrainz needs:

If you work for a company (or have a friend who does) that makes switches or hard drives, please consider hitting up the company for a donation to the MetaBrainz Foundation. Equipment donations are tax-deductible and I would be happy to give the donating company a tax-write off receipt!

UPDATE: James points out that Cisco has a program that makes donations to orgs like us. Could I convince anyone to volunteer to contract Cisco and apply for a grant on behalf of MetaBrainz??

Jaikoz MP3 Tag Editor and our new affiliate program

Jaikoz MP3 Tag Editor is the newest member of our tagger affiliate program! Paul Taylor has recently released a new version of his tagger and has agreed to join our affiliate program. With Jaikoz joining, I’ve laid down the details of the affiliate program so that others can participate in this program. If you are … Continue reading “Jaikoz MP3 Tag Editor and our new affiliate program”

Jaikoz MP3 Tag Editor is the newest member of our tagger affiliate program!

Paul Taylor has recently released a new version of his tagger and has agreed to join our affiliate program. With Jaikoz joining, I’ve laid down the details of the affiliate program so that others can participate in this program. If you are interested in finding out more about the program, please read our Tagger Affiliate Program page.

Welcome aboard Paul!

UPDATE: Paul points out that he has been paying 10% for a couple of years now and that taggers should kick down 10% was his idea in the first place.

MetaBrainz Foundation Annual Report 2006 available now

I’ve just completed the MetaBrainz Foundation Annual Report for 2006!

The report provides a close look at our finances, traffic, community and provides a general review of 2006. Some interesting tidbits from the report:

In 2006, the Foundation spent $10,758.67 on hosting and hardware costs and served out 614 million web hits and 352 million web service hits. Calculating a cost per hit, we find that we spent $17.56 per one million web hits and $30.58 per one million web service hits.

. . .

The balance sheet for 2006 shows that the MetaBrainz Foundation closed out the year with retained earnings of $7,984.50, net income of $6,338.95 and total cash assets of $14,423.45.

. . .

Mudcrow, our top editor and voter (peer reviewer) of 2006 made an astounding 100,998 changes to the database and voted on 38,347 edits from other editors! Thank you for all of your efforts mudcrow!

The report is full of other details about MusicBrainz and MetaBrainz. Go take a look!

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Collaboration of the Month: Dire Straits

The current Collaboration of the Month is Dire Straits, please give up some of your MB time to help tidy-up this artist’s discography. A list resources and things that need to be done are at this wiki page and you can discuss specific issues on this forum topic. We are also trying to come up … Continue reading “Collaboration of the Month: Dire Straits”

The current Collaboration of the Month is Dire Straits, please give up some of your MB time to help tidy-up this artist’s discography. A list resources and things that need to be done are at this wiki page and you can discuss specific issues on this forum topic.

We are also trying to come up with a better name for the project, one that won’t cause confusion with other uses of the term “collaboration” in MusicBrainz. If you have any ideas, please voice them here.

Ailing server replaced!

After 9 days of frustrating work to replace our failing main web server, we’ve implemented plan K (plans A – J failed!). Plan K involved making a previously unreliable server (lingling) reliable again by installing software RAID and then moving all of the services onto this machine. We just finished with that and the new … Continue reading “Ailing server replaced!”

After 9 days of frustrating work to replace our failing main web server, we’ve implemented plan K (plans A – J failed!). Plan K involved making a previously unreliable server (lingling) reliable again by installing software RAID and then moving all of the services onto this machine. We just finished with that and the new web server seems to be handling the load well so far.

Now its up to Dell to fix our server — fortunately, much to my surprise, we still have a service contract on that machine. So, its up to Dell to diagnose and fix the box and then we’ll put it back into rotation. Also, Steve Wyles (inhouseuk) has agreed to lend a hand in diagnosing the issues on moose, the new Sun Server — we’re suspecting a copy of Solaris that is too old to handle this new architecture.

So, expect more downtime in the future as we shuffle fixed machines back into rotation. Hopefully we’ll be able to proceed with a more sane pace from here on out.

Once again, giant kudos to Dave Evans for all his hard work! Thanks Dave!

MusicBrainz downtime redux

The attempt to switch the database to the new Sun server has failed and we’re still running with the old set of hardware. For some reason Postgres refuses to run with any kind of acceptable level of performance on this new machine. Thus, we’re setting aside this server for the time being and instead working … Continue reading “MusicBrainz downtime redux”

The attempt to switch the database to the new Sun server has failed and we’re still running with the old set of hardware. For some reason Postgres refuses to run with any kind of acceptable level of performance on this new machine. Thus, we’re setting aside this server for the time being and instead working to bring a replacement server online as soon as possible.

We’re also working with Dell to determine what the problem on the server is, and luckily the servers still have an extended warranty covering them with 4 hour on-site service. However, it appears that we need to diagnose the problem before Dell is willing to send someone out. I’ve run a memory test on the server and it passed all of its tests.

I’m out of ideas. I’m frustrated with Sun and Dell and will no longer waste time on their hardware trying to solve this problem. Instead I will work with whatever hardware I can scrounge up and get the service moved over to our spare server and then we’ll sort out the issues with our glorious servers.

It looks like it will at least be Friday before we can make the next attempt to fix this. Again, sorry for the inconvenience — we’re doing our best to fix this problem ASAP.

MusicBrainz downtime: January 17th, Noon PST

Tomorrow January 17th MusicBrainz will be unavailable starting at Noon PST, 15:00 EST, 20:00 UK, 21:00 CET, for at about 1 hour. The recent problems with certain artists not being found are being caused by a failing motherboard (specific guess: failing DMA controller). Fortunately the database server is still working well and the database has … Continue reading “MusicBrainz downtime: January 17th, Noon PST”

Tomorrow January 17th MusicBrainz will be unavailable starting at Noon PST, 15:00 EST, 20:00 UK, 21:00 CET, for at about 1 hour.

The recent problems with certain artists not being found are being caused by a failing motherboard (specific guess: failing DMA controller). Fortunately the database server is still working well and the database has not been affected by this hardware malfunction.

Tomorrow Dave Evans and myself will bring moose, our newly donated Sun Server, online and swap it out for the current database server. Once the new database server is up and running, we will want to monitor it for a while to make sure its doing its job properly. Once we’re convinced that it is doing its job, we will take the site down again and swap the drives in our then-to-be obsoleted database server with our ailing web server and bring the site back up.

After that we can remove the failing server and purchase a replacement motherboard — if you’d like to make a donation to help us cover the cost of the new motherboard (est: $800), we would greatly appreciate your support!

Thanks to Sun for the spiffy server that will get us out of a this bind and a big thanks to Dave Evans for his hard work getting our servers stable again.

I apologize for the inconvenience all this may have caused you.