LibraryThing

[ckd]

I resisted. I stayed away. But finally, the Readercon panel (writeup to come) pushed me over the edge.

You people are evil. Evil evil evil evil evil. Damn you all.

That is all.

Okay, not all. But when you throw me in that metadata briar patch, danger awaits (looks at clock). I've ranted before about the craptastic nature of the CDDB metadata, and now I'm busily going through and fixing up LibraryThing data. (I'm very picky about my metadata quality.)

The username is my usual one, of course, since it was available.

Comments

[gjules.livejournal.com]

That's why I didn't go to that panel.

[yendi]

I'm on there with my usual name, but since I haven't spent actual money on my account (and a free account is all but useless), don't expect much there. If I ever have the cash to burn, I'll eventually upgrade.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

The first D in CDDB stands for "Inaccurate." I can sometimes rely on it for pop albums, but with classical, it's usually good for a starting point to retitle every cut manually. Then I have to retitle them again in iTunes, because something in there thinks I want to concatenate every bit of information, starting with the least necessary. (I'll stop now before I duplicate my entire reply to your 2005 posting.)

[alicebentley]

I made the bare beginnings to a list, but was so distracted/disappointed by the multiple listings for single books that I just didn't take it any farther.

There's, like, ten different listings for The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, one with an incorrect author name, when I can guarantee that there are at most four possible formats (Limited edition hardcover, First Printing Tpb, Second Printing Tpb, SFBook Club HC). OK, five when you add in the German edition.

And then I tried to do an entry for Understanding Comics ...

[ckd]

Then there's the 1970 edition of one of my books that's listed as being published by Signet, or New American Library, or "A Signet Book from New American Library", or Roc. I'm not even sure the Roc imprint is that old....

[elaine-brennan.livejournal.com]

Yup. My own inaccurate data is a pain-in-the-butt every time I find some of it; I'm not convinced (however much I like the whole concept of LibraryThing) that collecting other people's inaccurate data will do anything for the quality of my life.

Lovely to see you, and I apologize for subjecting you to a rant. I should remind myself next year that I need to take more account of the heat and humidity factors when drinking and talking.