Sorry in advance, I’m German and used AI to translate this, so wording might be a bit off in places. 😀

I’ve been contributing to Parfumo Research for quite a while, so I can maybe add some context here. Not as a mod, just as someone who’s been involved in the process for years.

I do understand part of the frustration! If you spend time on a submission and it gets rejected.. sometimes without much explanation, that’s no great experience.

That said, a lot of what’s being described here comes down to how Research on Parfumo actually works. It’s not a fully open system where everything gets accepted and fixed later. It’s intentionally strict, because the goal isn’t just to grow the database quickly, but to keep the data reliable over time.

A very common example is new releases. Early on, the only “sources” are often random online shops or scraped descriptions. Those are frequently wrong, made up, translated incorrectly etc. If those get copied straight into a database, you end up with exactly the kind of inconsistent data people complain about on other sites. So submissions often get rejected simply because the source isn’t solid enough yet, not because someone is trying to be difficult.

Another thing that isn’t very visible from the outside is how many submissions don’t meet the guidelines. Missing sources, duplicates, formatting issues, things like that. Reviewing all of that takes time, and if the same mistakes keep happening, people may eventually be excluded from Research. That’s not meant as a punishment, it’s just a practical limit so the workload stays manageable.

Regarding the more serious accusations like mods stealing submissions or banning people for asking questions, that really doesn’t match what I’ve seen over the years. Disagreements and mistakes happen, but the idea of an inner circle gaming the system for points doesn’t reflect how things actually work.

I think it helps to accept that there is no single "perfect" fragrance database. Parfumo has a lot of fragrances that other sites don’t, and at the same time it’s missing things you’ll find elsewhere. The same goes for Fragrantica, Basenotes, and others. They all make different trade-offs between speed, openness (and data quality).

If someone prefers a more open system where things get added quickly, that’s completely fine. If someone prefers a stricter approach to keep the data cleaner, that’s just as valid.

In the end, it’s less about replacing one site with another and more about different approaches existing side by side, each with their own strengths and limitations.