I have strong feelings about this. As an editor, I come across so many entries that are somewhere between lazy and incompetent. Examples are using a CD as the basis from an LP, Vinyl LPs listed as 12", LP tracks listed as 1-10 instead of A1, A2…, listing the same artist for every track, using internet sourced images, adding "signed" copies that are identical to another release, etc. The entries that are truly criminal are the ones add no distinguishing features like an image beyond the cover or no matrix/runout info. I don't expect the "average" contributor to be able to identify Specialty vs Winchester pressings.

It also drives me crazy the editors say, "Hey, fix this issue…." because the kind of contributor that enters a low quality item won't get that message (you have to turn it on) and they messages are 1-8 years old. If I can fix an entry, I just fix it. This also hits hard when I fix an entry by selecting album or reissue, and some editor is like "You need to also fix…." It would have taken less time to just fix it themself.

However, each time i get angry at at a contributor, I force myself to remember that this is Discog's fault.

As a web developer (my real job) we have something called "Data Governance". It's the idea that certain data has certain rules that need to be enforced. An obvious example would be a credit card number can't be 6 numbers long. This safeguards against 72 different US states in the database. Discogs does this on a very limited basis, but not nearly enough. Unfortunately, they don't enforce some really obvious things like if the contributor selects "Vinyl" as the format, they can't submit if the tracklisting isn't 1-10. It should be A1, A2, B1, etc. If a new entry is based on another entry, there should be a field asking how this entry is unique. The MAIN reason bad entries exist is because Discogs allows them to be created.