I've created a new sub-forum to house the various submission tutorials and guides that were previously spread around the forum. I've already moved the ones I could find, so please let me know if I missed any. In time, we hope to expand these. If anyone wants to help write a new tutorial, we would be very grateful. I think there are still some mechanics here that are confusing to new users.

Some of you may have noticed that all our Amazon product links have been hidden since early December, although you could still create or edit them. This is actually directly related to a brief downtime we had on December 1st. What transpired was that Amazon's (presumably automated) systems mistook our affiliate links as "phishing collection points" and basically tried to shut our whole site down.

First, their "brand protection" partner, MarkMonitor, sent an email to our hosting provider ServInt, who then forwarded it to us. We clarified that it was a false positive and got in touch directly with MarkMonitor. Their representative confirmed over the phone that it was indeed a mistake, and that they had rejected the service request from Amazon.

But our site still went down for a few hours (possibly more for some visitors) after our DNS provider (Dyn) suspended our zone -- without prior notice -- after receiving an abuse ticket. In the end we moved our DNS hosting to another provider. A customer service officer from Amazon eventually responded to my queries, apologizing for the frustration and claiming that there was no record of phishing detected on our Amazon Associates account. Dyn took five days to reinstate our account.

The Amazon links will return once I make some technical changes (redirecting back to the album page if the links were accessed directly, for instance). But hopefully my account of this incident will help convince some people about the dangers of SOPA/PIPA legislation -- namely the removal of due process, which was the case when Dyn suspended our service indiscriminately. Imagine what it'll be like if they were legally required to do so, at the mercy of overzealous copyright enforcers with the very real possibility of false positives! At the same time I must commend our provider ServInt, not just for standing by a customer, but also for acting as a major voice in the campaign for a free Internet.

VGMdb has been chosen as February's "Website of the Month" in the current issue of Edge Magazine, a British magazine that covers gaming. This is the first time (to our knowledge) that we've been mentioned in a real print publication, so it is a humbling experience. Our appreciation goes out to all of you who have helped make us what we are.

More info (and a pic) here:

http://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=6112

We're implementing a change in the submission policy in order to increase the quality of new submissions. This will also make it easier for our staff to understand the edits so that they can intelligently accept or reject them in the queue. We have a great community here, and we appreciate all of the work that you have done, gathering and researching information for some pretty obscure albums. To keep the accuracy and quality of this information as high as we can, we'd like to ask you to take the time to follow one more step:

When you submit an edit to any field on an album or artist page, please use the discussion thread to provide a rationale for your edits.

Here are a few guidelines to help with this:

• Sources
• For many albums, the official site is the most useful source.
• Album scans are also great sources.
• Be careful with other user-submitted sites like Wikipedia or IMDB. They are probably fine for some basic information like game titles and release dates, but they are not very reliable for artist credits.
• Sites like Joshinweb, Anison Generation are good sources for vocal composition credits.
  
  Artists
• Please don't add artists to the artist fields (Composer, Arranger, Performer, Lyricist) without posting a source.
• When there are multiple artists, please show which tracks they worked on in the notes.
• All speculation and guesswork should stay in the discussion thread.
• Staff rolls are good sources, but keep in mind that soundtrack releases are not always complete.
• Composer identification by "ear" is not an eligible source. The only exceptions are for arranged tracks, where you can listen to recognize the original source, and medley tracks where you can identify the tracks played.
• Strangely, sometimes the game media is "tagged" with composition credits, and this info is valid. However, tags found in music you downloaded from some unauthorized site aren't a valid source.
• Show your work. If you pieced together the credits from 10 different games on an arranged album, don't just put those names in the artist fields. Show how the credits break down for each track.
  
  Translations
• If you change a translation, please post a reason for the change. Minor cosmetic edits (to match the tracklist in the booklet) don't need to be sourced.
  
  Japanese Names
• If you can't find a source that confirms a reading for an artist name, then leave it in Kanji.
• Don't use romanizations from a Kanji Translator for artist names.
• Romanizations from Anison Generations seem problematic, and might be auto-generated, so they also shouldn't be used.
  
  Auctions
• Sometimes an auction is all we've got for a rare album. We've allowed these in the past, but please link to the auction, and if possible, copy the text into the post.
  
  New Submissions
• Quality over quantity. One good entry is better than 100 incomplete entries.
  

Presently there isn't anything to force submitters to follow these guidelines, and I don't want there to be, so please remember to provide justification for any edits. Submissions can be rejected if no supporting information is presented. I think the main thing to take away from this is this: when an edit is made, we all need to know why the new information is correct, and why the old information is wrong. We need the opportunity to discuss changes too.

We've replaced the options dropdown menu with a customize button (the "gear" button to the right, on the subnavigation) that slides down our new preference management panel, which is divided into two halves. The settings on the left are identical to the previous dropdown. What's new are the album filtering options to the right, which work pretty much the same as the controls on advanced search. Right now filters are in effect on almost all pages except artist discographies and collections.



Advanced Search doesn't enforce the filter, but your settings will be pre-filled on the search form.

By the way, you can click the customize button again to slide the preferences back up, if you're just changing language displays on the fly.