FreeDB Moderation

FreeDB Moderations and the FreeDB Moderator

Prior to the 2004-10-10 server update, it was possible for an album to be imported into MusicBrainz from FreeDB without any human interaction or verification. This would only happen under certain circumstances described in more detail at AutoInsertFromFreeDB. When this occurred, the moderator for the AddAlbum edit was the FreeDB moderator. The FreeDB moderator was just a placeholder for these moderations; instead of being a real person, it represented the system operating in an automated, unattended fashion.

This feature was disabled after some mailing list discussion because the poor quality of the raw FreeDB entries and the frequency of duplicated entries due to bug #898903 were felt to outweigh the benefits of additional data for MusicBrainz.

Note that the effect on the rate of DiscId imports can be seen clearly on the Database Stats page (the DiscId total graph).

Nonetheless, even though the automatic addition of albums was disabled, certain elements of the implementation still remain in MusicBrainz. Notably, the addition of DiscIDs to existing albums is still supported, although this occurs very rarely, since the artist name and album title must match the FreeDB entry "exactly" (subject to some case insensitivity described in AutoInsertFromFreeDB). (Since the addition of DiscIDs to an album happens automatically, without voting, the FreeDB moderator is not used for these additions.)

Additionally, the MusicBrainz search page still retains special support for including or excluding the FreeDB moderator, and a prefined search for FreeDB Moderations is still one of the entries in the SiteMenu.

• This page is referenced from the FreeDB moderator home page; if you are moving, renaming, or redirecting this page, please (ask a MusicBrainz administrator to) update that as well.