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BuriedUnborn
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:01 pm
Posts: 318
Location: Inside your house
PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 6:59 pm 
 

There are a lot of bands with "unknown status" in the archives, which usually means that the band stopped postin on social media or it never had any social media and it was formed at least 5 years ago, or because they dissapeared from the local scene, whatever happened to those bands we just don't know.

Now, there are a lot of old bands (formed in the late 80s/ or the 90s/00s) that are marked as unknown, and all of them share at least one of the conditions I've mentioned above. Some bands have been marked as unknown already years ago, like Silent Hill; the remaining band members never gave a statement about the status of the band, but it's very hard to believe that they are still active after 10 years. Sure, there might be some bands that just stopped posting or never cared about social media and just play like one or two gigs per year, but these are most probably rare.

Now my point is: if a band has been marked as unknown, and there is no recorded activity of it from the last 3 to 4 years, should it be marked as split-up? Because I don't see the point on marking a band as unknown after 10 years of apparent inactivity.
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Midnightwards666
Heavy Metal C-3PO

Joined: Tue Aug 02, 2011 7:05 am
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Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 7:31 pm 
 

This is not an answer or instruction but my view regarding the status:

The "unknown" status is an indicator of a long period of inactivity and often suggests the band is likely finished, but without the band having made any official statement confirming their end... as such, no one can say for sure what happened. We're also unable to confirm if the band is on a very long hiatus or definitely finished... so in the scenarios you mentioned, I think "unknown" is still the far better option.

Even when a band is very likely done with music, I think marking the band as "unknown" instead of "split-up" is a great way of indicating that the band's activity fizzled out without any definite ending, while simultaneously avoiding to be a website that speculates. If you had said 30 years, you might have had a case... but 10 years is still too short.
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Midnight Rider
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2016 6:07 pm
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 7:58 pm 
 

BuriedUnborn wrote:
Now my point is: if a band has been marked as unknown, and there is no recorded activity of it from the last 3 to 4 years, should it be marked as split-up? Because I don't see the point on marking a band as unknown after 10 years of apparent inactivity.

Absolutely no. Derigin gave a detailed answer to this back in 2014:

Derigin wrote:
When a band is "split-up" or it has "changed name" then we know that band in that form is no longer active. Likewise, when a band is labeled "active" then it is, as the term suggests, an active band. The same is true for bands that we know are "on hold;" they're still active in the sense that the artist has the intention to continue to work on it, even if later on it is decided to instead end it for good. At least while it is "on hold" there's the expectation that the band will be active again someday. The "unknown" status is simply a placeholder until (or if) it can ever be confirmed the band is active or not. For reasons unknown to us there is no news from the band one-way-or-another to confirm that the band is "active," "split-up" or even simply "on hold." This could be the case for a myriad of reasons. For example, the band may be from a time before the Internet, so there's nothing online about them and nobody who contributes here has heard from the band in years. It might be assumed that the band is dead, but hey, you never know if there's a bunch of 50 years old dudes out there still meeting up and playing music as the band. In other cases, there's been no news about the band in a while and it's entirely possible that they drifted apart and never decided to "split-up" or let people know the band is dead. Or maybe they're still active or "on hold." Or even maybe one band member says it "split-up," and another says it's "active," and no one can make sense of the situation. We just have no idea. The hope is that one day someone might know for certain and fill us in.

So why do we lump them in with the "active" bands? Well, we do know for certain that bands that are now "unknown" were previously "active." That's a certainty and not an assumption. Running on assumptions for our facts is not the most ideal way to run a credible repository of information, so we consider it a safe bet if we lump it in, in the category we know for certain it was last in. The other reason is a more nuanced one; it is more damaging for a band to be falsely labeled as "split-up" than it is to be falsely labeled as "active." Now, granted, we aren't here to cater to bands or artists, but we do respect that our actions may have an impact on how a band is perceived. If we want to remain credible and trustworthy then we can't go around making guesswork out of what the status of bands are, as well as what bands are up to. For our sake, and often the band's sake and the sake of our visitors, it's better to have outdated information than it is to present incorrect info.

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BuriedUnborn
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:01 pm
Posts: 318
Location: Inside your house
PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2018 9:40 pm 
 

Ok, I understand. But there are a lot of obscure bands which are marked as "disbanded" (with an unknown finish date) even if there isn't any source to confirm it, I guess you can take an obscure band from the 80s/90s that only released a demo as disbanded because it's been too long and you never heard of that band anymore, but as Derigin said, they might still be active playing songs in a garage.

What about those bands? Some examples can be Faethon, Votum, Incarnator, or and thousands of others, I don't think anybody has been able to contact the band members or take info from the internet because of how obscure those bands are.
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Midnight Rider
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2016 6:07 pm
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 12:08 am 
 

BuriedUnborn wrote:
Ok, I understand. But there are a lot of obscure bands which are marked as "disbanded" (with an unknown finish date) even if there isn't any source to confirm it, I guess you can take an obscure band from the 80s/90s that only released a demo as disbanded because it's been too long and you never heard of that band anymore, but as Derigin said, they might still be active playing songs in a garage.

...and for that very reason the benefit of the doubt is what prevails. Even if the "garage" situation may be the reality for only a couple of bands, we simply don't know.

BuriedUnborn wrote:
(...)What about those bands? I don't think anybody has been able to contact the band members or take info from the internet because of how obscure those bands are.

Let them be, it’s fine. Trust me, trying to get information for these cases can be frustrating and time consuming. Besides, you may get into trouble if not all the band members share the same point of view towards the status of a band (assuming that there will be willingness to pronunciate about it on the first place). Some people just don't want to be asked and we must respect the desire of bands/artists to not clarify their status and remain silent until some official information surfaces. As Derigin said, we lost credibility as an Enciclopedia if we make assumptions that may turn out to be false, therefore, doing unnecessary damage on how bands are perceived outside.

There are 7000+ bands under the "unknown" status. That’s only 5% of the bands accepted on M.A.
While I appreciate your concern on this, there are better ways to focus your energy if you want to keep contributing to the site.

Hope this works for you.

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BuriedUnborn
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2017 12:01 pm
Posts: 318
Location: Inside your house
PostPosted: Thu Sep 27, 2018 11:49 pm 
 

Ok.

I've just got a little suggestion that isn't very useful but could make things better:

When you check a band's line-up, if a member is/was part of a band marked as "unknown", he will be featured as an ex-member "example: ex-Nocturnal Rites", but if you check the artist's page, he will be featured as an active member of the band.

I suggest that in these cases, the band should be featured with a ? (ex: Nocturnal Rites?), and in the artist's page there could be an "Unknown" tab.

Just that. Thanks for the replies by the way.
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Midnight Rider
Metalhead

Joined: Fri Jul 22, 2016 6:07 pm
Posts: 400
PostPosted: Fri Sep 28, 2018 7:57 am 
 

We'll discuss it briefly. You're welcome =)

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