Bart--

You're right that things would be better in the Prince information on the internet world if Prince hadn't gone on his one site to rule them all thing years ago, and people hadn't folded and walked away from the table. However, I'm thankful for those who are working now, even though what they've produced isn't perfect. The community of 15 years ago doesn't exist anymore, unfortunately, and if the work wasn't carried forward over the years, then whatever happens has to happen now, using the people who are still around and interested. I can't really contribute much, but if anyone could (like you, possibly)--go for it.

It would be nice if there were an obvious way to submit info to Princevault and effect changes in entries. If there is a submission process, I'm unaware of it.

[Edited 4/18/14 13:10pm]

madhouseman said:

Volume 4 (1996)

Issue 5

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Hmmm, taking pictures might not be the most efficient or ideal way.
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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I'm gonna check if I can find a cheap scanner somewhere.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

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Because you're doing it wrong. Shit like that is supposed to be a collaborative project.

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IMHO there are two problems:

- Things like PrinceVault and detailed discographies shouldn't bestarting now, they shoudl have been started 10/15 years ago and evolved along the way, with evidence backing up each entry etc.

- They also should not the work of just one guy or a small group, but of a community. IMHO things like this should be alike to software; we should be doing this via the likes of Github and simply supplying "patches" (i.e. missing information) or forking the existing "code" so it could be reformatted to fit another purpose. But again, this too should have been started ages ago and plenty of the knowledgeable people have simply left the scene.

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I maintain that if P hadn't been an ass we could have created some amazing stuff, the P fan community from 1995-early 2000s had some amazing people who surely would have come up with numerous solutions to problems which then could have resulted in software that other musician fan sites could use to structure information etc.

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And I don't remember that Mason Vault at all: what was it and when was it closed???

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Something like PrinceText, except with tons of articles and reviews etc. I don't remember when it got closed or why, I think Warren wanted to be part of the "Collective" back in 1996/97 but IIRC by then it was already gone for a while. I recall something like the Electric Sun project but I don't think anything ever came from that.

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TV was amazing, imagine being a P fan in the mid-1990s, coming online and discovering this huge treasure trove of articles you'd barely heard about. Ugh, I've got boxes full of 1980s era articles and reviews etc. which I'd hoped to be able to transcribe one day.

U're right and wrong at the same time.

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The main problem is that there's a problem of trust among US that's got little to do with P (even though his shit certainly didn't help).

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2 examples:

1/ Both the defunct open wikis Priince.com and the org's own Princepedia: the minute they were open rookie fans started to fill 'em with a whole bunch of nonsense straight out of tabloids. These wikis were a shameful MESS, so yeah I thought I'd rather do my discography on my own.

2/ At first I noticed some inaccurate and missing data on Princevault and wrote them an email to say "hey, I noticed this and that" and a very nice guy answered me to say "OK, cool, thanks, I'll take this into account", and we traded a few emails to send more info/corrections, then one day I unfortunately sent them an info about a promo version of a track that I now acknowledge to have been mistaken (but at that point it seemed accurate) and told the guy that my info was approximative but at least was backed up with this and that for what it was worth, and in that same email (silly me! u don't fight the dogma) I very politely told him that I disagreed about a very subjective stand they were taking regarding 2 songs. After that I've NEVER heard from that guy or anyone at Princevault again, even after sending at least another email to signal (legit) mistakes. I actually wish we could work together a bit more because I notice small mistakes/omissions on their site quite often but what's the point if they won't even answer...

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NOW where u're wrong is because it's up to EACH and EVERY ONE of us to make it a collaborative effort again!

Again, 2 examples:

1/ Boris on HQ did an awesome list of officially released audio recordings back in 2008 (not 1996!) and asked people to help proofreading it and that ended-up being one of the most reliable source of infos available at the time thanks to a collaborative effort.

2/ I'm not doing my discog as alone as u'd think. It happened SO MANY times that contributors on this very forum suddenly came up with verified info that had been missed by even the best sources so far (Nilsen, Boris) I do use those infos. When I have a question or doubts I create a thread here to ask the question and most of the time I end-up getting the info I need thanks to cool orgers. And even better every once in a while I get an email from someone telling me "I noticed a mistake here" or "I think u missed something there". So I can tell u my discog IS a collaborative effort.

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So my point is that if there's a Prince research collaborative unit left it's the Org, and if we'd stop talking shit and bashing each other and focused on trading reliable info, this website could be what HQ used to be at some point: DEDICATED. But even though... In the middle of all the crap I read here I still find precious new info every week or so, and have nice devoted fans helping me when I need help.

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Also (and I'm saying it to the new generation of mods: Militant and OldFriends4Sale r u listening?) if people who did HARD DEVOTED RESEARCH work such as SciFiFilmNerd did in 2009 hadn't been ignored by the mods (we were many to ask for his posts to be stickies but instead the mods back then preferred to make stickies with Prince's tax problems), maybe some people would still be here. This guy made the most up-to-date and comprehensive list of Prince recording sessions, and the deepest articles ever published about the whole 93-96 era and he posted them here for free and... the threads were just, well... ignored by the mods despite a popular demand for them to be archived as the precious and valuable data they were: that's sad. This being said I think it was Luv4u who made a sticky of the 2013 page of my discog last January, and that was really a good surprise for me and it seems it announced a change of policy regarding research threads, so thanks for that and please mods keep promoting research over gossip!

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So u're right and wrong at the same time. It's up to US.

- Princevault could and should indeed be communicating with us here instead of being mute as they are. I think of all people they'd be respected here the same way Boris was (never seen anyone bashing Boris) so why wouldn't they drop by and say hello and ask for some help/proofreading?

- I DO ask for proofreading, please go on my site and see what's wrong!

- More people could and should spontaneoulsy help us proofreading our respective sites and sending us emails.

- More people could try and make more threads about FACTS and less threads about OPINIONS here.

- The mods could keep encouraging serious research threads a bit more.

EddieC said:

It would be nice if there were an obvious way to submit info to Princevault and effect changes in entries. If there is a submission process, I'm unaware of it.

In the top right-hand corner of the PrinceVault home page there is a link to email:

contact@princevault.com

langebleu said:

EddieC said:

It would be nice if there were an obvious way to submit info to Princevault and effect changes in entries. If there is a submission process, I'm unaware of it.

In the top right-hand corner of the PrinceVault home page there is a link to email:

contact@princevault.com

Well, that's just too obvious!

BartVanHemelen said:

madhouseman said:

The biggest thing I am missing are certain issues of PRINCE FAMILY NEWSLETTER. If you know of anyone who has some of them, let me know. There is one year (and a few scattered others) that I am missing and those were excellent sources of obscure information.

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Pretty sure I've got them all stored away somewhere (bought them all back in the mid-1990s when I became a subscriber). Not digitally of course; really wish Diana had done a digital dump when she called it quits and put all of her archive out there.

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Ugh, so much P history is lost in dusty archives. Still hoping one day someone will find the urge to actually compile it all and deliver the definitive compilation of all things P.

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Lemme know what you need; I don't have a scanner but I do have a decent photo camera so I should be able to provide you with legible pics of what you need.

I had a ton of them and scanned them all back in 2007. It's on an old external hard drive.

If you listen closely, the synth line sounds a lot like the one from "I Would Die 4 U".

langebleu said:

EddieC said:

It would be nice if there were an obvious way to submit info to Princevault and effect changes in entries. If there is a submission process, I'm unaware of it.

In the top right-hand corner of the PrinceVault home page there is a link to email:

contact@princevault.com

U part of the Pvault team aintcha?

databank said:

1/ Boris on HQ did an awesome list of officially released audio recordings back in 2008 (not 1996!) and asked people to help proofreading it and that ended-up being one of the most reliable source of infos available at the time thanks to a collaborative effort.

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Sure, but that is an inefficient process. The Github way or working via a wiki-like system where people can contribute but a committee approves or disproves (and edits) contributions would be far better -- note that this process hsoudl happen in the open, so others can see what has been discussed before and why something was rejected or altered.

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The other reason for it to be open is that info like this should not be considered as "yours". You deserve credit for contributions, of course, but in the end the goal is to advance the knowlegde of fans. Boris' discography was undoubtedly great, but it vanished along with HQ. ChronicFreeze's Q&A on the Org: gone (by his request, of course, but still). Uptown's archive, Pierre Igot's archives, The Prince Family's archives, the PPML's archives: gone. alt.music.prince: available through a couple of web interfaces, but heavily fragmented and edited because knowledgeable sources like T included headers that made their posts vanish from usenet servers after a couple of weeks.

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In a way things are much harder now than back when Uptown started their work: they could access physical archives. Sure, that wasn't always easy but they existed. But try to find articles published online only in 1999 for instance: good luck with that. I've got a ton of HDs lying around that undoubtedly contain plenty of "valuable" stuff, and chances are I'll never get through them because there is just so much.

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Also (and I'm saying it to the new generation of mods: Militant and OldFriends4Sale r u listening?) if people who did HARD DEVOTED RESEARCH work such as SciFiFilmNerd did in 2009 hadn't been ignored by the mods (we were many to ask for his posts to be stickies but instead the mods back then preferred to make stickies with Prince's tax problems), maybe some people would still be here. This guy made the most up-to-date and comprehensive list of Prince recording sessions, and the deepest articles ever published about the whole 93-96 era and he posted them here for free and... the threads were just, well... ignored by the mods despite a popular demand for them to be archived as the precious and valuable data they were: that's sad.

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But in the end these threads were at the wrong place in the wrong format. That is part of the problem: that the fans with the technical skills can't be arsed to provide custom solutions and thus we have people like him simply creating these long threads when they really should be wiki entries etc. (but wiki markup is IMHO needlessly complicated).

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That is part of the problem: that we are still in this "ooh isn't X wonderful" phase where fans who provide detailed discogs are celebrated. They deserve that praise, but at a certain point we gotta realise that the point isn't the work that fan put in, but the discog itself. Instead of restarting this work over and over again, it should simply exist and be improved upon, and that won't work when it is linked to a "personality".

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- More people could try and make more threads about FACTS and less threads about OPINIONS here.

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IMHO all fluff threads should be relagated to a "Prince: More" group, and "Prince: Music" should simply stick to the facts. And yes, "P has released song X" threads where people spout opinion do belong to the fluff.

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And "Prince: Music" should be heavily policed, with bans for people who abuse that group.

langebleu said:

EddieC said:

It would be nice if there were an obvious way to submit info to Princevault and effect changes in entries. If there is a submission process, I'm unaware of it.

In the top right-hand corner of the PrinceVault home page there is a link to email:

contact@princevault.com

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Email is the wrong format for such a thing. Part of the point of a wiki is that the debate of the contents is public. (See my post just above for more of my thoughts.)

BartVanHemelen said:

langebleu said:

In the top right-hand corner of the PrinceVault home page there is a link to email:

contact@princevault.com

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Email is the wrong format for such a thing. Part of the point of a wiki is that the debate of the contents is public. (See my post just above for more of my thoughts.)

Agreed. What you describe would be better. A wiki with committee would be better--but people have to take on that task. It's work--as would be your digitizing the material you have. So, who is gonna do it?

BartVanHemelen said:

madhouseman said:

Volume 4 (1996)

Issue 5

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Hmmm, taking pictures might not be the most efficient or ideal way.
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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[img:$uid]http://i.imgur..../img:$uid]
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I'm gonna check if I can find a cheap scanner somewhere.

Nice--but, yeah, not ideal. It would be great for this stuff to be available to everyone (which, let's be honest, mostly means I WANT IT!!)

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

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But in the end these threads were at the wrong place in the wrong format. That is part of the problem: that the fans with the technical skills can't be arsed to provide custom solutions and thus we have people like him simply creating these long threads when they really should be wiki entries etc. (but wiki markup is IMHO needlessly complicated).

.

That is part of the problem: that we are still in this "ooh isn't X wonderful" phase where fans who provide detailed discogs are celebrated. They deserve that praise, but at a certain point we gotta realise that the point isn't the work that fan put in, but the discog itself. Instead of restarting this work over and over again, it should simply exist and be improved upon, and that won't work when it is linked to a "personality".

.

- More people could try and make more threads about FACTS and less threads about OPINIONS here.

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IMHO all fluff threads should be relagated to a "Prince: More" group, and "Prince: Music" should simply stick to the facts. And yes, "P has released song X" threads where people spout opinion do belong to the fluff.

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And "Prince: Music" should be heavily policed, with bans for people who abuse that group.

I kinda agree with all that analysis of urs.

I've asked the mods for a "music" without the "more" forum once in the Org Discussion forum and they said it wouldn't happen.

As for my discogs I can only answer for 2 things:

- I chose 2 create this new "databank" alias when I started it so this project would stay separate from my real person and my online presence as a writer: I didn't want people to think I was trying to use P's work for my own publicity.

- My site will NOT go down and I WON'T give it up, ever. Unless I abruptly die (can happen, but unlikely) I WILL finish it and before I eventually die (I still have about 40 years of life expectation, and if I die earlier from cancer or shit hopefully I'll see it coming), I'll make sure a few devoted fans have been given the leys to the car so it won't disappear or stop being updated.

But in the end everything u say makes perfect sense. We actually COULD create such a wiki with strong moderation, but the problem is that with Princevault around it would be a bit odd to have 2 coexisting projects, don't u think?

databank said:

But in the end everything u say makes perfect sense. We actually COULD create such a wiki with strong moderation, but the problem is that with Princevault around it would be a bit odd to have 2 coexisting projects, don't u think?

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That is my point, yes. And all info should be released under a Creative Commons license so it can be re-used by others in case PV goes down.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

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That is my point, yes. And all info should be released under a Creative Commons license so it can be re-used by others in case PV goes down.

I think people have too different ideas about what constitutes facts for this to work. I like PrinceVaults conservative approach.

BartVanHemelen said:

madhouseman said:

Volume 4 (1996)

Issue 5

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Hmmm, taking pictures might not be the most efficient or ideal way.
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I'm gonna check if I can find a cheap scanner somewhere.

Thank you very much. I've printed this one out. I am really trying to get this book done in the next few months to take advantage of the press that Prince coming back to WB is going to get, so this sort of thing is great. Thanx.

paulludvig said:

BartVanHemelen said:

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That is my point, yes. And all info should be released under a Creative Commons license so it can be re-used by others in case PV goes down.

I think people have too different ideas about what constitutes facts for this to work. I like PrinceVaults conservative approach.

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I don't call articles like this conservative: http://www.princevault.co...II_and_III That is basically taking some BS Prince mentioned in a press release and repeating it, and ignoring the fact that record companies don't consider "old crap I had laying around" as valid album proposals.

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Considering that we know plenty about what happened when P delivered TV:OF4S and C&D to WB and that there is no actual trace of these three Vault albums (artwork, tracklists,...), I find this article (and especially the speculation WRT the tracks that were supposed to be included) mostly lacking in value.

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They recently added that Andy Allo did the background vocals for The Breakdown, yet when you look at the history of the page there's no source for that fact -- and yes, there is a source: a Facebook post by Andy Allo.