Artist database?

[Angriff]

I'm not likely to be the first to suggest this but without a search function I don't think I can reasonably be expected to browse the entire forums

Some recent threads (the artist picture one I saw last week and this one http://www.ddrfreak.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=70476 ) really outline the need for some artist based features on the site.

Stepcharts, FAQs and whatevers are cool but what I really want to know is "Did INSERT NAME do any other songs that I don't know about?" and "Who the heck is INSERT NAME exactly?"

The DDRMAX USA booklet was really cool for that reason, obviously an artist database wouldn't be mini-interviews but you get the idea.

It would be particularly useful given the various names many of the Konami artists use, not to mention that songs often only have one credit when in fact there should be singing and music credits. Having a short bio, perhaps a few picture/links to personal sites and a list of inditivual music credits (in and out of DDR/Bemani) would be very interesting.

Gathering the information would be a fair amount of work and from what I can gather in other threads the site's staff doesn't have too much free time but I think its at least worth some thought. Perhaps users could be allowed to provide information (with references to info sources) since reviewing information is quicker than building from scratch. The actual information display part is pretty easy as long as you have a decent web programmer (and by looking at some of the site features I'd guess you do, there's alot more work that was done here than "let's install phpBB").

Well, I hope this might spark something, if not at least I wasted a few minutes while running some server monitoring apps (work).

[IguanaGrrl]

I actually really like this idea. I think that this could help improve the site a bit.
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[skie]

http://www.psn.ne.jp/~slayer/allmusic/artist/index0.html

It's in japanese, but it's very similar to what you are describing... (i think?) maybe not quite as in-depth though.
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[Angriff]

There's a great deal of information there but for people that don't read kanji fluently its a little hard to use. And altavista's babelfish isn't quite up to par with the original babelfish so there are some errors there.

That site could be used as partial reference to build an improved English equivalent, with the additions I suggested (picture, bio, perhaps links to interviews and such).

That's why I think it'd be a good idea to have a user input system (or at least to split it between many people). If die-hard fans work on gathering info on their favorite artists, they're likelier to find more things to say than someone who doesn't like that artist much (not to mention it greatly reduces the work load). I'm pretty sure if one of the people who started "The Cult of E-Rotic" put together an E-Rotic bio, it'd be more in depth than if I did it, and so on. And I wouldn't mind working on say Akira Yamaoka's since he is like a tiny god (yeah, I bought Silent Hill 3 today but I already loved his stuff from SH2 and others).

I hope other mods and admins like the idea (or parts of it). So far looks like interest is coming from the DDR radio station owners demographic

By the way, great job with those!

[[Do V] Zangief]

Heh, I suggested something similar a few months ago. Some mod/admin type said s/he had been working on it for some time and that it might eventually get done. Yahhhh.

-Pete
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Yep.