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FACTS only please!


R_Soul

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I really like this site, but I get irritated by postings by users underneath the facts which are absolutely not relevant or not factually correct. I was appalled today to read postings saying that Yoko Ono is a [bleep] and that Mark Chapman should have shot her instead of John Lennon. There's enough hate in the world without making personal attacks which have nothing, anyway, to do with the song. Is there any way the moderators/administrators can stop non-factual stuff being posted? I thought the Message Board was meant to be used for discussions about a song and yet I constantly see things like "Worst record ever", or "This is my all-time favourite". The FACTS section should be just facts.

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Welcome to the boards Martin,

When people make comments on songs they are automatically posted. We do go through and delete inappropriate comments as often as we can but you'll have to allow us some leeway in getting to them. We're going as fast as we can! Feel free to alert us via email when you find an inappropriate comment, it is helpful. :)

The message boards are provided for discussion, which invovles sharing personal opinions. Often, a thread about the "The Best or Worst Song Ever" makes for great discussion. :thumbsup: I hope you'll stay and participate.

:) Sara

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Martin, welcome to Songfacts!

Thank you for bringing your voice to concerns that have been irking me for some time.

This is a wonderful site and my apologies for the thoughtless threads and posts by some members.

There has been a fast rise in membership over the last month and moderation has not been effective nor applied.

I assure you, this will change.

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I really like this site, but I get irritated by postings by users underneath the facts which are absolutely not relevant or not factually correct. I was appalled today to read postings saying that Yoko Ono is a [bleep] and that Mark Chapman should have shot her instead of John Lennon. There's enough hate in the world without making personal attacks which have nothing, anyway, to do with the song. Is there any way the moderators/administrators can stop non-factual stuff being posted? I thought the Message Board was meant to be used for discussions about a song and yet I constantly see things like "Worst record ever", or "This is my all-time favourite". The FACTS section should be just facts.

Welcome to Songfacts Martin!

I think that "opinions" of members is important.

Facts and Comments are two different things.

While your case in point is rare and justifiably "inappropiate", however if you consider a song that is widely popular Hotel California-By the Eagles

Songfacts Link -there is many comments on this song, in fact many more comments than facts, I personally find it interesting to read so many "opinions" of meanings, theories about undetermined, unfounded and undisclosed aspects of songs and their meanings.

It's what the listeners are thinking, it's the pulse of the music-listening-community! Or at least the ones who cared to register and add their thoughts.

There is over 22,000 members, only a fraction actually make their marks here at Songfacts.

By all means send a private message to Sara or Carl if you find anything offensive in the comments of a song, if you find anything you find objectionable in the forums please contact the appropriate moderator for that forum for review.

Thanks for your concerns, and thank you for contributing to this great site.

Mike

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The point is (so I thought) the Facts section should be Facts, not opinions - particularly when they are insulting/personal attacks on the artist. I thought discussion about songs (their merits, or otherwise) was meant to be in the Disussion section. Also, people are posting things as "facts" when they are nothing but erroneous and misleading statements. Therefore, once you have spotted this in relation to songs you know something about (e.g. in my case many Beatles' songs) then you cannot be really sure if what you read (i.e. about another song) is factually correct or not!!! For me, it devalues the purpose of what is otherwise an excellent site.

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The point is (so I thought) the Facts section should be Facts, not opinions - particularly when they are insulting/personal attacks on the artist. I thought discussion about songs (their merits, or otherwise) was meant to be in the Disussion section. Also, people are posting things as "facts" when they are nothing but erroneous and misleading statements. Therefore, once you have spotted this in relation to songs you know something about (e.g. in my case many Beatles' songs) then you cannot be really sure if what you read (i.e. about another song) is factually correct or not!!! For me, it devalues the purpose of what is otherwise an excellent site.

Martin,

Maybe I misunderstand you, I was referring to Facts vs. Comments for a given song. Facts are submitted and verified to be accurate by the board adminstrator. Comments on the other hand are unsubstantiated and an example might be... "this song was played too much on radio" or "I think the lyrics of this song are very similar to a song by another artist" or even, "my first date, this song was playing on the radio".

These are comments, and are common types of comments.

Again if you see comments that "you feel" are inappropiate please let Carl, Sara or one of us moderators know and we we forward this on to the adminstration of this site for review. It is the admistrators that decide what is and is not appropiate for this site. I hope my response has been helpful.

Mike

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Am I banging my head against a brick wall here?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with posting opinions. My point has been in relation to the factual accuracy of the postings made, the relevance of the postings made and the personal attacks made on artists which have nothing to do with the song, per se. [see my post about the insulting comments made about Yoko Ono at the beginning of this.] All this serves to do is devalue the site and the actual facts that are posted.

The note at the top of the Songfacts page for each song says: "You can leave comments about the SONG at the bottom of the page." I personally do not see that (an erroneous) discussion about Ringo's age, an attack on Yoko Ono, or someone saying "this sucks" complies with leaving a comment (not an opinion) about the song. I have also just been reading an interesting (not) discussion about Paul and Heather McCartney's relationship/age difference under "Here Come The Sun".

Also, this site is called "songfacts", not "songopinions" or "songattacks", but "songfacts". I rest my case.

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Martin, you're absolutely right when you say we should not have personal attacks or worthless statements like "this sucks" in the comments. We try to weed those out, but they sometimes slip by. We'll look for the Yoko comment and try to get rid of it. (Yoko is a distant second to Courtney Love when it comes to rock wife hatred, BTW)

I think the comments are a great place for interpretations, opinions, and interesting tidbits about songs that we cannot verify. I hope you'll agree that a lot of the comments are interesting reading, even if you don't agree with them.

A note on how we police the comments -

With songs by groups like The Beatles, there is lots of room for interpretation, and that's what we hope for. On songs by someone like Avril Lavigne, we allow more leeway - we might let someone post "I H8 this song" for "Sk8er Boi" because we think it's funny.

We would like to hear about it if there is some clearly inappropriate stuff in the comments.

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"we might let someone post "I H8 this song" for "Sk8er Boi" because we think it's funny."

That is funny!

And I will have to agree with the Yoko being a distant second to Love, because (insert ironic sense of humor here) Love's a slutty **** :jester:(seriously though, she is :laughing:)

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I truly, with every fiber of my being, H8 S8er Boi, but I would not post that in the facts section. I save it for the message boards, which were designed to be the opinion area. Most of the people who post comments of hate on the FACTS section never post in the boards. They come on, post "Yoko Sucks" or whatever, then crawl away. And I hope away they stay.

I actually typed S8er Boi. My IQ just dropped 30 points. :stars:

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OK....I feel a bit of support for my views now, so I can calm down a bit! The song with the insulting comments about Yoko is under "Yesterday". It seems to come about because the song's composer [McCartney] wants the credit changed from Lennon/McCartney to McCartney/Lennon. The comment about the composer credit is relevant to the song. The attack on Yoko is completely unnecessary and unwarranted.

Also, when researching "Get Back" yesterday, I noticed another nasty, pointless comment aimed in Yoko's direction: "[Yoko] is the most useless person that ever existed". Apart from being able to name 100 people off the top of my head who would deserve that title more than Yoko, is anyone able to to enlighten me as to what this has to do with "Get Back" (notwithstanding John Lennon's unsubstantiated view that he thought McCartney was singing to Yoko: "Get back to where you once belonged"]? What exactly is it that Yoko Ono is supposed to have done that warrants such postings from visitors to this site? Split up a pop group? [Which she didn't...and even if she did, she should receive credit for it.]

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OK....I feel a bit of support for my views now, so I can calm down a bit! The song with the insulting comments about Yoko is under "Yesterday". It seems to come about because the song's composer [McCartney] wants the credit changed from Lennon/McCartney to McCartney/Lennon. The comment about the composer credit is relevant to the song. The attack on Yoko is completely unnecessary and unwarranted.

Also, when researching "Get Back" yesterday, I noticed another nasty, pointless comment aimed in Yoko's direction: "[Yoko] is the most useless person that ever existed". Apart from being able to name 100 people off the top of my head who would deserve that title more than Yoko, is anyone able to to enlighten me as to what this has to do with "Get Back" (notwithstanding John Lennon's unsubstantiated view that he thought McCartney was singing to Yoko: "Get back to where you once belonged"]? What exactly is it that Yoko Ono is supposed to have done that warrants such postings from visitors to this site? Split up a pop group? [Which she didn't...and even if she did, she should receive credit for it.]

SEE MUSIC DISCUSSION FORUM ~ LENNON/MCCARTNEY AND YOKO

I wanted to respond but thought it better to continue in an appropiate forum

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Carl/Sara,

Can I just say how impressed I am with the way you have dealt with this. I have never visited a site like this before where the moderators are really actively involved, actually listen to 'the people', and take the required action. So.."thank YOU".

If I spot any others, I'll drop you an e-mail rather than doing it through this forum, but I have also enjoyed the experience of exchanging views about this, so the whole this has been positive. [Also thought it was funny/ironic that "Dick" got [bleeped] (in the Music Discussion about Lennon/McCartney) even though used perfectly correctly!]

Cheers,

Martin

X

P.S. Yoko says "Thanks", too!!!

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