The site will be going down tonight for some maintenance at around 11 pm EDT (3 am UTC). We will be upgrading the database server software to a new version. Hopefully this won't take too long, or break anything, but it's hard to say with these things.

EDIT: Alright, all done, and things seem to be in order. Let me know if you see anything that looks broken. It seems like it might be a little slow, I'll see if I can adjust some settings tomorrow.

-HellBlazer

For all its awesomeness and virtues, ever since v2 went live about three years ago there has been a constant issue with inaccurate or plain nonsensical album (recording) lineups. Although this issue stems directly from the very possibility and ease of adding such data, it is not a technical concern. It lies with the userbase.

Even though it should be rather obvious that only correct and verified data should be added to the Archives, and even though there is an even more obvious reminder about this visible when editing album lineups, many people abuse this option for quickly acquiring points through considerable numbers of useless updates. This practise is hardly news, but it has found a new and very annoying instrument with album lineups.

Now, obviously the aforementioned infestation of blatant point-whores is a very important concern. However, the main reason I'm writing this is because there are some people who do have good intentions, but misunderstand what exactly is meant by officially sourced album lineups. There have been many instances of users believing it is permissible to make certain educated guesses based on a band's main lineup and the year ranges and then transmute these into a "probable" constellation of artists for (a) specific release(s). THIS IS NOT THE CASE. For starters, even with short-lived bands with no past members and only one release there can be numerous permutations, such as one member not performing on the album or others playing slightly different roles.

So yeah, there it is. Repeated failure to observe this very simple rule and/or especially unapologetic point-whoring can get your account banned, whatever your intentions. If you have added questionable guesswork lineups in the past, it would be in the site's best interest (and yours, naturally) to flag these instances for review with the report function.

So let me reiterate, very clearly: Only use trustworthy, ideally official and explicit sources for adding album lineups. That includes album booklets, discography sections on the band's website, Bandcamp pages, reviews including additional info about the release, etc... DO NOT make guesses, even "educated" ones. If you cannot be sure about a lineup, leave it blank. Having no information is preferable to having incorrect information. We do not want guesswork data to be presented as fact on the site (and inaccuracies disguised as truth to spread from here), and this is exactly what ignoring the above leads to. Let's all try to keep this wonderful site accurate and professional, as opposed to a cesspool of lazy misinformation, shall we?

Thank you for your comprehension and contributions.

-Azmodes

Hey, we're gonna try something new. As many of you may know, this weekend is the Bloodstock Festival in the UK. I learned today that the fest will actually offer a live stream of the shows on the main stage, and it's possible for third-party websites to embed the video. This seems like it could be of interest to a lot of MA visitors so... here you go. Also, here is the Bloodstock forum thread for those who want to comment.

EDIT: The fest is over so I removed the video stream.

-HellBlazer

We have now reached an incredible 90,000 bands listed in the database! Needless to say, a gargantuan thank you from the owners and the staff goes out to all contributors who made this possible.

The magic six digits aren't too far away now, onwards to 100,000!

-Azmodes

Once again apologies for the sad state of the site today. We are aware that it's very slow or even unresponsive, and our host is looking into the problem. Nothing has been perfect since the server crash earlier this month, and believe me we are as sick of this situation as you are. We will try to get everything back to normal as soon as possible.

-HellBlazer

As mentioned in the post below, there are still performance issues to take care of, as the site performance hasn't been the most optimal since the crash recovery. So we'll have a short server maintenance update tonight, at around 1 AM EST. The update should not take long, and should revert the server configuration to what it was (or closer to it, at least) before the crash, so it will hopefully help with the sporadic downtimes and slowness we've been experiencing lately.

Once again sorry for the troubles, and thank you for your understanding.

-Morrigan

To the best of our knowledge, the bugs or glitches left over from the backup restoration (search engine, label pages, etc.) have been fixed and the site is now fully functional.

There may be some minor performance issues from time to time, as many of our server tweaks haven't been configured yet, but they should hopefully not be too noticeable and will be fixed in the next few days.

We once again apologize for the inconvenience.

-Morrigan

So a partition on our server was corrupted earlier today. Our host worked hard at rebuilding the system and getting the site back online, and we had a backup from this morning, but unfortunately some data entered in the few hours after the last backup may have been lost.

As of right now, some parts of the site are still broken: the search isn't working (except the Google search), label pages are not loading, among other things. We are doing our best right at this instant to fix all these problems, so we ask for your patience.

We know the site stability hasn't been the best lately, and we apologize for that: this is the biggest issue we've had in a while, but hardware failures are random and beyond our control (in other words: "shit happens"). Hopefully this is the last of our problems for a while.

We will post more updates as soon as we have them. Thank you for your patience and comprehension.

EDIT: the search is back, at least. Still working on other issues.

-Morrigan

Just a heads up that the site will be going down soon for a short time while some maintenance is going on the server. It should be back quickly.

EDIT: Everything is fine now.

-HellBlazer

### IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR ALL BAND SUBMITTERS ###

As of this new year of 2013, we have now changed our policy concerning the band approval process.

Before today, bands were required to have a physical album before being eligible. Since digital distribution is becoming more and more widespread, we have decided to now accept bands who release their music entirely through digital medium.

However, this does not mean we accept any bands with a few songs on Myspace or Youtube. Only bands with serious digital albums will be accepted. I urge all band contributors to revisit the rules and guidelines page for the details of what kind of digital albums are considered acceptable.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused to the contributors who may have recently deleted their drafts of bands which, despite having no physical album, may have had a valid digital album. If you had a very detailed draft and deleted it recently, it might be possible to restore it. Please post in this forum thread about such a matter.

Note that after much time spent rejecting a number of non-metal bands, we have also put in writing some additional examples of what kind of music we do not consider acceptable for this site (j-rock, djent, post-hardcore, etc.). This is not a change of policy, but just a matter of clarification for those confused users out there who may think these styles as metal.

To all our contributors and visitors: thank you again for all the great work, and we hope 2013 will be another great year for the Encyclopaedia as it continues to grow and prove itself to be the greatest online resource for heavy metal.

-Morrigan