The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #34673 Message #469270
Posted By: Joe Offer
24-May-01 - 01:24 AM
Thread Name: Correct the Digital Tradition
Subject: RE: Correct the Digital Tradition
As Murray stated, there ARE dozens of incorrect lyrics in the Digital Tradition. That's because the people who submitted the lyrics goofed them up. It's important to be careful about submitting lyrics, and to use writted sources whenever possible (and tell us where you got the lyrics). If you transcribe frm a recording or if you are posting from memory, tell us that. We also get lots of demands for corrections to the Digital Tradition for corrections that aren't sigificant, or for corrections that are incorrect, or for corrections that are just different versions of the songs we have. Dick used to like to include lyrics exactly as submitted, because he felt he had a duty to honor the work of the person who submitted the lyrics. We've pushed away from that in recent years, particularly with composed (not traditional) songs. We are making better efforts to include proper songwriter attribution and copyright information. It's easier to submit new songs than it is to submit corrections, but we're working on that.
If you think a song in the database needs correction, post the whole song (with all Digital Tradition formatting), not just the corrections that need to be made - include comments that explain where the corrections are, or put the corrections in bold if you can. It's best to post the corrected lyrics in an existing thread on the song, but you can start a new one if there isn't an existing thread. If you want to correct several songs, you might want to start a thread and call it DT corrections, making sure that you post only one song per message in that thread, and that you put Correction & the song title in the message title. It's probably best not to post a single song all by itself in a thread - solitary songs tend to get lost, especially if the harvesters aren't working on the day you post.
It really helps if you post songs in the Digital Tradition format, which is explained in the FAQ.