Mobygames is great, but.... http://imageshack.us/a/img819/9852/snap1my.jpg

http://img835.imageshack.us/img835/6435/snap2ln.jpg

Long time to approve contributions .... can somebody fix it?

That's not so bad

Vedder the shredder? o_O

Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!

At least my corrections from 2009 are escalated since last August

oO 2009? TOOOOO LONG! Moderators are too lazy.

Correction: we're understaffed.

Correct, approvers do a great job. Just more of them are needed. Volunteers?

Looking at this board http://www.mobygames.com/approver-request, there are not many vacancies, so I do not think that's a real problem. The real problem lies in the fact that approvers just trying to get another points in the ranking that they forget about their responsibilities. And obligations should be in the first place. I have met several times with the situation that my contribution was rejected because the approver added the same contribution, although mine was previously in the queue.

I'm not saying this because it bothers me. I personally talked to many people who have left the MobyGames or recognize that it is not worth to register here because of the waiting time for approval. And this is a real loss.

A total of 136 vacancies is not much? Does anybody know how many approvers there are available at mobygames?

Be serious, just a few platforms are essential. In these delays are greatest. There are 4 vacancies on the PC, there are 3 vacancies on the Atari. To approve the contribution from the Atari awaits to 1 day, the PC several weeks, and sometimes months or even years. We do not know how many there are approvers. What does this mean? Approvers are poorly deployed, or not doing their jobs properly. The problem is large, like delay.

Those application pages are incredibly out-of-date. We regularly contact consistently-good contributors and ask if they'd like to join the team. Even if we don't contact you, if you're interested in helping out and feel you've proven your abilities through your submissions, you can certainly contact anyone on the approval or admin team and ask.

We can always use more help, especially considering we've had some retirements in the last year or so (though I wouldn't say I was ever particularly active as an approver). If you think you can help, it doesn't hurt to ask!

Those application pages were broken last time i've checked. So don't complain there is not enough stuff since no one new can be submit for a long time because the form does not work at all. After all this is ridiculous. Write to the top 50, maybe someone answered. Then for the next 50, until it succeeds. It can not be that someone has not approved contributions of 2008. Approvals should go according to the addition, and not by the choice of approver. So long wait discourage people from contributions - without this site will cease to grow. If you can't handle, reduce your number of platforms. WTF is WonderSwan or other Mophun? Concentrate on what's important. The MobyGames database is incredibly holes compared to sites dedicated to a single platform. Why add new unnecessary platforms if the PC ones are complete in less then 20%.

And approval queue should be public.

As it's been said if you'd like to help approve then you can contact an approver or an admin like myself. Yes we know the form to volunteer is broken but if one really wanted to help out there are other avenues listed on the site to contact us in order to volunteer.

Approvers are volunteers that help the site when they have free time to help out because they care about the site. Without knowing how the approval process works please do not judge the approvers. They do not pick and choose what to approve. They cannot approve their own entries also. The reason why the site is not open to public approving so to say is because of the standards in quality we try to maintain which is one of the strongest points of the site compare to others.

We do support a lot of platforms yes but many of those little known ones do not get a lot of entries to them so that leaves many of the popular ones to approve for as is evident by looking at the New Games page...

The longest waiting contributions are in the corrections which takes a lot of time to do extra quality control to verify the information on file is correct or not according to the submitted claim. The corrections are also only handled by admins of the site which is only a handful of people so the corrections are slow to get to because of this also.

I am thankful for the approvers we have. I welcome more people if they are interested and have proven to know the site well and have a genuine interest in helping out. If you have any more feedback please let me know.

Opening that approval queue to the public sounds like an idea. Not entirely sure if it's one of those ideas that'll backfire in your face, but an idea worth exploring nonetheless.

Speaking from experience, MobyGames is amazingly boring from a non-approver side. All the fun stuff happens at the approver side. Sometimes I do miss re-ordering screenshots and entitizing weird developer names. Damn you OCD!

Come back to this side of the fence then, dude. =)

Nah. I have Facebook and a real life :p. Besides, there should be more new blood approvers, not old blood.

What wouldn't hurt would be adding little icons to users which currently have Approver rights (same for Admins). We have those little stars for donators, so at least part of the code is there? New people just want to add stuff, not learn our chain-of-command.

Just don't make me wait until the long-announced site's face-lifting...

That, in all likelihood won't be too long from now.

This is one of those things I've wanted for awhile. It would be after the redesign though.

If I can give my 2 cents...

This site is filled with people with niche interests when it comes to games. Sure, we want the new "mainstream" games covered, but not everyone here feels adding the latest PC games is that important, while spreading knowledge on some long forgotten is a real passion project. We all know about the C64 and the NES, but the rest are also of historical significance even if they by now have all but vanished from people's minds. The Wonderswan you mentioned was one of the big players in Japan when it came to handhelds, and that is certainly worth our attention.

As for me personally, I really enjoy odd and obscure games from Japan (currently trying to focus my efforts on the ps1). The amount if energy I spend trying to even find information on some of these is staggering! But once it's here on moby, with a description (which you never find as detailed anywhere else), se screen shots and maybe even a cover scan... Then I'm happy. Dead Space 3 is on the opposite end of the spectrum for me. Google it and end up with several million hits.

So yeah, I really love the attention these "wtf" platforms get, because sometimes it's their only time in the spotlight!

Perhaps we should start considering that not all information presented here should be subject to the approval or admin queue. Well, perhaps just the hints section. Those wikia contributors are OCD insane.

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On another note, it would be nice to if we could tell which users consider themselves an expert in a particular game. A tag of sorts would be nice. Half the time the approvers and admins have never played/heard of the game, if warranted, can escalated that information to public view for users (who are not approvers) that consider themselves to know a good deal about the game.

Example:
A wants to add game 123 into game group XY. Approver B never played the game, not entirely sure if it should go in there. Escalated contribution to users who have played the game. Approver may at any time approve or reject based on comments provided by users.

Yeah, in a perfect world.

I suggested contributor "tiers" on another thread before, with contributions from trusted users of the types they're known to be particularly active and reliable in getting posted directly. Some very strict criteria, so it'll only apply to the top few and not carry any noticeable risk of reducing our reliability, but that'll clear up a large part of the queues anyway and let the approvers focus on newer and/or less active users, who are those who need checking more anyway, and are also far more likely to be disheartened by long waits.

Not really.

...and considering they're by-and-large volunteers doing so for free in their spare time, it's probably best not to try to get a precise count.

Oh, my gawd. Is that a colored pencil picture? I thought they were extinct. Haven't seen one in decades.

It's crayon, actually.

Crayon? I vaguely remember such a device. It must have existed during the time of Egyptian pharaohs, along with papyrus scrolls and rotary dial telephones.

OK kids, back to topic. So where is the recruitment center for approvers?

http://www.mobygames.com/approver-request

As mentioned is broken. Need to contact with admins.

Yep. Your best bet would be to contact an approver who is familiar with your submissions, and they can bring it up for discussion in our secret approver party forums.*

*Note: Forums are not actually party-filled.

OK, so I just wait and catch the first one how approves any of my contributions

Gotta catch 'em all

Just PM Corn Popper directly. He has the final say on it anyway.

Let me think about. - maybe later (I'm studying....).