Why Can't I add items without a link?

Mods can you please add

Name: Ken Multi MOD-SS Overdrive

The only difference between the MOD-SS and the less-rare (but still very rare) MOD-7 is the transparent plastic case, correct?

UPDATE: is it true that these are one-and-the-same with the Aria AOD-1? One of the videos linked with the AOD-1 IS the MOD-7.

I think you can guess where I'm goin' with this...

I made my suggestions to upgrade the quality of added items. Rating / submission system would be good. Maybe also a kind of approval system especially for items of low iq users.

But adding items shouldn’t be restricted on mayor label pedals / equipment. I’m in that DIY and would definitely prefer adding new pedals from Aion, PCB Guitar Mania, GuitarPCB and so on.

They are Kit you can regularly buy. Same as madbean and other layouts. So the restriction that the item should be listed at reverb, sweet water or an other mayor shop is not convincing and should be undo again.

I think so, yes.

But is this honestly a reason not to add it? You'd have to remove a lot of gear then. Classic Ibanez Tube Screamer? Just a rebranded Maxon. Most early Fuzzes? Just clones of other early fuzz circuits. Park amps? Just rebranded Marshalls. Silvertone guitars? Rebranded Danelectros. The MXR Black Label chorus? Exactly the same as the MXR M234 Analog Chorus apart from the print on the case. Heck, what about 60s Epiphone guitars? They were made in the Gibson factory along side the Gibsons to the exact same specs, they only put a neck with a different headstock on there.

In my opinion, if it is sold under a different brand and/or has a different model name it should have it's own entry.

I think so, yes.

But is this honestly a reason not to add it?

My reason not to add it is that you kicked off this thread by asking to add it, and a founder, site architect, and person responsible for paying the bills at EB responded by asking some questions instead of adding it right away. Then they further explained why things need to be done differently going forward. I'm inferring from this outcome, from the fact that it didn't get added, that perhaps a pedal that is this rare, and this long out of production, that hasn't garnered any documented pro usage in 30+ years***, may be the kind of thing we need to hold off on adding right now. I'm not thrilled with that conclusion... but the point of these restrictions is to reduce the number of gear entries that have little to no chance of garnering multiple artist attributions and reviews, and steer users to more generalized existing items where it makes sense. These changes are necessary because major search engines are apparently penalizing Equipboard in their search rankings for having lots of discrete pages deemed to be low-activity dead-ends, and therefore low quality, by their algorithmically-derived standards.

I hear you that different brand names applied to the same item from the same factory should still get an entry per brand name... and in the case of items that have some pro-usage documented, and/or are still in production, I agree that separate entries feels like the way to go (until there's a better option at our disposal).

In this particular case, you're a user that's made 189 submissions to Equipboard, which is awesome, and this add is something you want, and you want it badly enough to ask twice and argue your case in-detail without being a jerk about it.

If we add the item as the less-rare MOD-7, and include the clear SS edition as a secondary picture, could you live with that?

Would you be willing to write a kick-ass review of the MOD-7/SS if we added it?

I promise every request to add won't be this drawn out; you're just one of the very first to ask and we're still working out the policy/approach. I appreciate that you're being patient with us.

*** it's still a hand-wired pedal from a golden age of high-quality MIJ gear. I'm sure it sounds great and is worth owning, despite the historical obscurity.

👏 Well put!

Effects Database also says this is one of four different OEM Arion AOD-1 Overdrives made for Ken Multi. This brings up the issue of whether or not it’s distinct and merits its own item or if it should be subcategorized under the AOD-1.

But is this honestly a reason not to add it? You'd have to remove a lot of gear then. Classic Ibanez Tube Screamer? Just a rebranded Maxon. Most early Fuzzes? Just clones of other early fuzz circuits. Park amps? Just rebranded Marshalls. Silvertone guitars? Rebranded Danelectros. The MXR Black Label chorus? Exactly the same as the MXR M234 Analog Chorus apart from the print on the case. Heck, what about 60s Epiphone guitars? They were made in the Gibson factory along side the Gibsons to the exact same specs, they only put a neck with a different headstock on there.

All valid points, but I will note that those fuzzes were often ever-so-slightly modified and, over the decades, have come to be regarded as separate.

We have a few items given as “limited editions”, such the Ibanez SK10 Visual Super Product, but then we also have three OEM EHX Big Muffs (Wabash, Lyle, Marveltone) and two OEM Joyo Classic Flangers (Harley Benton, Rocktronics) floating around. There has been discussion of subcategorizing certain items under one master item, so the latter would probably be subject to that, if not the first as well.

@ro5, what bothers you most re: the new system?

Is your #1 concern that it will complicate your ability to add rare/obscure/boutique gear to artists?

...or are your concerns more about restrictions to what you can add to your own Equipboard and wishlist?

None of the above. I noticed that the feature was disabled when I wanted to add the new EHX Memory Man Nano. It's not yet in Sweetwater or Guitar Center nor Reverb.

This seriously limits the usability and value of Equipboard which should be community driven and not driven and limited by big commercial companies...

I understand your concern about data quality issues but I bet most data quality issues are caused by some specific type of users/contributers. And now you are punishing all users/contributers for the bad behaviour of some. Why wouldn’t you disable adding gear to new users, only enable it for users with a specific "IQ"-score? Or implement a rating/scoring system and users which add too many gear with bad score get blocked from posting new gear? Or perhaps you could create some "ambassador roles" who need to doublecheck or approve each submission in their area? E.g. in this case I might volunteer to verify all EHX, Behringer and TC Electronic guitar pedals... All the solutions above are better than just preventing users from adding new gear...

You could look into analytics/statistics to detect data quality issues or gear that is only added to one user. And start cleaning up like this?

One other suggestion is to use variants. I noted the concern that users would post a guitar with a slightly different or a custom color. And therefore you'd prevent users from adding it. Well, with the current rules I can easily add the Behringer TD-3 or RD-6 in all 10 colors which is exactly what you'd like to prevent with these new rules. Oh, it's already done: https://equipboard.com/search?search_term=Behringer%20td-3

So the new rules are really defeating the purpose and there are better ways to achieve you goals.

I really like the variant idea! It could apply at multiple levels - like Mk1, Mk2, etc. or for different colors. I'm not sure which way would be best.

@ro5, what bothers you most re: the new system?

Is your #1 concern that it will complicate your ability to add rare/obscure/boutique gear to artists?

...or are your concerns more about restrictions to what you can add to your own Equipboard and wishlist?

None of the above. I noticed that the feature was disabled when I wanted to add the new EHX Memory Man Nano. It's not yet in Sweetwater or Guitar Center nor Reverb.

OK... well... you'll be able to add this item as soon as Sweetwater has a page, which is typically well before the item is even shipping. Were you looking to add this item to your wishlist, or just in the mood to update the database?

For me, there are several issues:

1. There are things I already own that I cannot add to my own list, because they are not sold on those sites. These might be boutique items, like pedals. Many are normal, common instruments from other cultures (Chinese, Middle Eastern), but are not sold on any of the required sites.
2. There are things that might be on Reverb, but don't have any listings currently, so I can't add them.
3. There are things I cannot add to my wishlist for the above reasons.

None of the above. I noticed that the feature was disabled when I wanted to add the new EHX Memory Man Nano. It's not yet in Sweetwater or Guitar Center nor Reverb.

I already did. I love EHX!

None of the above. I noticed that the feature was disabled when I wanted to add the new EHX Memory Man Nano. It's not yet in Sweetwater or Guitar Center nor Reverb.

I already did. I love EHX!

Great! You can be the one to remember to link it to the Sweetwater page once it's shipping, lol :)

Great! You can be the one to remember to link it to the Sweetwater page once it's shipping, lol :)\

Haha! Of course.

None of the above. I noticed that the feature was disabled when I wanted to add the new EHX Memory Man Nano. It's not yet in Sweetwater or Guitar Center nor Reverb.

I already did. I love EHX!

Great! You can be the one to remember to link it to the Sweetwater page once it's shipping, lol :)

Now why would I do that? So you'd get a small comission?

Now we are getting to the real reason why we can only add gear with links to big commercial sites...!

Now why would I do that? So you'd get a small comission?

Now we are getting to the real reason why we can only add gear with links to big commercial sites...!

On the contrary, Equipboard is configured to have items’ properties auto-filled by connecting them to Sweetwater pages. Sweetwater and Reverb links also inform the gear score.

Going back to what gchiaren said, items without these links are less likely to have a dynamic presence on the site since they lack traffic, but equipment that is currently on the market and does have such a link is more likely to get that traffic.

None of the above. I noticed that the feature was disabled when I wanted to add the new EHX Memory Man Nano. It's not yet in Sweetwater or Guitar Center nor Reverb.

I already did. I love EHX!

Great! You can be the one to remember to link it to the Sweetwater page once it's shipping, lol :)

Now why would I do that? So you'd get a small comission?

I was addressing eyeseeofficial, who, like me, is an unpaid, non-employee volunteer.

If someone viewing an item on the site clicks the Sweetwater link for that item, then decides to buy the item @ Sweetwater in the same session, Equipboard gets a tiny fraction of the sale. As per this site's public affiliate disclosure.

Now we are getting to the real reason why we can only add gear with links to big commercial sites...!

No. As per earlier in this thread, affiliate links are NOT the reason that Add > Music Gear has been restricted to specific types of links. These new restrictions are due to the fact that Equipboard has recently discovered that it is being penalized in search engine results for having too many pages that are algorithmically deemed to be "low quality". A low-quality page, in the eyes of a search algorithm, is one that doesn't have a lot of user activity and doesn't link to other directly-relevant internal or external content. This is a gross oversimplification, because I'm no SEO expert, but bear with me.

When any of us add an item to the database that has a relatively low chance of being connected to more Artists in the future, garnering more user reviews in the future, and more directly-trackable Reverb auction activity in the future, we're contributing a page that search algorithms currently view as a liability to the website's ranking.

The current Add > Music Gear restrictions are not the final state and final word on how items will be added to the site forever; I'm confident things will evolve and improve over time. That said, I'm sure you can appreciate Team EB's current need to focus on improving the site's search rankings as an ultra-high priority, even if it means some of the changes they must attempt are not that immediately popular. Pleasing search algorithms, even if the makers of those algorithms were advising you directly, is not an exact science, obviously. I think it's fair to say that sometimes you just have to make some explicit changes, then wait to see whether those changes help or hurt your ranking.

To the best of my limited outsider knowledge (again, I don't work for Equipboard and don't profit in any way from this site), Equipboard's only revenue streams are hosted ads and affiliate links. Getting good rankings within the major search engines is critical to that model's success. To state the very obvious: Equipboard is a business and must be profitable enough to be worth the time, effort, and expense to run it. Anyone talented enough to create, guide, and maintain a site like this, could easily focus their efforts on way more profitable industries. I, for one, am grateful they're focusing these efforts on musical instruments.

As a temporary solution, Gchiaren has encouraged anyone who can't add the gear they want to post the details here, so moderators can review and potentially add it. Until I am explicitly directed otherwise, I'm likely going to add the gear if its currently in production, currently for sale anywhere, not redundant to other entries already in the database, and relevant-enough to music gear in general. Boutique gear and gear only sold direct by the manufacturer is AOK by me. I'm sure I speak for all mods when I say I am more than happy to help those companies by giving them exposure here, I think this is of critical importance. That said, if the gear is rare, long out of production, and has little to no chance of garnering user reviews and artist attributions in the future, that's where we have to think about it a bit, and likely hold off for now.

Dear Mods, please add the following guitar pedals:

1. Drunk Beaver Pedals T-Rex https://reverb.com/item/45124762-drunk-beaver-t-rex https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--Qt449Mit--/f_auto,t_large/v1633084042/apj2qmqkrnjohwvop5tv.jpg

2. Drunk Beaver Pedals JellyFish https://reverb.com/item/43763128-jellyfish-custom-analog-bbd-chorus-mn3007 https://images.reverb.com/image/upload/s--0tDaPbjg--/f_auto,t_large/v1630325571/tqrdgixkbpidr2368wah.jpg

Thanks in advance.

Concerning to my actual DIY Pedals: Is there a way to add pedals like this?

https://aionfx.com/project/astra-silicon-fuzz/

It’s an official Pedal Kit you can buy at the shop or at www.musikding.de

Well just use stats or analytics to select the gear that is not linked to any artists, is only in one persons gearlist, is not reviewed by anyone and not viewed in the last 12 months and delete it from your DB.

Select the people who posted this gear which has little financial value to the EB founders, send them an email that they should only post gear which is deemed valuable or desirable (explaining your logic) and monitor their posts in the next 12 months. If they keep posting this type of gear, prevent them from adding more gear.

So after thinking about all the posts above I thought of something that might be a solution for both sides. (Just an idea. I fully understand the arguments against adding super niche products just so I can ad them to my online gear collection that nobody except me is ever gonna look at anyways. Also: I know I often come across very angry/annoyed in online posts. I'm not angry, just passionate ;-) )

So. Idea. How about if gear I want in my collection isn't relevant enough for it's own entry, I can make a small note in my gear page noting that I also own this item. Just a line of text with the item name and an image that is all only visible in my gear page. It isn't clickable, it doesn't have it's own item page, it doesn't show up in search results, it can't be added to other peoples gear pages or to artist profiles.

It reduces unnecessary clutter that nobody is interested in, which hopefully appeases the search algorithms, but everyone can still track their WHOLE gear collection.

So. Idea. How about if gear I want in my collection isn't relevant enough for it's own entry, I can make a small note in my gear page noting that I also own this item. Just a line of text with the item name and an image that is all only visible in my gear page. It isn't clickable, it doesn't have it's own item page, it doesn't show up in search results, it can't be added to other peoples gear pages or to artist profiles.

This is a really good idea. Without getting too technical there are internal things we can do that signal to search engines that a page should not be crawled nor considered for search results. It's our job to deal with this, I won't bore everyone here :)

This has been a great discussion to read, and I think it's clear we need to bring back some way for you all to add things that aren't sold at the 'big' music stores.

I hesitate to build yet another queue that mods have to visit to approve/deny items. There are already several moderator queues and staying on top of those is already a lot!

So how about this - we'll just pick a reasonable GearIQ threshold that shows you are a good citizen of Equipboard, and allow access to the "legacy" add item process. That way, we keep the new way as the preferable method since adding an item via the big music stores gives us a unique identifier (like a UPC or SKU) which helps us internally with data accuracy .... but if you needed to add something more niche/custom, you'll be able to do so the old way.

Thoughts?

That would help...

And if the issue is bad ranking by too many low value entries. Start identifying the worst entries and contributors and find a way to address that root cause. Send a message that their entry will be deleted in 30d unless they can link it to an artist, shop, another user, review, youtube...