A Warning to File Traders

[Secret Squirrel]

I've posted about this on the forum, but there's still apparently some of this going on. We take this seriously, and there will be loss of account privileges for those caught doing any of this, so new users should take note.

1.) Please don't send unsolicited messages to members asking for lossless rips of their albums.

It's apparent that some of you are "spamming" everyone who owns an album, begging them to share a lossless rip. This must stop now. VGMdb's collection feature is for everyone to use, and I don't want anybody to feel like they have to start hiding their collections to keep from being harassed.

2.) Please don't use the "Show Collections" page to advertise file-trading.

This is an example of the Show Collections page. For each user who has the album in their collection, the user name and the title of the immediate containing folder is displayed. I have caught a couple of people clearly using this to solicit trades, with folder titles such as "Lossless (with cue) for Trade."

• If you have digital copies of albums in your collection, please set them to private, or use folder titles that aren't a glaring advertisement for file trading.

While I've always supported the use of the Collection feature for purposes beyond simply cataloging albums you physically own, we must remember that our collections are only two clicks away from the album pages. We don't want a VGM artist stumbling onto a list of obvious filesharers.