What's up with Parfumo?

You cannot eat your cake and have it!

Although I try to inform the international Parfumo users about important changes or developments at the same time as the German speaking users, this time I had to focus on the German users first. Sorry for that!

A few days ago, I posted a long blog article about the (possible) future of Parfumo on the German site, and I received lots of attention for the topic of Parfumo Research. You may not be familiar with it – but we consider it the core of Parfumo. We have to blame ourselves for not talking enough about it.

Anyway, this must change.

Parfumo Research is the tool that we currently use for adding new perfumes to the database, and for correcting errors or enhancing information. It works a bit like Wikipedia: A user suggests a new perfume or a change of an existing perfume data set. Other users then look at the proposal and check if all the information given is proved by sufficient sources, they add further sources and correct possible errors. Only if everything is correct, the proposal will be confirmed and the information added to the database.

We started Parfumo Research in May this year, but now we have to face the fact that there are conceptual shortcomings.

We do get many proposals by the users – even more than we can handle with our small team. That's the point: Parfumo Research has never been intended to be run by only a few persons. It is lot's of fun for us Final Verifiers but we currently spend too much time with it by far. There is a life outside Parfumo and Parfumo Research, and we will not be able to keep up our current pace for very much longer if we do not receive some support. What we badly need are more users who not only suggest new perfumes but help check the proposals of others!

The reason why our team is still small is that Parfumo Research has been difficult for users to join in, and this is what we have to change.

Even so far, every Parfumo user has been able to take part in Parfumo Research. You can look at the proposals, and if you find anything wrong in them, you can post a few lines in the discussion tab. But honestly – who is going to pick holes in other people's proposals and point one's finger at, let's say, a spelling error? Out of courtesy, one would rather ignore that.

Since nobody is starting to help us this way, we cannot see who might be interested and sufficiently skilled to join the Final Verifiers who actually shove the new perfumes into the database. And so, we cannot grow our team. As a Final Verifier, you must be able to work precisely, and you must be a team player. You must quickly find solutions for cases of doubt and come to the respective agreements with the other team members.

When I have taken pains with a specific proposal – look at all the data, check all links, look for further information – then I really enjoy the moment that I finally can tick the Okay button with my mouse. However, it is this feeling of success that we have refused to the “normal” users who do not have the Verifier status. If somebody took an effort by checking a proposal and found out that everything was okay – then there was no proper way to confirm that and to document this result. The work was in vain, and the proposal did not proceed a single step further towards admission.

So, what has to be done?

Every effort taken in Parfumo Research must be documented and transparent.

At first, we must get rid of the different status of possible contributors. We should skip the Editor level and make every supporter a Verifier immediately. Verifiers and Editors can change the data in a proposal. It simply does not make sense to first write discussion posts about erratic or missing data so that somebody else with a higher authorization level can change them later.

I am also pondering the idea whether every Parfumo user who has achieved a certain number of Parfumo points should be given the Verifier status automatically - but these are details. Generally, we must be more courageous and allow all possible supporters to change data in the proposals.

Also, all supporters should be able to set the Okay flag then. It is no big deal if it is set wrongly. On the contrary: this gives us the opportunity to inform the users about what is erratic or wrong in a specific proposal, and so we all can learn.

In addition to that, all effort in Parfumo Research should be rewarded by a few Parfumo points (this is already the case) except for setting the Okay flag in order not to encourage random and false confirmations.

We will not be able to abandon the role “Final Verifiers” and replace the team by an automatism that simply counts the Okay flags before adding the entry. But it is important to grow this team and so, the job of the Final Verifiers is also to look out for possible new team members.

And here is how you can support us:

Simply start checking proposals and note the result in the discussion tab!

There is a guideline in Parfumo Research that will help you, and if there are questions coming up, just ask.

Although Don cannot quickly re-program Parfumo Research we can nevertheless make a better use of what we already have. We are currently assigning the Verifier status to all users who have started to help us with the checks. If we see activity, Don will assign the Verifier status.

After this somewhat dramatic call, I would like to explain a bit about some future plans, and about the possibilities of Parfumo Research that we currently do not use to its full extent.

***

Let us travel into the year 2033, twenty years from now. What would a visitor of Parfumo find on this site then?

The fragrance directory would contain well above 100,000 perfumes. Some people would use Parfumo not only for perfume talk, but for research and to extend their knowledge. After all, Parfumo will be something like the memory of mankind of perfumery. There will be other sites too that present information about perfumes, but in a more matter-of-fact-way.

At Parfumo, there will still be the little Research link on every perfume details page. Behind this link, the “History” of this perfume can be found. There is the initial data set for this perfume, but also a list of all the corrections that have been made on the perfume data during the years. The visitor will see the links to the sources that the information was based on, and while many of those links will not be working any longer, there is still the discussion where he or she can follow the reasons why the team some twenty years ago took the fragrance notes from one source and disallowed the other. Or find out about the doubts about the correct release date of a historic perfume. There will be perfume data full of information, but others will not. If the visitor finds only one source behind a perfume, he can make up his own mind about its reliability.

Parfumo will offer more information than today. Each fragrance note will be explained by a short text. In many cases, there will be links to longer texts about those notes. A chemist may have written a profound article about the different sorts of musk, and a historian may have given an account on the exploitation of sandalwood.

For every perfumer, there will be a detailed description of his life and works . The history of all perfume houses will be outlined on the brand's pages. The perfume details pages will be enhanced by information about all the special editions of a perfume that were released during the years.

All this will have been made possible because 20 years ago, the people at Parfumo found the right way to get themselves organized.

***

So many ideas, so little time!

Today, Parfumo has reached a size where its content cannot be managed any longer by just one person plus a small team.

However, if you cannot do everything on your own, you need quality management. This is what Parfumo Research is all about.

Roughly said, Parfumo can be divided into two parts. The bigger part is the users' content. Basically, every user is free to write whatever he or she wants to. The other part is the technical but also the journalistic frame around it. Any “official” text or statement should have a certain standard of reliability – and this can only be achieved by people working together on it, and based on some guidelines.

We do want to have fragrance notes explanations, perfumer information texts, and brand information but any of those projects is too big to be given into the responsibility of a single person. In order to further improve Parfumo, the users would have to contribute to such projects, but in a way that a workflow like we have in Parfumo Research ensures the quality.

I know that these ideas I outlined here are tempting, but we will not start these projects before the perfume adding process in Parfumo Research is better established and the Finals Verifier team has grown. This will be the first step. Only after the team has grown, it can take over more tasks.

Among the many comments that were posted under my blog article on the German site there was one that I liked in particular:

“ I have not been aware of Parfumo Research so far, but I have started now, and it is fun!”