I got the idea.
Based on what Crashdisk and mai explained, there are some systems (namely amiga and c64) where a lot of dumps float. Many (most?) of those dumps are bad dumps but there are also a lot of variations of original sets created by dumping modified disks (unfortunately not write protected). Our goal is to catalog images and not to create a purely original, best dumps collection, however the situation in these systems is indeed ridiculous.
By adding so much of these sets in the last years, the project in part even helped preserving them. I recall that idoru was already avoiding the addition of new alts and bad dumps for amiga due to the same reasons and i do support the idea, since following this path will end in 50000 new repeated or unused sets.
Now the other side... for good and bad those unrenamed sets will not go away since they are datted and collected by some as we know. If these sets don't get cataloged, the current renamers will keep receiving the same sets to verify again and again. This probably already happens today, with mai and others testing sets (which don't get renamed) that were tested by idoru and others before (and also not renamed).
I do support the addition of (part of) these unrenamed sets, still if we add all these to the current dats the number of sets/dupes will skyrocket with many being even unusable. The creation of different dats might be the best (or less bad?) solution and should be done to help the renamers even if they take some time to be introduced in the catalog.
Still there are many questions. What really is a bad dump? What should be done with alternates and the many different types that exist (i imagine this may be a problem with the same dimension than the bad dumps' one)? What about sets that where only bad dumps exist? Over and under dumps?
Even more, is the fact that many of the current bad dumps and alts might after all be badly renamed (as mai is discovering
). Plus, using a single dat per system might create an huge, unusable dat with "various" types of software but creating various is in many cases plain stupid. Here, the best solution would probably depend from system to system and its dimensions, just as it happens to the other dats.
Finally, i think (albeit i don't have knowledge about every other system) that this problems are common in a few systems.
Anyone has better ideas or opinions against the solution?
... and now as recreation, some random stats:
83,26% of the alternate images are in 5 systems (C64, Amiga, Spectrum, Atari ST and Atari 8bit), with 60.737 of a total of 72.494 alts.
69,51% of the bad dumps are in 5 systems (NES, Amiga, N64, Megadrive, C64) with 7.649 in 11.004.
If we look at percentages, we have Robotron Z1013 with 43% alts and NEC SuperGrafx where 83,3% of the sets are bad dumps (however the dat is just 6 dumps of the same software with 5 bad dumps), Game boy comes second with 54,65% of the sets being bad dumps but the dat is really small too.
All these numbers would actually change a lot by adding these dumps left out until now.