I think i already got the idea.
We can simply see it as just a normal new dat category. When there are a lot of sets we already divide things further, for instance from using just a "Games" dat, to various "Games - [EXT]" or even further with "Games - Public Domain - [ext]", collections, compilations and so on. Years ago we even had several "Various" dats with a mixture of everything.
Some of my concerns are with the possible loss of information by creating single those new "Various" bad dump dats per system that may contain similarly named files from different dats (because the roms have different extensions, are different types of software and so on). Again, this really depends from system to system and common sense from renamers
At least we agree on:
- Documenting the existent sets, and not the single best ones
- There are renaming mistakes, existent alts and bads might be actually something different but not properly checked
- Some software might only exist with dumping errors or already edited, creating some kind of alts / modifications
Things are different across systems, you can have Amiga with 2313 bad dumps already (which could increase a lot i guess) or C128 with only 19. In some cases it might be logical / helpful to have only a "Bad Dumps" and others might need "Bad Dumps - Games" (...).
Finally, you said alts should remain as they are but i suspect (mai will know better, at least in Amiga) that alternates are a far bigger problem going by the current statistics. The definition of the flag (alternate) is not clear for many or at least it was never followed as it was supposed, plus there is a lot of confusion with the hack/modified and others. I view the flag as something used to identify different versions of existent (mostly) original sets - for instance a copy with harder enemies, different background in a game and so on. Original sets that were modified due to unprotected media should be marked with a modification flag, such as [m highscore], [m savegame].
Nowadays we have already *tons* of alts which are probably wrongly renamed sets, marked alternate by laziness or lack of knowledge/information from the renamers and used as a super speedy way of adding tons of sets. The numbers with alternates are or a different magnitude than bad dumps but if renamed correctly they will mostly be bad dumps or modifications (and we will start having tons of it, which in the future will also probably be discussed to suffer the same reorganization
).
As an example, only in Commodore C64 we have 30.088 alternate flags, the Commodore Amiga - Games - [ADF] dat alone is 26,6 % alts (7261).
My current position is in favor of the idea of moving those bad dumps, especially in cases where the number is high, based on renamers feedback (mai/Crashdisk). New sets can be renamed to save future work and things will still be cataloged and we will improve in organization.
Still, it would be interesting to have more opinions from others too (members or not).