What.cd News: The What.CD Sixth Birthday Celebration Begins
When WhatMan, nando, The N Man, and A9 presented What.CD to the world on October 27th, 2007 in response to OiNK's untimely shuttering, it is difficult to imagine that any of them anticipated how monumental their work would become. What.CD is now proudly entering its seventh year as inheritor to the legacy of the "world's largest and most meticulously maintained online music repository", and it can be said with confidence that we've continued to make massive strides forward as a tracker, site, and community.
What.CD is now home to over 1,780,000 torrents representing over 744,000 releases by over 629,000 artists. Our members remain active and vibrant, contributing to these figures day by day without showing signs of stopping. Recently, another significant barrier was broken: there are now over 500,000 "Perfect" FLACs indexed on What.CD (there were 506,348 as of the time of this writing).
The last year brought us a new version of Ocelot, many quality-of-experience improvements to UI elements like the settings page, new release types, a streamlining of the cassette rip upload procedure, further refinements to our rules, the unveiling of artist collages, routine VH featured album releases, multiple store updates, a completely new donation system, and additional enhancements too numerous to list here.
None of this would have been possible without the immense efforts of our staff members, all of whom deserve thanks for the time they invest. When asked how much work goes into running the site, we like to say that "running What.CD amounts to a full-time job in itself", and this is no exaggeration. The staff page saw a number of additions and departures since the fifth birthday celebration, but one characteristic uniting all staffers past and present is the commitment to fulfilling What.CD's mission despite the obstacles and risks inherent to the job.
Supporting the staff are various teams, each comprised of top community members. These are users who go above and beyond when contributing to the site, be it in the form of community leadership, feature development, maintaining our groundbreaking interview system, or other specializations which make What.CD - to use WhatMan's words - "a place of quality". Let's extend our thanks to these users as well; despite its importance, the work our team members perform is often less widely acknowledged than that of the staff. If you find yourself wondering how you can directly assist the site, we can offer you no better advice than to encourage you to follow the positive examples set by our team members.
But the essence of What.CD is not located in the secondary class titles or moderator positions which distinguish our respective roles. Whether you struggle to maintain a ratio because you love music too much to hold onto your buffer, or spend most of your time posting in the forums, or consider yourself a prolific ripper of rare records, everyone here brings something important to the table, and it takes all of us to make What.CD what it is. With that sentiment in mind, we'd like to dedicate this celebration to the entire community: you are What.CD, and today you turn six.
We have a number of surprises planned for the days and months ahead, so let's cut ahead to the good stuff. To kick things off, we're pleased to bring you another round of staff picks.
Happy birthday, What.CD!
