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May 10, 2006

lyrics wiki · by Rafi Kam

Through Hashim Warren comes word of an existing song-filled lyrics wiki at http://www.lyricwiki.org.

Maybe this puts the kibosh on my not-so-secret dream of building an ohhla killer and we should all start using this one instead. Wikis grow smarter as more people use them after all.

I do see a little downside to this solution as opposed to what my aims would have been in a similar site. I would have made sure to include some room for annotations, interpretations, commentary, how songs reference or respond to other songs and so on. The LyricWiki looks like a great solution to creating a repository of song lyrics with the means to be corrected. But it won’t provide any of the meta-information or room for discussion that I’d see on my perfect songs site.

Like everyone else in the world I’m in awe of wikipedia but their wiki software (which also powers LyricWiki) definitely buries the “discussion” pages. There is no way of knowing if a topic has any discussion until you click that tab which is easy to miss. That makes sense on a general encyclopedia site but on a lyrics site I’d bring the discussion area up-front maybe using Wikka software to run it. Check out how they handle comments at the bottom of each wiki page.

By comparison click the discussion tab from any song on the lyrics wiki and you’re unlikely to find any conversation. After the first or second time that happens most people will probably stop clicking that tab…

Comments for "lyrics wiki"

  1. You’re right. Only once out of the hunderds of times I’ve used Wikipedia have I looked at the discussion page.

    I would like them to break down the site into genres so I can easily link to “hip-hop”


    — Hashim    May 10, 11:42 AM   

  2. ^ as far as breaking down into genres go, this is definitely an area where tags are better than folders. Since there are things that you might want to categorize as hip-hop and as something else.

    Can wikis work that way?


    — David    May 10, 01:22 PM   

  3. Many wikis have categories which is basically the same as tags and (depending on the wiki) usually any page can have many categories.

    See what I mean at Wikka or at Wikipedia


    — rafi    May 10, 01:29 PM   

  4. Yeah, but are they exclusive categories? Or can one item be in more than one box – that’s probably the most crucial difference in terms of the way they will then be used.


    — David    May 10, 06:23 PM   

  5. “usually any page can have many categories”

    – Rafi Kam, May 10, 12:29 PM
    — rafi    May 10, 08:25 PM   

  6. Ouch, how about I read


    — David    May 10, 10:09 PM   

  7. The MF Doom lyrics in the pages at mfdoomsite.com have the sort of discussion you are talking about. Some typical nerd infighting as expected, but it is a cool resource.


    — SmoothJimmyApollo    May 14, 06:49 AM   

  8. It just I was looking for


    — letras    May 20, 01:59 PM   

  9. Meh, all of the rap lyrics I’ve seen on lyric-wiki have been lifted from ohhla, mistakes and all


    — David D    Oct 26, 09:45 AM   

  10. ohhla is horrible, i’ve posted corrections to several songs on there, mainly Twista, and they are all still wrong. get a good lyrics site goin with discussions and insight, i’d be there all the time!


    — DC    Oct 26, 09:57 AM   

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