Is anyone else here a member there? If so perhaps you can explain a mystery.

I was on there earlier looking through the games and discovered that if I click the 'Edit this page' link at the bottom of the page I am able to make edits and changes to the game listing, regardless of who submitted the game.

I must admit the couple of games I looked at were tagged with License: Commercial (out of print)

I don't know if certain games get posted as a Public Domain type thing because they're re-prints of old commercial games, but it seems very odd that I could do that.

IFDB is more or less a wiki. Anyone with an account can add a game and make edits to any entry. Hopefully people who add games and make edits are conscientious about accuracy, but I suppose there's no guarantee.

Thanks, alice. This just seems so wrong. It means I could edit someone's listing and change the description to 'Don't play this game, it's garbage!'

I suppose such behaviour would get me banned, but still seems like a weird system to me.

My games were listed by someone else on there before I got a chance to put them on myself!

Haha. Well as long as they were complimentary...

You do realize that's exactly how Wikipedia works, right? And the IFWiki. Each revision of a page is saved in a database, and presumably changes can be reviewed by moderators. Also, it turns out that most people who go through the trouble have good intentions. Those who don't -- and I've been through that, as a wiki admin -- can easily be banned. Really, it's a proven system, almost as old as the IFComp itself.

Yes, I suppose if changes are moderated it's not so daft an idea - I was just surprised to discover I could edit other's listings was all.