ImportBuddy is being retired; website contributions are now the supported path

[lfoust]

We are retiring ImportBuddy. It is now unsupported, and its downloads and source will be removed on September 13, 2026, after a 30-day notice period.

Contributions are still welcome through TheDiscDb website's contribution and edit-suggestion tools:

• Contribution guide
• Start a contribution

Why we are making this change

Maintaining ImportBuddy and manually reviewing and importing data pull requests requires more maintainer time than the project has available. The website workflows give submissions a consistent validation, normalization, and review path, which helps keep the database accurate and conformant.

The website also avoids asking contributors to download and run an unfamiliar executable on their machines. Consolidating on one supported contribution experience lets us focus limited maintenance effort where it helps the most contributors.

What changes now

• ImportBuddy is unsupported effective immediately.
• There will be no new ImportBuddy releases, bug fixes, enhancements, or platform support.
• Existing downloads will remain available during the 30-day notice period, but they are provided without support.
• ImportBuddy-related issues will be closed and linked back to this announcement.
• The website contribution and edit-suggestion workflows are the supported path.

The complete disc-scanning flow currently requires Chrome or Edge. Broader browser support is tracked in issue #177.

What changes on September 13, 2026

• ImportBuddy GitHub releases and their associated version tags will be removed.
• ImportBuddy source code will be removed from the current data repository tree.
• The ImportBuddy publishing workflow will be removed.
• Historical documentation will point to the website contribution flow instead.

What is not changing in this announcement

• Existing database content remains available.
• The data repository is not being locked as part of this retirement.
• This announcement does not change pull-request permissions or decide how current open pull requests will be handled.

This is part of moving contribution workflows toward the website so submissions can use the same validation and review pipeline. Any later change to the data repository's pull-request policy will be announced separately.

Questions about the retirement or migration can be posted in this Discussion. ImportBuddy bug reports and enhancement requests will be closed because the tool is no longer maintained.