Yes, you can also see them if you browse in Windows Explorer, which I had never done because I trusted the iTunes interface. As others have mentioned, sometimes it “deletes” from the library, but leaves the file behind. I also have an external, and I should check that. I’m probably going to write a little script to look for duplicates and see what turns up since I don’t fancy clicking through 80 GB of folders.
You said some thing about mechanics that didn’t actually explain what mechanics was. Then gave an analogy about a skill vs a highly skilled action (cutting vs surgery). Do you really feel coming to a consensus about how to handle missing id3 information is a highly skilled action on the level of heart surgery?
The only time coming to a consensus is that difficult is when the group has two or more stubborn parties. Apple’s design motto is built around stubbornness. Do it this or else.
Yet the wheel to handle this, without it being a problem, is already invented. Multiselect listbox. It’s all in a list. If you wanna do em all at once. Also, like I was saying before a choice can be repeated for all errors automatically.
The option you didn’t quote (multiselect listbox) wouldn’t work because?
Of course it’s easy; don’t rename the file. What else would it do? This isn’t nuance or complexity; it’s the basic art of writing your program so it doesn’t irretrievably fuck up people’s data. Winamp manages my music just fine without ever renaming anything, which strikes me as considerably less complex or nuanced than Apple’s shoddy attempt.
Anyway, I highly recommend that before importing stuff into iTunes, people clean up crappy tags in something like MP3Tag, which lets you write the metadata based on the filenames using simple pattern matching. It’s free, too.
Sorry, I thought it would be understood that “mechanics” referred to the actual coding that would change the tag. And I didn’t say it was skill versus a highly skilled action–I said it was **mechanics of implementation **versus rules for applying the mechanics.
Writing code to rename files via MP3 tags, even with a variety of conditions, is easy. Deciding what to rename or not to rename (i.e., what conditions to apply) is complex. No, it’s not as complex as surgery–but I never said it was. I was simply offering an example of a situation where the mechanics were simple but the implementation of those mechanics was complex.
You want two or more stubborn parties? Get a random group of computer users together and have them discuss settings for various applications. Dollars to donuts several of ‘em will be ready to rip each others’ throats out.
Now, I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea for iTunes to have an option somewhere that says, “If <Artist/Title> info is missing from ID3 tag, do not overwrite file name,” just to give people the option. But let’s be honest: the people who’d know to look for this kind of option are the people who’d have ID3 tags on any songs they had iTunes do the organization on, anyway.
In antivirus software, you’ll probably run into at worst a few dozen warnings. With iTunes, you could hit hundreds or thousands of errors. And with iTunes, the odds that you’ll want to treat all the files the same way is pretty small. You’d have to look through the entire list and to see what tag info was available for each song with an error.
Too, the more flexibility you add in, the more confusion you cause for people who aren’t good with complex applications. It’s much easier for iTunes to just deal with all files the same way.
That’s because Winamp doesn’t organize your music files. iTunes doesn’t rewrite anything without you telling it to organize your files. You can’t blame the program for rewriting your filenames based on ID3 tags if you don’t fix the ID3 tags before you tell it to do so.
Agreed. This kind of program is exactly what I use to update all of my file info before importing the music into iTunes, when I’m adding existing MP3s. I’m able to use my existing filenames to write ID3 tags, which iTunes then uses to organize my music directory.
TL;DR version:
When you tell iTunes to organize your music, it will do it based on ID3 tags. If your files don’t have ID3 tags, don’t select this option.
shot from guns, this is getting silly. This back and fourth has been going on for a week. I think we’ve firmly established we disagree about the quality of design of itunes. Let’s leave it at that.
Ah, but we don’t disagree abou the quality of the design of iTunes. I agree that there are lots of ways where it blows hard. I just don’t think this is one of them. 
But we’re probably at the “agree to disagree” stage of that, anyway.