Cleaning up The Cure. Lossy or lossless?

Done.

That's not really it.
You want to do that, then that's fine & totally your call.
T's talking about file sets being compressed & then posted on cruddy blogspots or even (& I know this has happened) sold as bootlegs on evilbay. It basically pollutes the trading pool & leaves serious collectors with file sets that are basically untraceable as to the origin.
By all means compress them. Just don't pass them on in that form if they weren't in that form in the first place

I've moved these posts out of sharing, as it was starting to go a bit off topic.

nothing...i think...

Not yet. I'm out playing pool

Okay. My two penneth.

I think the way we all listen to music is personal.
Some like to take their mp3 player to the gym for when they pound the treadmill, some like to relax in a comfy chair with a beverage or recreational stimulant while the music pours out of their state of the art home entertainment system.
I see no reason to deprive anyone of their personal preference or belittle anyone for it.

I make it a personal point not to post recordings that I know are lossy, as I personally would like to give people the chance to enjoy the music as they wish & from the best possible source. Whether they choose to compress it for their players, or whatever is up to them & no-one has the right to say that’s wrong.
It’s not about “snobbery” or “elitism”. It’s about preference & what a lossless file set affords is the possibility to enjoy in any which way you like. That’s to say sure. Go ahead & load it on your phone etc. But you still have the high quality option for when you fire up the stereo (that you spent quite a bit of cash on) at home.
I think a pretty good example is AForestFan’s awesome capture of the New Orleans show. HD video & sound. If you were to watch it on a HD display, wouldn’t you rather it looked as good as it could & not have half the pixels missing? Conversely, if you wanted to experience it on your phone screen or ageing tablet with Radio Shack earbuds, is there much point in loading the enormous raw MTS files? You’re not going to get any benefit & you’ll just bog down the memory. I think the cliche is “horses for courses”.

But I do believe the trading pool is very polluted nowadays as more & more “hobbyists” open up tumblrs & blogspots chock full of lossy copies of recordings that someone has taken great pains to capture in all their glory initially.
What’s even more worrying is that often these compromised file sets are downloaded & whopped onto just about any of the bootleg CDs you find on evilbay today & sold. Moreover, there are those that even take those lossy file sets & actually go to the trouble of pressing vinyl bootlegs from them.
For collectors, this can be very frustrating, as the source & lineage become instantly unknown. (one reason we don’t allow bootlegs to be sold here, not to mention that it’s actually illegal).
I can’t see that stopping to be honest & the only real action that’ll cease this practice is if tapers & collectors simply stop sharing with the wider community. Thorsten’s already decided that’s what he wants to do & if you look at just how many new shows have been circulated since 2012, you get a pretty good idea of how ticked off tapers are getting too.
But no-body really wants that do they?

I use the terms “hobbyists” & “collectors”. That’s NOT meant as a derogatory “label”. One of my hobbies is fishing. I’m not terribly good at it & don’t (often) catch a monster fish, but I have pro friends who offer advice & encourage me. I listen & choose the methods I prefer. Whether it delivers a better result or not, is down to my preference.

The sites jumeteor has mentioned are indeed pretty comprehensive guides & some of the known lineages are interesting. But I can’t help feeling that they are somewhat redundant. Again. That's just my opinion.
The “holy grail” (for collectors) is the master (or clone of the master).
In addition, The Cure is one of the most bootlegged bands in history & to maintain that level of detail would quickly turn into a full time job. If anyone wants to start a project that big, well, best of luck. You’ll need it. But I’m sure that this & many other The Cure fan communities would gladly provide information if needed.

Currently, by far & away the best reference site for known recordings on the web is cure-concerts.
It’s concise, simple & I’m not sure it really needs anything added to make it any better. Like I said, the holy grail is the master so if I have an AU1 copy of that master, why would I need to know there is an AU4 that has been converted to mp3 & then bloated back into wavs during its trek through the community? Or am I missing something?

I think, in short, the most effective compromise is to leave file sets alone & not share them as something else. That’s to say, if the original set was lossless, then keep it that way. The same goes for lossy sets. Don’t bloat them up like cure for all does. It’s a waste of storage space & bandwidth & although it’s possible to compress them all over again, what ends up happening is you compress a file set that’s already been compressed & so it gets even more damaged in the process. An example of that is The Sisters re-broadcast radio sessions on 6music. It’s a ~20mb MP2 file set that has been masquerading as a ~300mb FLAC set, but if you compress those flacs back to MP2s, you’ll wreck the files.

But going back to my opening point. The way YOU enjoy the recording is YOUR choice. No-one should tell you otherwise & the best way to clean up the trading/ sharing pool is to not pollute it in the first place.