Nicolás Tamargo de Eguren
2015-06-27 14:49:17 UTC
Hi!
When we recently released MBS-7489 ("Artist Credits for Relationships"), I
took the gist of the guidelines in the old Artist/With Multiple Names page (
https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/index.php?title=Style/Artist/With_multiple_names&oldid=67846)
and turned them into
https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Style/Artist#Performance_names_and_legal_names
That current guideline basically continues our old "leave separate only if
they're different projects" guideline, but admittedly that wasn't a very
followed one because a lot of people wanted to keep legal name (usually
writing) credits separate not to lose that detail. MBS-7489 allows that,
but some people have requested a discussion whether it *allowing* it means
we *should* do it, or whether the limits should be more strict than "all
except different projects".
On the comments for STYLE-534, KRSCuan said:
"My suggestion is to only merge artist entries that can be considered a
relatively small variation of each other. Which encompasses pretty much all
the examples on the current version of https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Aliases,
but not much more. The rationale is that even a user unfamiliar with an
artist (which e.g. appears on a VA compilation) should be able to pick the
correct one just going by liner notes."
My own opinion on that is that it should be solved by showing which alias
(best) matched the search term for each entity when searching, so that if
people search for (for example) a legal name and get a performance name
back, it will show "Performance name (Alias: Legal name)" in some way. I
feel it's a display issue that shouldn't affect what we choose to merge.
But I'm happy to hear opinions on it!
Another thing that could be discussed is whether an artist consistently
using their legal name for songwriting credits (on releases - work
databases basically default to legal name anyway so they shouldn't really
count) should be seen as a different "project" and kept unmerged, or should
be merged unless there's explicit artist intent.
But basically, I'm curious about people's opinions on the whole thing and
where each of you would set the limit for merges, so opinions away! :)
Cheers,
Nicolás
When we recently released MBS-7489 ("Artist Credits for Relationships"), I
took the gist of the guidelines in the old Artist/With Multiple Names page (
https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/index.php?title=Style/Artist/With_multiple_names&oldid=67846)
and turned them into
https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Style/Artist#Performance_names_and_legal_names
That current guideline basically continues our old "leave separate only if
they're different projects" guideline, but admittedly that wasn't a very
followed one because a lot of people wanted to keep legal name (usually
writing) credits separate not to lose that detail. MBS-7489 allows that,
but some people have requested a discussion whether it *allowing* it means
we *should* do it, or whether the limits should be more strict than "all
except different projects".
On the comments for STYLE-534, KRSCuan said:
"My suggestion is to only merge artist entries that can be considered a
relatively small variation of each other. Which encompasses pretty much all
the examples on the current version of https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/Aliases,
but not much more. The rationale is that even a user unfamiliar with an
artist (which e.g. appears on a VA compilation) should be able to pick the
correct one just going by liner notes."
My own opinion on that is that it should be solved by showing which alias
(best) matched the search term for each entity when searching, so that if
people search for (for example) a legal name and get a performance name
back, it will show "Performance name (Alias: Legal name)" in some way. I
feel it's a display issue that shouldn't affect what we choose to merge.
But I'm happy to hear opinions on it!
Another thing that could be discussed is whether an artist consistently
using their legal name for songwriting credits (on releases - work
databases basically default to legal name anyway so they shouldn't really
count) should be seen as a different "project" and kept unmerged, or should
be merged unless there's explicit artist intent.
But basically, I'm curious about people's opinions on the whole thing and
where each of you would set the limit for merges, so opinions away! :)
Cheers,
Nicolás