[mb-style] RFC: Allowing "Duplicate" Releases w/ Different Titles

[Frederic Da Vitoria]

2006/12/5, Andrew Conkling <andrew.conkling at gmail.com>:
> I understand this... in theory. Two questions:
> 1. What is this process? How can I participate?
> 2. Given the behavior of editors--voting down edits based on (in order
> of invalidity) their preference/"current practice" (whatever that
> means)/links to previous threads on the mailing list--one would think
> that this would have been voted on before*. What happened in those
> cases? (See #1 for why I can't investigate this myself.)
>
> *- One would also think that this was already approved, based on these
> editors' comments, but that's a different story.
>
> Cheers,
> Andrew

You shouldn't expect to solve anything this way. IMO, the only clear
way to solve an edit conflict is to show the written rule. Preferences
or habits should only be used as a last resort.

To those who say "this is how I would like it": I believe I already
answered something like "then create your own database and fill it by
yourself, but don't ask me to fill it, because I am not interested"
(or if I did not answer this, it is because I followed Don's rule ;-)
)

To those who say "this is current practice" I'd answer "can you prove
it with actual edition statistics? If not, the only way to prove that
it is indeed current practice is to propose it as a StyleGuide and see
if it is accepted or not". Anyhow current practice is not sufficient
to decide. Current practice is often quite wrong. I feel current
practice is only a system for the lazy, those who don't want to bother
with thinking to the consequences. If we only followed current
practice, we would forever keep the current state of MB and never
evolve to NGS.

Links to other threads is slightly better, but just slightly IMO.

Wow, I have been holding this down for months, I sure feel better now :-D

To Rob: your saying that BoxSetRule is not current practice could be
completely wrong. For example, I entered a few releases which were
part of box sets, but I did not mention it, so that they were entered
as seperate releases (they existed as such too). I did not mention it
because BoxSetRule did not suggest that I should. Nobody voted against
it for the simple reason that nobody knew these releases were from box
sets. So that the splitting of releases which you observed is only the
expression of the original editor's strong desire, but doesn't
necessarily tell much about other editors except that they did not
vote against the edit, but this is not mean they would have agreed if
they had been asked directly).

So Andrew, the process is: propose a change and work to convince
others it should be accepted, and if it is not, try to feel convinced
it is better this way. Just what Aaron started with this RFC.

-- 
Frederic Da Vitoria