[mb-style] How to handle band/artist name changes

[Lauri Watts]

On 10/11/06, Age Bosma <agebosma at home.nl> wrote:
> Kerensky97 wrote:
> >
> > DonRedman wrote:
> >> Heh, what about that simple suggestion: We could make a wiki page and
> >> collect all these artist there and the decisions that led to the state
> >> they are in. This would not be a guideline yet, but maybe a step towards
> >> one.
> >>
>
> >
> > I still think we need something more tangible than a wiki page listing the
> > consensus on every artist name change, or even an annotation on the page
> > mentioning the former or new name.  Maybe I wasn't clear before, the AR
> > doesn't have to actaully do anything now, it would have the same power as
> > "Performs as" but would signify a different change where an artist changed
> > name to something else at some point (and as a bounus it provides a
> > convienient link to that artist).  And we can still vote on certain merges
> > that we don't think should be done, or certain merges we think should be
> > done.
> >
> > Then maybe someday in the future we can utilize that AR to provide more cool
> > functionality when we have the programmers and testers to deal with it.
> >
>
> Personally I'm of the opinion that the prospect of generating a lot of
> work by separating artists and releases as in the proposal shouldn't
> stand in the way of creating a more semantically correct database. When
> changing the behaviour it doesn't mean everything has to be done at
> once. The changes to the releases can be made gradually whenever a new
> artist is added or whenever someone is up for the task.
>
> I do understand that a lot(?) of people might be reluctant with such a
> big change all of a sudden. Because of that I think I have to agree with
> Kerensky97. We could still change the the current 'performs as' AR to at
> least be able to create a link to other band/artist names. At the moment
> there are already releases divided over different artist names because,
> unlike others like e.g. Prince, in those cases it was decided to keep
> them separated. Especially in case of joined names an artist annotation
> can be added explaining the situation, optionally with a link to a wiki
> page with a discussion or more reasoning if needed.

That's what I think is best, just user performs as.  The link text
doesn't necessarily even need changing. And there's nothing technical
stopping people already doing this, other than voters (I bet there's
some already in the DB done this way, in fact, that got through.)

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts