[mb-style] Composition/Performer/Production ARs at Release or Track level? - PROPOSAL

[Sami Sundell]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 09:41:56AM +0100, Lauri Watts wrote:

> > I was on the verge of writing this down in
> > http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/ArtistRoleInheritance .  I'm a
> > newly-arrived MB
> We have to actually _have_ a consensus before running around editing
> pages.

Another duality here. We _should_ have, but at the same time the
documentation is stored in wiki, which is positively promoting free
editing. That's sort of the idea of wiki, isn't it?

> That maybe seems contradictory, but that's the crux of the problem.
> We're going to have to pick one, because right now we have the worst
> of all situations; some people think they're fuzzy and are entering
> them under that assumption, _and_ they're being autopropagated down by
> Picard, if not the web interface.

I've sort of liked the idea of adding the ARs in general album level and
then propagating them down to tracks. However, as I've actually added
more comprehensive data into albums, I've realized that may not be that
good idea.

Reason for this is that many albums only have "fuzzy" information
available. If the backcover only lists album level information - a list
of musicians, for example - then it's pretty hard to know if those
musicians are present in every track or only on some.

And, as you said, we have to pick one or the other. Since there are
releases where all the information available is "fuzzy", I'd say our
choices are limited. If we don't add a separate flag to mark the fuzzy
(or propagatable) information, we'll have to treat all album level
information as fuzzy and store the exact information down in
track level.

> We just have to pick one, and document it _clearly_.  I don't
> understand why everyone is so against writing down clear rules, when
> not doing so results in all this ambiguity.

I definitely agree.

-- 
 Sami Sundell
 sami.sundell at kotikone.fi