[mb-style] Looking for a new style leader

[Jim DeLaHunt]

Rob:


Robert Kaye wrote:
> 
> Jim: I would love to hear what you think of my ideas and how you would  
> tackle the task of defining a working style process!
> 

I've been turning over my thoughts on the style process, so it's taken me a
couple of weeks to reply.

First off, everything you write and all the wisdom you pass on from Don
Redman makes perfect sense to me.  I agree with it all.

Second, here's what I think about the style process at MB in general.

I think that the people we have here are fine.  I think the consensus
policies that I see expressed in postings to the mb-style list or in edit
discussions are fine.  Even where a discussion arrives at two different
proposals for how to handle a situation and then gets stuck, usually both
proposals are reasonable, and it's just a matter of picking one and running
with it.

There are some places where MB is limited by technology. Awesome as our
database is, the domain we're trying to describe is even more complex, so
the technology has to become yet better. A number of our style disputes
would lessen if we had some of the technology promised by
NextGenerationSchema. A MusicalWork entity would let us say "yes" both to
identifying classical tracks precisely and to reporting what's on the CD
liner. A tool which made data entry for ARs easier would vastly improve how
we described releases, and would make it more realistic to ease off on
FeaturingArtist refs in titles. 

But the technology we have today is enough to get lots of useful work done,
and there are style process problems to solve in the presence of today's
technology. 

So the people are fine and the consensus policies are fine. Where I think we
are badly broken is in recording our consensus policies in our
documentation.  In particular, our documents don't reflect what we actually
do. I see several obstacles.

1. There's lots of purely editorial flaws, not policy-related, in our docs. 
Clearly stale content labelled as under revision. Poorly structured pages.
Discussion placed inconsistently within policy pages, or on separate
Discussion pages. Unclear writing. I think we need a way to identify
editorial problems, and open them up to low-overhead fixes that don't go
through the mb-style discussion process. We need editorial guidelines for
this. Newbie editors (as I was a few months ago) should be able to dive in
and help with this.

2. For classical recordings, I think a list of common work and movement
titles would help hugely. They would let new users copy existing text for
TrackTitles and ReleaseTitles, without having to understand the whole
ClassicalStyleGuide. The CSGStandard pages are one approach to such a list.
Within the last few months there was a proposal to store such a list in the
database somehow.  In either case, copying is easier than generating anew.

3. We should integrate AdvancedRelationships into the style guides alongside
the ReleaseTitle and TrackTitle guidance. I think we should set the
expectation that the few basic ARs are as necessary as ReleaseEvents. We
should remove all references in our docs to ARs as an upcoming feature, or
one yet to be rolled out.

4. Some proposals get put to the list for discussion, then get stuck and
don't proceed. Sometimes this is because the mb-style discussion gets
sidetracked. Sometimes its because two competing policy alternatives emerge
and we don't have a good way of choosing. Sometimes it's because we lack
data.  This would be helped by having an empowered Style Czar as a referee.
Having a small group work the issues and present a more fleshed-out
proposal, as in Rob's message earlier, would help.  (A small group can flag
most of the problems that a large group would find, and more efficiently.) 
We should resume using the Bug Tracker to track style issues. A 
http://bugs.musicbrainz.org/query?status=new&status=assigned&status=reopened&group=milestone&component=Style+Issues&keywords=~phase_&order=priority
report of open issues by phase (like this)  makes it clearer when something
gets stuck. I think the Style Czar and a few assistants can keep this up to
date with little hassle for the proposers.

5. We should improve our execution of approved style changes. This means
having pages which clearly say which users have the special permissions to
implement the change. It also means having a place early in the process for
implementors to advise proposers on which proposals have technical
obstacles. In particular, some of our AR proposals in the last few months
passed RFV, only to find that the proposal as worded couldn't be implemented
with our AR machinery. Oops.

6. Our process needs some backwards arrows. There should be clear
transitions for stuck proposals to go back to an earlier stage.

7. Our docs about process should reflect the process we actually follow. The
Style Czar should be empowered to rewrite the process description pages as
needed. The pages of who's available to do certain tasks (like add
relationships) should likewise be kept current.
 
8. It would be good to have more data from the database to guide decisions
about Style choices. Examples of data: for an AR which can relate to Tracks
or Releases, what proportion of its use is with Tracks and what proportion
with Releases?  Which Composers have the most Tracks, and what works do they
contain (pointing to priorities for the CSGStandard pages)? How many times
is a particular instrument used in ARs? I'd love to see a small pool of
people with the tools and query skills to be able to chime in with such
answers.

9. For the ClassicalStyleGuide and its offshoots, there's a ton of work to
do, and the major overhaul seems to have gotten stuck. Therefore I like the
idea of breaking it into pieces.  I think the Style Czar should be assertive
in cutting off bite-sized pieces and assembling a crew of participants to
come up with a proposed improvement. It's OK that the Style Czar not be part
of that crew. 

10. We should keep in mind the need to welcome and groom new contributors.
The more of them we welcome, the more hands we have to make light our work. 
MB is an intimidating place, with its complicated rules and inaccurate
documentation and immediate judgment on a newbie's first contributions. I
think many of us could stand to be more welcoming in our interaction with
newbies — make a point of saying "Hi, thank you for contributing" before
saying "but your TrackTitle is all wrong". We should have some canned
Welcome texts. And most of all, we should get our docs to the point where
someone following the docs is doing the right thing, instead of some wrong
or obsolete thing.

Interestingly, one thing which I think the Style Czar not need do much of,
is make style policy decisions. Because, I think, we've got fine people with
fine ideas, we already have the wisdom to get those decisions right.

-----
     -- http://jdlh.com/ Jim DeLaHunt , Vancouver, Canada  • 
http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/JimDeLaHunt

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