[mb-style] Band name changes (was [mb-devel] Panic! at the Disco)

[Chris B]

On 20/03/2008, Lauri Watts <krazykiwi at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 11:12 AM, Chris B <chris at whenironsattack.com> wrote:
>
>  >  currently we would (all else being equal) merge to the most useful
>  >  (ie, popular) name, which has manifest benefits for both the
>  >  discography and the tagger (as previously mentioned). if we retain
>
>
> If it's so simple to determine which one is 'the most popular' to
>  merge them into,
>  it's equally simple to use that same one to base the AR's from.

that's what i said in the bit you cut, but i would have thought it
doesn't make sense from the AR phrase point of view. Eg, "[Radiohead]
is (was?) also known as [On A Friday] from 1986 to 1991" but then
"Radiohead" was not formed till 1991, so semantically this seems
'weird' to me. maybe others don't see a problem

>  >  i don't buy that we should 'prepare' the data for NGS - isn't that the
>  >  reason we're having NGS in the first place? because such an 'accurate'
>  >  DB structure is unsuitable for our needs without major DB and display
>  >  changes. obviously there's going to be significant editing work across
>  >  the board once we go to NGS from our current 'amended' data anyway...
>  >
>
> That it helps sort things out in the future when we can have them on one page
>  is just an extra benefit.
>
>  The point is, many users do not want their albums released and widely available
>  for many years under one artist name to be automatically changed to
>  the other.

I do. "many" isn't "most" :)

obviously i don't speak for the majority, but for me it would make MBz
worse for tagging and navigating if it was going to split up the
supremes, or prince, or whoever. i already have to manually retag my
wendy/walter carlos because certain editors feel that someone changing
their sex makes head nor tail to their musical discography *ducks* :)

>  This occurs so often that  we _do_ already have artists that are
>  recreated constantly,
>  we _do_ already have duplicates in the database solely to cope with
>  split discographies,
>  and we _do_ already have users using the performs as AR to connect
>  them.  And some
>  of these artists are the cause of intense arguments, every single time
>  they get merged
>  (Wendy vs. Walter Carlos, for the obvious one)

and here's another argument :) i disagree with that rule change, is all.

>  The _intention_ is, to stop pretending we don't have this situation
>  and that most users
>  are actually happy having everything always merged, because let's face
>  it, while merges
>  often make sense, they sometimes don't.   Nobody is suggesting we keep split
>  discographies for every single name variation and alias, only in the cases where
>  it's already obvious that the discographies are split, keep being
>  split, keep being merged
>  and get duped when users are unhappy with the current situation. Just
>  like we do
>  for people.

but that's not the rule you are suggesting:

"To be used in cases where a band changed their name only, between
 releases, with no accompanying lineup or musical style change.  This
 AR should only be used for completely consistent name changes, where
 all releases for a given period used one name, and the change to the
 new name was entire."

that is, if an artist changes their name from one release to another,
no matter how small the change, we create a new artist. that i don't
agree with. i think one artist page should equal one artist. if an
artist changes their name to create a new body of work (eg, like
warsaw > joy division > new order) then fine...split away. whether
that needs a new AR or not i don't know. i don't see those as 'name
changes' but rather the same guys (err, minus one for new order)
performing as a different group, so ostensibly the old performance AR
seems to deal with that scenario.

>  Let's instead use the tools already at our disposal to deal with it in
>  some manner.
>  Acknowledge that there is a problem in a small few situations, not
>  bury our heads
>  in the sand and continue to argue about it every time Walter gets merged into
>  Walter, or her entire back catalogue gets imported yet again under the
>  other name.
>
>  Performs as AR (or a new AR to replace it) seems to already work fine,
>  in the situations
>  it's appropriate.  I want to either explicitly allow it's use or
>  replace it with a similar AR only
>  for bands.