[mb-users] Special characters in release titles

[Chris B]

2008/4/29 Gioele <gioele at svario.it>:
> Johannes Dewender wrote:
>  > It IS important what's on the cover. If the artist doesn't
>  > introduce "weird" characters, we shouldn't either.
>  If the artist (or the graphician that made the cover art) makes a spelling
>  error we correct it, unless it is an "deliberate" mistake.
>
>  To (mis)quote someone on IRC:
>
>  Artist intent > consistent spelling and capitalisation > cover art

seeing as it's near impossible to prove artist intent in such
situations, you're better off trying to find 'consistant original
data'. ie, you track down as many tracklistings (sourced from or
copies of the sleeve) as possible and see which spelling is the most
popular, or which spelling is on releases with the most weight
(official 1st party releases/reissues). you can also check the
artist's website if available.

>  > So no œ just for language reason. I know a lot of non-german releases
>  > that use german title names, but no ä etc. We shouldn't introduce them,
>  > unless it was only an encoding mistake and it IS on the cover.
>  I think you should use the most appropriate spelling. I'll keep on fixing
>  all the releases where Italian words are misspelt or wrote with the wrong
>  accent, regardless of what is written on the back cover. I wonder why I
>  should not fix releases titles like "Cosi fan tutte" (they all do things)
>  that are supposed to be spelt "Così fan tutte" (thus do they all). :)

i think this is fairly dangerous to do without at least a little bit
of research. correcting spellings has no use in itself - we're not a
dictionary!