[mb-users] Guess I'll boycott adding release events

[Frederik 'Freso' S. Olesen]

Frederic Da Vitoria skrev:
>On Wed, Jul 30, 2008 at 9:30 PM, Frederik 'Freso' S. Olesen
><freso.dk at gmail.com> wrote:
>>Frederic Da Vitoria skrev:
>>>>Where/when are are the comments lost? AFAICT, the comments I entered
>>>>during my last release event addition are still to be found:
>>>>http://musicbrainz.org/mod/search/results.html?object_type=album&orderby=desc&object_id=665858
>>>Almost unusable.
>>Why?
>
>Because references can be lost among all the Release's history. IMO,
>Release Event sources should be accessible directly from each Release
>event.

And so should the sources of ARs (e.g., how do you know that Artist 1 is 
the parent of Artist 2 and a sibling of Artist 5?), releases themselves 
(not all releases are obvious, e.g. a release might have been released 
online, but since lost in the electron cloud), artists, labels, ...

Release Events aren't the only items that we need a source to verify. 
Right now, edit notes do the job of listing sources relevant to the 
edits that add, change, or remove data. If you have an idea of how to 
better list sources for everything without being in the way of actually 
using the data... (Yes, edit notes need to be dug up - but this also 
means that they're not thrown in the face when you just want the 
chronological list of release by Foo Bar.)

>Can you imagine what MB is doing currently on a book?  You are
>reading this book and you wonder if there is a reference for this
>sentence;  you must go to a rerference index, seaarch for the page
>number you were in. Definitely not user-friendly.

I've read quite a few books that doesn't even bother to list the 
references, other than a compilation of texts at the very end of it. 
This means that I can't say "oh, this chapter sounds familiar" and check 
whether it's nicked from one of the sources, without going through all 
of the sources in turn (unless, of course, you happen to run into it).

MB isn't a book, the Internet isn't a book. A book analogy won't work here.

Also, as I said. Some edits *are* hidden away a bit too well. But a bug 
reports are in place to have this corrected. I'm sure the search[*] 
could be improved upon as well, to make edits even more easily 
findable... but I usually do fine by browsing the edits.

[*] http://musicbrainz.org/mod/search/index.html

>Actually, I am
>convinced must user aren't even aware the edit notes are still there..

And so this ought to be documented better. I never even thought of the 
idea of them going away.

>>>are very difficult to find. Furthermore, if I want to add another
>>>source to an existing release event, how can I?
>>All edits have an "Add note" link. Using that, you can add a note (for
>>example, citing the source).
>
>Good, I did not know this. But still completely counterintuitive.

How so? (Read on.)

>I
>was trying to click on "Edit release events" which seemed more logical
>to me. After all, when I want to add a reference to a release event,

Which is not possible as such. I have no idea where you got the idea for 
this, as no other release event has such information listed directly in 
connection with it in the interface... ?

>the first concept that comes to my mind is "release event", not
>"release edit". But maybe I am the only one.

To me, it sounds more like you had the idea that the system was 
something it isn't and never has been. I don't know what you saw that 
suggested so. Common practice is to document the source when you make 
the edit. I'm pretty sure it's mentioned somewhere, that the discussion 
happening in edit notes is also so that future folks can see why we did 
what – which implies that they're not being tossed away. But I'm too 
tired to figure out where I have this from right now. Try the wiki. :)

>IMO, this is typical: The
>interface is too close to the database design. And I know what I am
>talking about, I am a software designer, mainly in databases, and I do
>this same mistake all the time :-D

I know that patches to improve the interface are more than welcome – see 
http://musicbrainz.org/doc/Development :)

-- 
Venlig hilsen,
Frederik "Freso" S. Olesen <http://freso.dk/>

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