Auto merge release groups instead of deleting?

MusicBrainz
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1

I noticed two release groups with duplicate releases that should be merged. I could either enter a separate edit to merge the release groups as well, or do nothing and have it be automatically deleted. Since we merge rather than delete, I should do the former.

I had the idea that a merge could be done automatically between the release groups in this case. Since the release is the same, the release groups should always be the same as well. An exception could be if the release group had a lot of bad data for some reason, in which case it might be easier to just have it deleted. Or it could, for some strange reason, have the data of another release group in which case you might not want to merge them.

Given these counterpoints, I think a (pre-filled?) checkbox in the release merge dialog when the merge would result in empty release groups would be a cool and useful feature.


As a side note, I’m aware of the bug tracker and could have posted this there straight away since it’s basically a ticket, but I figured I should get some community feedback and make sure my presumptions are correct before I did that. Do you agree?

2

This sounds awesome in theory, but in practice I worry that it may detect and merge things it shouldn’t detect and merge, e.g. similarly-named studio and live albums. And since it’s not a human user entering the edit, there won’t be an option to cancel the edit if something goes wrong.

2 Likes
3

It would help if the merge is only automatic if one of the release groups would end up empty as a result of the release merge. After all, even though release groups hold some information that releases do not, they are pointless if there is no release inside.

4 Likes