I would think that is not the case for people who cannot read the original script, otherwise people would not be entering such disambiguations?
While the current solution with transliterations as aliases makes searching work on a technical level, the actual search results only show the primary artist name in the original script, which doesn’t help the searcher if there are multiple similar-looking results and they cannot read the script in question. To fix this, the search results would have to show the alias that matched the search query.
I just came across an edit where a Russian composer’s (Tchaikovsky) romanized name was added to the disambiguation field. I was set to vote on this edit, as I understood that this was the function of aliases, not disambiguation. But then I noticed that there is quite a history of edits, for this and other Russian artists, adding, then removing, the romanized name from disambiguation.
Assuming this had been discussed, I found this thread, but it doesn’t appear that a consensus has been reached, and the style guidelines don’t appear to have been changed to address the issue. At least, I haven’t found any such guideline. So I’m reviving the issue, in hopes of finding out what decision was reached, if any.
Disambiguations are meant to differentiate and the name doesn’t generally differentiate, so it should be self-evident that these do not belong in the disambiguation. We even have a report for the Latin vs Latin version of this
Disambig regularly turn into a general description field, even for the famous. I saw these pop-up this week and wondered if they should stay. There is not really anyone to disambiguate these artists from.
I’ve thought about this. I’ve been adding events and while selecting performing artists I’ve made the mistake of adding the wrong artist because there was only 1 artist by the name I was searching, and so I felt like surely this must be the artist I am looking for. When diving a little deeper into it I discovered there are more artists by the same name but they weren’t available yet in MB. So that means that even if there seems to be no-one to disambiguate from that doesn’t need to be true (forever). A disambiguation would’ve helped me prevent my (I admit, careless) error. Therefor I feel like it would be a good idea to always add a disambiguation. In the best case it helps prevents errors, I’m sure we’ve all come across MB-artists containing data from several artists. In the worst case it’s redundant, but does that really matter a lot?
I would argue that that’s irrelevant because despite something being well known by most, there are always people who’ve never heard of it. The disambiguation helping those (perhaps very few) people would in my view outweigh the argument of redundancy.
Neither of those are particularly rare names. There’s dozens (if not hundreds) of Sinead O’Connors in Ireland, and it doesn’t seem too far-fetched that a few might turn up as professional cellists or recording engineers or whatever.
Sure, it is not forbidden to release under your real name, even if the name is occupied by a much more famous artist, but then the disambiguation will have to be added for that artist. And if the editor can’t tell the artists apart, they will pick the wrong one anyway.
And what if the next Sinead O’Connor is also singer-songwriter? You need to know the distinguishing features first.
If a disambiguation helps identifying artists that’s good. Not everyone is familiar with even artists you consider famous. MB has users from all over the world from different generations. And I think especially for artists performing under their actually not so uncommon name there is a point of having those disambiguation.
I really don’t get why there are these recurring lengthy discussions about that. Having the disambiguation causes no harm but they add clarity.
I think the reasons the discussions keep recurring are:
As in this case, the artist’s disambiguation has been edited many times, with one editor adding the romanized name, and the next removing it.
The guidelines don’t make clear whether this use of disambiguation is approved or not.
Because of #2, the only way an editor can learn whether this use is allowable is to either search edits (not an easy or intuitive task) for this type of edit and read the edit notes, or to make the edit and wait for comments to appear, which doesn’t always occur.
I realize that not everyone takes the time to find the style guidelines, but if the guideline was there, editors can be referred to it when necessary. That should, over time, greatly reduce the flip-flopping edits, and the recurring discussions.
I generally support the notion that disambiguation isn’t where romanized names belong, primarily because there is a feature (aliases) that is explicitly intended for this purpose. If there is other information in disambiguation for a particular entity, adding romanized names unnecessarily (IMO) goes against the goal of keeping disambiguations brief.
While aliases are the place where a romanized name belongs, until they are are actually displayed in search results everywhere it’s a moot point. “Пётр Ильич Чайковский” is undoubtedly the correct name for the composer, but a large majority of people won’t immediately be able to tell that this is the Tchaikovsky they are looking for.
I will note they are shown in some search results, like the relationship editor and artist credit editor. none of these have the artist name in the disambiguation (and it falls back to the sort name of there’s no alias)
Yes, I think that localized primary aliases have been displayed next to disambiguations in “inline” search results at least since 2014 – see the mention in MBS-7903, for example. I uploaded a PR yesterday to experiment with displaying them in more places, although it still needs some work:
I’m curious whether editors think that “regular” search results are the only additional place that these should be displayed, or whether they’d also be useful in other places where disambiguations are shown (e.g. artist credits in the tracklist editor and release editor’s “Edit note” tab, etc.). Or whether there are editors who think that they shouldn’t be displayed anywhere.
Instead of showing primary alias (aligned on MB language, I guess), wouldn’t it be better to display the matching alias? The alias that matches what you have typed in the search box.
It’s probably much more complex to do, but it would be cool, maybe.
