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.
