The Possibly duplicate artists report says « MERGE or ADD COMMENT » and it apparently suggest this on artists that don’t have the same name, so it’s unneeded and cluttering to add comment in some cases:
There is only one David Bowie but the report apparently told to either MERGE or COMMENT, because of I don’t know which other one artist
My revert edit is pending
The is only one BLANKEY JET CITY but the report told it looked like some Francky something, just because katakana transcription looks like BLANKEY and Francky (but are sitll different). Then why not adding comments to BJC alson, etc.
My revert edit is pending
This report should really ask user to not change artists that really don’t look alike, false positives.
I second that.
It makes a lot of sense when a new artist is first added, but having a very common name.
Also when all artists have a disambiguation but one (this one also needs a disambiguation to help editors).
Well, David Bowie and BLANKEY JET CITY chose their artist names, they are distinctive, there are no homonyms and if one day another artist takes this name, it will be on purpose and will have to get a comment.
I did not present you examples with common names but distinctive unique artist names.
This is why I think it is redundant to comment them.
And also, those disambiguations are not internationalisable so we could set them in artist native language.
Judging by the boys here, I might as well cancel my reverts.
It is unfortunate that disambiguation comments aren’t localizable, and aliases can’t have disambiguation comments. I’m not sure the artist’s native tongue is really the best language to pick when we only get one — it’s really for use by MB editors in creating a database, it’s not something the artist comes up with or uses. So I’d (somewhat selfishly, I admit) suggest English would make sense. Even better, of course, would be to make it localizable and/or move it to an artist alias attribute.
There is a big problem with the introduction of the reports.
They should emphasise that they are only some automatic request showing potential useful hints but not calling for action.
We really should rewrite the introductions of the report if editors feel this way.
Many of the matches in the report should absolutely NOT get editors write a comment.
BLANKEY JET CITY has an alias that collides with フランキー, so that’s why I added a disambiguation to them both.
I believe that an alias of David Bowie collided with The Thin White Duke (an alias of Bowie’s that is not used as a performance credit).
Reports are calls to action, as the introduction text on the Reports Page says:
If you’d like to participate in the editing process, but do not know where to start, the following reports should be useful. These reports scour the database looking for data that might require fixing, either to comply with the style guidelines, or in other cases where administrative “clean up” tasks are required.
This report aims to identify artists with very similar names. If two artists are actually the same, please merge them (remember to write an edit note and give your proof). If they’re different, add disambiguation comments to them (and once a group of similarly named artists have disambiguation comments, they will stop appearing here).
So if those aren’t a call to action, what are they?
I think that we should probably keep a list of common words and names and users should be prompted to add a disambiguation to any that match the list. Users should also be prompted to add disamiguation comments to very short names as well.
Is not a call for action.
And if some report makes some people think that we should disambiguate or merge all major artists that have some tribute band, these reports should be changed.
As for フランキー and ブランキー they DO ABSOLUTELY NOT SOUND THE SAME AT ALL.
One sounds BUrankii, the other sounds HUrankii.
And I will remove the フランキー alias if it can stop report editors to clutter my artists.
I do believe disambiguation comments are almost always helpful.
I might make exceptions for super famous artists like Beyonce and yes maybe David Bowie, but I never heard of Blankey Jet City and if I ever add them as featured artists on a release I enter a comment will surely come in handy.
Edits should generally improve data. I don’t see how removing a valid disambiguation does that.
Disambiguation comments are also helpful for artists, whose name is unique at the moment, because it can always be the case that a new but different artist has the same name.
I completely dysagree to overzealously put English blabla on every artists…
Including non‐English artist and artist that chose a distinct/silly name that cannot be reused by another artist.
This is disambiguation comment field, no random English blabla field.
Let’s not get possessive over Artist entries, please? The database belongs to all of us. (Unless you actually are the Artist(s) (or their label or some such) in question, but I don’t think that’s the case here. )
Please review this edit that I have willingfully left pending instead of auto:
THE ROLLING STONES (not one of my artists) disambiguation https://musicbrainz.org/edit/56768330
I have also auto‐added some disambiguation to other of not my artists.
Continuing here as the discussions in the edit notes are not really going anywhere.
Here are my points summarized:
I agree the text in the report could be changed to only say that disambiguations should be added for identically named artists while for artists that come up in the report because of aliases disambiguations could be optional.
That being said personally I wouldn’t mind if we’d add disambiguations to all artists. Not everybody knows Madonna or Michael Jackson and disambiguations could help there.
I don’t interpret the current guidelines to say disambiguations should only be added if the artist is a homonym. So adding a correct disambiguation to any artist should never be no-voted.
For the same reason I think artist disambiguations should never be removed if they are not wrong. They can always be improved though.
Back to the report: I think it would be awesome if there were different versions of the report. Like an option to show all artists with duplicate names no matter if they have a disambiguation or not, an option to disregard aliases (maybe even by alias type - legal name, artist name, search hint) and an option to disregard sort names.
But it’s called a disambiguation, not an introduction.
It should be renamed if it was to be added to all or random artists like that.
Something called disambiguation has no reason to be on artists with names so unique that they would never be ambiguate (BLANKEY JET CITY, for instance).
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