@CatQuest is currently vacationing:
There will likely be no official decision either which way until next month, but feel free to continue the discussion and enjoy the (northern hemisphere) summer. 
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Now we have had this membranophone bot reak its havoc across the database, is there any simple way to correct its obvious errors?
For example Dave Grohl - one of Nirvana’s drummers
Click on that link and look at his relationships. He is now credited as playing membranophone on dozens of tracks. Originally this would all have been “drums” as that is what was on the disk boxes/vinyl covers. (I am trying to imagine him using hippy type drums in Nirvana LOLZ :D)
I have been working through some bands by hand trying to correct this confusion. And it is possible to click one by one on each release and clean this up with some artists. (For example, I did this to The Cure)
But it will take ages to work through all of the membranophones on Dave’s page and correct them.
So please someone come up with a magic script or some kind of way of fixing this for the obvious rock bands. For this sake I’d even try and learn scripting to work through and correct this weirdness.
We need a script where we can point at a Band and\or and Artist and let it swap all membranophones back to drums (drum set).
Eeek… I kept looking at Nirvana and there are just so many entries that need correcting for their various drummers.
I know this same thing has happened to Pink Floyd… and I guess Rolling Stones will be hit hard (I bet Ronnie Wood wouldn’t know what a Membranophone was). They are just too big to correct by hand.
It is especially the older data that will have just been “drums” and now has been changed to a term the average person has never heard of. (So far I have asked a dozen random Brits if they know what a “membranophone is” and so far no one has… and that includes my spellcheck)
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We just had a talk recently (and in the dev meeting today) about changing stuff with a bot, so yeah, that’s in the plans It’s the summer and things move a bit more slowly though, so give it a bit of time
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“Correction bot for hire” sounds good. Good to hear there are discussions going on in them secret rooms.
I am just imagining other people who access this database and how odd this membranophone is going to be to them when trying to use the data.
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Just a minor correction: There was no bot in place changing relationships. It was “just” a name change (and of course this affects all existing relationships).
But yes, a big +1 for getting a bot in place to fix this up. I have started correcting this for some drummers, but it is very tedious work. And seeing all those “performed membranophone” entries really hurts my eyes 
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And hopefully the bot can also fix the musicians playing ‘families’ instead of instruments issue:
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No secret rooms FWIW, our IRC channels are all open 
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The IRC channels are promoted almost everywhere the forums are; e.g.,
https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Communication
https://metabrainz.org/contact
Additionally, both our channels (which both have more than a 100 users in them as I’m writing this) are logged and the logs are publicly available. Since it’s relevant to this topic, here are the logs from the talk @CatQuest, @reosarevok, and I had in MusicBrainz as well as the short summary of the same during last night’s weekly meeting in MetaBrainz
https://chatlogs.metabrainz.org/brainzbot/musicbrainz/msg/4232582/
https://chatlogs.metabrainz.org/brainzbot/metabrainz/msg/4235288/
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I only really visit MusicBrainz and this forum so finding the IRC channels is a bit hit and miss. Trouble is I am trying to visit here to relax around my music hobby and get away from the computers. 
Thanks @Freso for the links. Have read those chunks now.
When the @FresoBot has been updated, I would think it would be useful if you can have a “targeted mode”. Something that allows a whole Artist - either Band or Single person - to be targeted for “correction”. This would then allow a swap from “Membranononophone” to “Drum Set (drums)” for Rock bands.
And if a bulk rename happens, the same bot can help undo those bands who have accidentally become “Drum Set (drums)” instead of “drum”.
Maybe have a thread dedicated to “Instrument Corrections”. Then an artist or band that is spotted as being heavily wrong can be corrected quicker. This would also cover the issue @hiccup mentioned above where “guitar family” has slid into an artist.
When looking at Nirvana saw lots of worryingly loose “bass” entries too. This would be again handy if we can say "For the Band “Nirvana” change all entries of “Bass” to “Bass Guitar”. (I did see previous discussions on this topic too)
Human eyes will always be superior to a bot. So Human Checks are needed. Humans requesting the corrections seem important to me. The human should always have the last say. 
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I should probably point out that wherever “membranophone” is listed using the “programming” relationship, the bot should probably replace those with “drum machine” rather than “drums (drum set)”.
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… and the membraphone → drums change is possible with this script
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And it works very nicely on a release-by-release basis, but with over 200,000 recordings featuring “membranophone”, it’s still gonna take a looong time.
BTW could you add ‘guitar family’/‘guitar’ as options as well? There are a more manageable number of those - though also, I would guess, even better targets for a bot-based cleanup.
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If I get bored at the weekend I’ll have a look at that and see if I can learn how to run it. It will help my OCD on the bands I deal with. Even if there is eventually a bulk change to the database it would probably still be good to get as many corrected drum set (drums) in place as possible.
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Added in version 2018.8.18
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How about “violin family”/“violin”? I’ve seen that at least once.
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The accompanying ticket for this is https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/OTHER-329
we are waiting for this to be coded/worked on, after which things should be much in order.
afaik @freso is also waiting for something - I’ll let him explain that part.
We also want to conduct a poll to see which thing you all think is the best replacement; should blank credits be moved to “drums” or “drumset”. This poll will be made Soon™, right now everyone’s a bit busy with preparations for GCI, BookBrainz, and general stuff esp @reosarevok (as explained in the blog) and @freso (who’s the Lead Admin for GCI)
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Sorry to dig out a two year old thread… but what happened to the plans to fix the Membranophone confuddlements in the MB database?
When I see membranophones in the artists I am working with I try and fix them as often as possible. But this is a slow old process by hand. Especially as I have just stepped into tagging some of my Pink Floyd albums… far too many membranophones to fix in there!
Maybe there is a script someone has made that can be pointed at a Relationships page and do all the clicking for me? It would be good if I could point a tool at a per Release or per Artist basis and make the adjustments.
Generally with a single release it is easy to know which type of drums it will be. And mostly with the artist too.
It seems sensible to me to arm some of us who care with “Correction Toolkits” to help push this forward?
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There is the old capitalisation_gun bot that has been used to fix deprecated relationships before. Perhaps it could be repurposed for this?