In searching for incomplete and/or duplicate releases of artists I know, I have discovered two releases that I am unsure what to do with, if anything. They are:
Both of these releases have no references, format, date, etc, basically nothing to work with. Both releases have a group with the same name. Both releases appear to have been added automatically by a bot and were voted yes.
I am unable to verify either of these releases to complete the information, much less justify them being labeled as official releases. There must have been something to get yes votes on them, but I have no idea what that could have been. It would be my opinion to suggest removal of both of these releases. I considered bootleg, but for a bootleg, it needs to be available as a release, and in these cases, the only availability seems to be these two unreferenced releases here.
Any thoughts or suggestions on how to clean up the data on these releases? I do not see a real use for releases with a ârandomâ track listing and nothing to go with it.
If you really canât find anything on it, I donât see a problem with putting through an edit in to delete it.
If another editor knows better, they can always vote on your removal. I also donât see any value in information-poor and source-less tracklists floating around on MB âjust in caseâ.
Just make sure youâve made a concerted effort (via edit notes and google) to track down the release!
Otherwise I wouldnât stress too much, after all, very little information is being lost, so very little is needed for an editor to add it again if they want.
There is a DiscID on both releases, but I donât think thatâs quite enough to justify keeping the releases around (imo).
I wouldnât mind removing the releases either. For your information, freedb is (or was, whatever) a database for cd releases and in the beginning of MusicBrainz a lot of releases were imported from freedb. So are these two releases. Freedbâs data is however, pretty unreliable. I wouldnât accept it as a source.
He means that a lot of people might have tagged that album, and if they look it up again they wonât be able to find it. Though in this case I doubt it would be that many people. Anyway, donât forget to set the release type to bootleg, since this isnât an official release.
By the way, there seem to be many âreleasesâ with that barcode: https://www.google.nl/search?q=5+601250+202197
Iâm not sure if Discogs is a really reliable source in this case either (though normally they are of course).
Setting to bootleg is done, the edit created anyway. I see, I misunderstood. You mean tagged as in used Picard or similar to tag user files. I agree, given the release, I doubt this was used often, if at all. Regardless, that release has edits in process to correct / complete it.
I do have a question on this. On recent edits I have been involved in, the topic of what qualifies as a release and what does not has been discussed in good detail. I ask the question hereâŠdoes this qualify as a release to MB standards? As I was informed that having cover art is not in itself making it a release, what does this have? Meaning, is there a source of this release, a source where the release can be acquired? If I understood all correctly, a bootleg release needs to be readily available, examples like Amazon selling bootlegs. The edit is done and that is fine, I am just asking so I know how much more effort to put into the second one. It is for sure not an official release, and the one that was identified is a bootleg from Yugoslavia.
You should generally only consider deleting entities (releases, artists, recordings, âŠ) as a very last resort. MBIDs are the fundamental gears in our raison dâĂȘtre. We have a lot of people relying on them being stable and that an MBID being used today will still be referable in 5, 10, 20, 50, ⊠years in the future.
I understand that and have followed that for some time, thus bring this hear before doing anything. But my last question in here is thisâŠso if someone adds a ton of home-made releases, they should all stay because we do not want to rid MBIDs, even though all of the adds are not qualified per MB guidelines? I do not have the answer, thus I am asking.
I personally had an edit denied completely because it was not official enough to be called a bootleg, regardless of artwork. Others add stuff that is not even found and that is fine. I am trying to understand how this works and what to do with existing releases that are in question. What makes a last resort? It could be nothing, no release ever gets deleted because someone might have used an ID. I hope that clarifyâs my question.
To add on the above, what I am getting at is how clean the MB database is desired to be. The more accurate data, the better. Or, you can slide into what FreeDB became, more and more unreliable and âjunkâ releases. Whatever the answer is what I will do, but I am looking for some clarification.
I think availability isnât a good way to judge releases because it changes over time. Of course something that was bootlegged in Yugoslavia more than 10 years ago isnât going to be available now, but we should avoid adding hundreds of torrents just because they are there too. You could also ask yourself whether a bootleg adds something useful to the bigger picture? A bootleg like Endtroducing⊠The Samples may just be a download on a blog, itâs a great document to DJ Shadowâs magnum opus. A Chinese pirate release of an Adele album doesnât sound very special, but what if there is no official release in that country?
tl;dr: Itâs complicated, there are no hard and fast rules, and it should be decided case by case.
About deleting releases: I agree that it should be a last resort, and merging is always better than deleting, but if the data shouldnât have been in MusicBrainz in the first place, the MBIDs are not going to help anyone anyway. They just obscure the good data en lower the average data quality of MusicBrainz. Off with their heads!
That makes sense. Unfortunately does not give an answer and still leaves up to each personâs opinion at the time, but I do agree that an answer like that may be all there is. I ask this in detail because I deal with a large amount of promo / DJ / bootleg releases, so that is an area that I can add releases to and can help clean many of them up.
For the record, FreeDB import edits, at that time, were queued by [ModBot] instead of as the editor who actually did the lookup and triggered the import.
The yes voter for these edits is generally the editor.
Hopefully it is not the case any more but unfortunately, ModBot still steals some edits (MBS-6778).
Thanks. Yes, that is what I was stating. These two edits were queued by the bot, and then yes votes were tallied. I was saying that there must have been something to get the yes votes on them from actual editors. For one, a Discogs reference was found. The other, still nothing. I do understand now that these edits were the start and the reliability may not be as good.
Read me again, I donât write very goodâŠ
ModBot did nothing. @bawjaws (editor) looked up some release and clicked the import button.
You see the name of ModBot there, but it was @bawjaws in fact.
Then they voted yes their own edit.
But anyway I usuallly tend to think the release does exist⊠But if you really found nothing about itâŠ
Yes, thank you for the clarification. I understand what you are saying now. I did misunderstand. Thank you for that information, it helps a lot when reading old notes.
