I wasn’t a 100% serious with my last post and also obviously I wouldn’t do this with editors I hadn’t asked for better edit notes many times before. Also obviously my no-vote would still come with a note asking for more info and I’d switch to abstain as soon as they provide some (even if I don’t agree with the info).
Generally I do so too even though I hadn’t read that blog post before.
One thing though. The post says:
Edits fit into four categories:
Edits that makes things better (perfect or not)
Edits makes things different (but neither are better)
Edits that contain some correct things and some incorrect things
Edits that are outright wrong (existing data is better)
That is only true for voters who know everything. For everybody (else) there are also:
Edits that you can’t tell yet whether they improve or worsen the data.
That’s for example true for all those recording merges based only on title, length and artist. Maybe one day the compilation one of the two merge subjects is from will be re-released with more detailed artwork providing evidence that the recordings are or are not the same - but right now you just can’t tell.
In this case you can’t make a judgement on whether the edit improves the data or not, you can only weigh the risks vs the benefits and I would argue there is no situation where you are much better off when you already merged before you knew it was deserved, but you are much much worse off if you merged and then find out it was wrong.
I never said that. But a lack of votes often is evidence for a bad edit note. You’re right of course that with obscure artists you are likely going to get fewer votes, but getting one yes-vote is never really hard with a good edit note.
Today I found such an account. 99% of yes votes cast by editor A were cast on edits by editor B and 99% of yes votes cast on edits of editor A came from editor B, but all I could do was ask them whether they are accounts by the same person and when they said no all I could do was believe them.
I agree with the first part, but I would argue the link doesn’t really fit here.
In that edit the problem is no longer the lack of provided info about what the edit is based on, but the lack of basis for the edit. We asked for info, the info was given, it just wasn’t convincing.
That’s my whole frustration here. There are a lot of editors, even well established ones, who refuse to add good edit notes even if they are asked for them many times and each time they are asked they either get defensive and aggressive and still refuse to give any info or they admit their edit is based on basically nothing and still refuse to cancel if someone voices reasonable doubt.
I believe the following was the only time I actually voted no on such an edit:
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/58867629
The gist of the long conversation there was:
A: “merge”
B: Based on what?
A: Based on nothing.