Encouraging Adding Edit Notes

Would having context dependent (type of edit) suggestions, for what might be useful to put in an edit note, get bus better edit notes?

Eg
Add External link to a Discography and the suggestion asks "Maybe tell other Editors what matches between the MB Artist and the data on external link? ".

The Editor might write:
Matches for genre, name, role, dates, works and geolocation.

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Please report said editors using the “Report editor” on their user profile. Once I or someone else has prodded them and they continue to do so, we can either mark their account as being untrusted (which will make all their edits go into the voting queue), disable their editing and voting rights all together, or (in really bad cases) straight out delete the account.

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I’m not too good at this myself, but I think leaving an edit note whenever you add a Disc ID should be done, to tell what the source of the Disc ID is. Some releases end up having multiple Disc IDs, and with no edit note, there’s no clear lineage of where said Disc IDs came from.

Edit: Another thing that might be good to add for Disc ID addition edit notes is what client was used to calculate the Disc ID, as some will inevitably have bugs: Disc IDs from Hybrid SACDs - #22 by Freso

Same for “membranophone” → “drums”. While this will likely be correct in 99% of cases, there’s still the 1% where there’s some ambiguity. Knowing your source or arguments/reasoning for why you decided to change the instrument would allow other/future editors to consider whether this edit was in the 1% or not.


I’m pretty sure “pertinent” is too “high brow” for non‐native/fluent English speakers. And I also don’t like that the statement would be wrong. Even with the suggestion of making no-note edits open for 14 days instead of 7, the edit would still move forward (eventually). Let’s not lie or otherwise confuse people more than we already do (– ideally we should confuse less!).


That said, I don’t like the idea of neither checkboxes (one more click for making a mostly simple edit) nor of requiring an edit note for submission. Like others have said, this will almost certainly lead to more bad edit notes than good one. I’d like more contextual nudges and hints and reasons why editors should leave edit notes (for pretty much all edits) close to where edits are being made, ideally also with tips on writing good edit notes (or link to somewhere talking about this).

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I think these complaints mostly come from me. Until recently I just voted “abstain” on edits that have bad or no edit notes, but that that didn’t send a message.
Now that a large percentage of all open edits are viewed by 2-5 voters I am more vocal as I really think it’s reasonable for the editor who already made the research to leave an edit note, so x voters don’t have to do the research themselves too.

Two of those I don’t consider very helpful - at least in many cases.

“as written on cover” is helpful if it’s written big on the front cover and ideally the voter uses jesus’ script that displays (small) cover art for each edit.
Otherwise each voter still has to click through to the cover art to be able to vote on the edit.
“as written on cover” + url to the relevant cover art is much better

“I’m the artist” can sometimes be helpful, but in most cases artists don’t use MB for a long time, so they will most likely be inexperienced editors so whenever I read a note that just reads “I’m the artist” all I think is: does the editor even know what they are doing?

This is more of a punishment for active voters than for the editor in question.

I have thought about posting a “bad edit notes hall of shame” on the forum, but that wouldn’t be very nice.

This is true. If the edit is so obviously correct according to uncontroversial parts of the style guide leaving no edit note is totally okay imo and forcing all editors to always leave an edit note would just be wasting everyone’s time.

This is another example I think is totally fine. Especially when adding featured artists or so while doing another edit and you already have the edit note for the first edit in your clipboard.

What annoys me personally are merge edit notes that just read “merging into oldest MBID” as written by a script. Recording merges already do require an edit note so you can submit them, but using this script circumvents that.
The mass merge sctipt on the other hand mostly leaves helpful edit notes, though I’d love to see more additional edit notes written by the editors, e.g. like “same label” when merging recordings from different compilations as otherwise it seems like these albums have nothing in common.

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I agree that I should force the use of an edit note!
I have created feature requests for this.

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8 posts were split to a new topic: Edit notes for adding Disc IDs

I’ve been employed to make signage for public spaces before, and you can make it ten feet tall with flashing lights around it and people will still only read if they want to.

I don’t think people being lazy editors will be solved by trying to obstruct them with extra button clicks or larger messages. A buddy system for newbies or something along those lines and lets them know that people look at their edits (something that promotes a cultural/attitude shift) would be the most effective imo. Not saying I expect that to happen, big job, just an example.

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Based on the discussion here, I have decided to enter a Jira ticket for this change. If anyone wants to comment, track or vote, it is Ticket MBS-10294. Thanks for your thoughts everyone.

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I fear the only way to stop people from adding no or bad edit notes is to block edits from being applied after 7 days if they didn’t get a single yes-vote. On the other hand that would get more people to create fake accounts to vote on their own edits.

I’m going to start voting “no” on all merges with bad edit notes soon.

The code of conduct says:

Never vote against edits where information is optional (not required during the submission process). Instead Abstain and enter an edit note requesting more information.

For merges leaving an edit not IS required and leaving one containing no information is not enough.

This goes for edit notes like “merge”, “same”, “merging into oldest MBID” or “compilations”.

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I wrote some code to block edit notes with only spaces, punctuation or one character. That might block some of the bad notes, although I’m sure not all of them.

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Isn’t voting no on possible good edits a bad voting practice, though? Perhaps you could try to ask the editor for more information first? I am aware that you are reviewing every merge (and I’m very grateful for that!). Perhaps after https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-10299 is implemented it could be manageable this way?

Additionally, even though the following link is not a guideline, I personally try to base my current voting tendencies on the following article: Editing: Making MusicBrainz better – MetaBrainz Blog , although sometimes instead of politely asking the editor to cancel the edit first I do cast a no vote if their edit makes the data worse, however I always accompany it with an edit note explaining why. Also I can’t approve and fix stuff myself cause I’m not an auto-editor (doesn’t matter for merges in this case anyway).

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I disagree. A lack of votes should not be an assumption of wrong data. I am often working in obscure artists doing edits that never get votes. Probably due to people not always knowing much about these artists. Rejecting edits because they are being done in an unpopular area is wrong.

Sock puppet accounts would soon stand out. You would especially notice them as you see so many of the edits yourself. If the same users are always voting for the same users then it soon gets obvious.

I do agree with the frustration of the notes system. I loose count of the number of times I have tried to engage someone in conversation due to bad data or bad edits. Usually starting with Abstain votes to go with a comment. Only kicking that to a No if they clearly break the guidelines or are known bad data.

That looks perfect to me

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If “no” votes on bad edit notes instead of bad edits as threatened by @paulakreuzer should become current accepted practice that would be a major change of the guideline quoted and followed by @culinko, which states “give people the benefit of the doubt that they are doing the right thing”.
As much as we wish and ask for sensible edit notes, we also ask for reasonable doubt and comment with no votes: a missing or unspecific edit is never a sufficient reason for voting no
See also Edit #62907424 - Merge recordings

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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.

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Totally agree on this one. It freaks me out seeing some of those huge merges where you can see that they have clearly not checked the data, just looking at the names and times. And clear mistakes get made as there are many editions out there of some tracks. I’m working on a cleanup in the coming weeks of exactly this kind of mess where someone has just done huge merges based on name and times. You can tell these merges were not checked as open up the page on the Release Group of that album and there is the Wikidata intro which STARTS with details of how the initial release was out for only a few weeks with different mixes on most of the tracks. :confounded:

(Actually - the times in that example are very different, but it didn’t stop the mergers!)

Some people are more interested in merges than accuracy.

I misunderstood you then. Sorry for that. (Proabaly read the words too literally) Lack of votes is NOT to do with lack of edit notes. I assume that lack of votes in my case is due to lack of knowledge of the voter on my subject.

As you have noticed, my notes can sometimes waffle too much, but there is only so much time available and editors can’t be expected to add every reference to the edit note. For example, I’ll often refer to cover art attached to the Release and I have seen some voters complain that a link wasn’t included! Yet the art is only a couple of clicks away. Those voters need to remember that editing is also very time consuming :slight_smile:

I like when I see your Abstain votes - that tells me I haven’t done something obviously stupid, but you don’t knwo the artist so can’t comment further.

Please tell me you hit the REPORT THIS USER buttons on their account? This kind of thing should go straight up the tree to someone that can suspend the account. It is an area I have often seen strangely lacking here - there seems to be no real interest having an consequences for wrong doing. I love a bit of anarchy, but there needs to be someone with a BanStick™.

Can I vote for this point 100 times over? Some of those people I wonder if they even listen to music, or are just stuck in a database merging streak. They seem just see words and numbers and have no care that some of us are here to listen to the little differences between releases. The example you give there also leaves me confused as to the lack of care.

That example is painful in so many different ways. That editor is making it clear they don’t care about the music, they just want to tidy up some links. They clearly don’t bother even opening the page involved of these artists. You can see that many of them are not even bothering to check the items being merged - too often you see merges going backwards due to the weird assumption that “old” is better than “accurate”. (ARGH!!! You have got me joining your rant with my own rant! We both care too much about the quality of data :wink: )

They will use an excuse of it is “too much effort to check” - well they should not be merging then! It will take me many hours research to untangle the mess that has been caused on a badly merged artist. It will lead to probably a dozen edits, and a whole batch of new recordings. Meanwhile Mr Merger will have run another 500 Mass merges and be all smug they have move themselves up the Number of Edits tables… and someone suggested making this a “game” with “rewards”! If you think it is bad now, wait until people think there are prizes for the numbers of edits…

I have given up trying to deal with those people :frowning: This is seriously one of the Weirdest “communities” I have even been a member of.

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Does your code take into account text written by scripts like the Mass Merge script? As noted by @paulakreuzer above it is those merges causing big headaches. Technically they include a comment as the script splatters text… but the comment is meaningless without REAL words.

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That is not something that can really be checked on MusicBrainz’s side. It’s something that individual scripts will have to be upfront about themselves. @jesus2099 at least is aware of this:


If there are other scripts that this is lacking from, please report to said userscripts’ authors.

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This page actually encourages people to merge based on name, artist and length, but I see it has not been reviewed by the documentation team.
https://musicbrainz.org/doc/How_To_Merge_Recordings

Wrong merges happen easily when recordings of alternative versions/mixes/etc do not have any disambiguation text. For the same reason recordings get assigned to the wrong releases by mistake. To not make a mistake, the only solution would be to add new recordings for every disc - leading to an even greater number of recordings without proper disambiguation, so I can see why users are encouraged to merge recordings based on name, artist and length…

I’m one who will sometimes make large merges, but I’m careful about it. I check every release I’m merging a track from to make sure that there’s nothing about it that would contraindicate merging: live albums, re-recordings, anthologies with multiple versions, basically if it’s anything other than an obvious “best of” kind of compilation I’ll dig into it further, and if I can I add a disambiguation instead. If I can find evidence of multiple recordings of similar length, I also won’t merge. For instance, Patsy Cline overdubs make me very hesitant to merge a lot of her recordings. But if I’m looking at a “hit song” with only one well-known recording, then yeah I’ll merge a bunch of compilations just based on artist, title, and length. The value added by having relationships shared between merged recordings outweighs the risk of merging different recordings in a case like that, for me.

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Yes, in the case of one-off “hit” songs your approach allows reasonable confidence.

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