It is hard at first but extremely rewarding once you get the hang of it - if you’re the kind of person that enjoys entering data and helping others!
Thanks for putting in the effort.
1 Like
I can see where you are coming from.
And if there was a reasonable chance of resources being allocated to the changes of the pges on which classical releases are entered then I’d say “Change the pages”.
If that is not currently doable then what small step can we who aren’t tied into coding and db maintenance probably succeed at now?
Starting to experiment now with mentoring seems a pretty good use of available free resources. If mentoring develops into a part of MB culture I’m pretty sure that there will always be new editors who will use/benefit from/be more productive with quality mentoring.
Even if the UI becomes very user friendly, the inherent complexity of creating metadata will be a big step-up for most people wishing to enter data.
2 Likes
This is helpful information!
However, the title of the Voting/Auto-editor Request Thread does not indicate that it is where new users should go to post questions. Can someone pin a new thread called “New users can post questions here” or something like that?
My biggest problem as a new user/editor was that I did not even realize that the forum part of the musicbrainz.org website existed–a problem that @reosarevok referred to early in this thread.
Friendly suggestion: Modify the function that displays search results so that if someone performs a search in the documentation pages, the system will suggest checking the forum for additional guidance (and vice versa).
For example: I remembered reading something about straight and curly quotes but couldn’t remember which was preferred. So, I searched the documentation for straight curly, but only got the Italian language page. I must have read about the straight and curly apostrophes in the forum, but I thought that the only help available was in the documentation pages. In case it helps to see the progression, the edits I made while looking for the preferred style of apostrophe are illustrated here. Later, when I stumbled into the forum, I found several discussions about the apostrophe including the curly vs. straight discussion. 
Could the documentation style guidelines at https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Miscellaneous include links to examples of the differences between unicode and ASCII as they appear in the database?
More friendly suggestions: Can the documentation pages include links to relevant forum topics or even reminders to check the forum? Just now, I looked at the tips and guides links at the bottom of the first Classical Style Guide page: https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Style/Classical. Why all the warnings about official vs unofficial? Why abbreviate CSG here? Abbreviations and warnings are intimidating for new users. The titles for the tips do not lead a new user to click on the tips links because a new user has never heard of CSG before (even though it is abbreviated at the top of the page—it’s just so overwhelming at first). Rather than “Introduction to CSG”, how about “Beginner tips for adding and editing releases of classical music”? Instead of “Tips for CSG editing”, try “Intermediate tips for editing classical styles more easily”. Make the documentation guides easier for someone who is not computer-savvy or database-savvy to understand.
And another friendly suggestion: Experienced editors could search for edit notes that contain question marks or words like “help”! I tried asking for help in my edit notes. Until reading this thread, I did not know that I could ask questions.
@reosarevok, I still do not know how to write to a person other than through an existing thread, like this. Is there a list of editors with experience in different styles who are willing to answer questions? How would a new user find this? I really liked the forum certification process. It was a bit tedious, but I could see how useful it was to go through each step with that robot thing. Can you incorporate some way to let users know this classical editing information through a similar, automated process?
I’m sorry for the long post. This thread generated a lot of questions/ideas popping up all at once. -Marnie
5 Likes
Another suggestion (instead of or in addition to the above) could be to add a “Forums” option in the search drop down, that would redirect to the forum and do a search here?
4 Likes