"Introduction" as work type

I’m just trying for the first time to add an introduction to an edition.
In bookbrainz it seems to be considered as a “work” with the type “introduction”. But how should the title of that work be named: Nearly all introductions are just titled “Introduction”. So we would have to add "Introduction for “edition” by “author”. Or am I missing something?

Wouldn’t it be better and more elegant to add a new relation field “Introduction/foreword written by” to the edition form?

I like this. Would love to see “Afterword by” or some such relationship too.

I agree, it would be a lot simpler, and adequate for most cases. We have a ticket open for that: https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/BB-520.

It would only makes sense to have a separate Work for an introduction in some rare cases
I’m thinking for example of multiple preface/introductions with titles, different authors, etc…
This book I have with me has:
• Preface 2001: Democracy Matters in Race Matters
• Preface to the 1994 Edition
• Introduction: Race Matters
• …rest of the book…
• Epilogue to the Vintage Edition

If I wanted to describe this as thoroughly as possible, I might want to have the ability to create a separate Work for each preface. The prefaces might be by different authors too.
If I only had “Author A wrote preface to Edition” and “Author B wrote preface to Edition”, that doesn’t really tell the whole story.

That being said, I’m of the opinion that it’s a bit overkill in most cases to create Works for introductions, prefaces and the like, where a simple relationship would suffice.

An ideal approach in my opinion would allow for both solutions and recommend a simple Author <–> Edition relationship unless there is a particular reason to have a separate Work.

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Yes, that would be great. The Only thing I always have on my mind is “the average random user” that will come certainly, when the database becomes more well-known. It happened in discogs and even in bookogs, which still is/was a database baby.
If there is a work field “Introduction”, a certain amount of users just will use it, adding the title “Introduction” as it appears in the book and if all goes “well” they even forget to link it to the correct book. So at some point you will have dozens of “Introduction” works, that are “lying helplessly around” in the database.

I know this is a general problem of open databases, but I’d like to minimize the possibilities of polluting the database.

PS: Same applies for poem titles like “Song”, “Sonet” etc. but I will bother you with all problems concerning poems, when I start adding hundreds of them soon enough :wink:

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