Compiling the issues reported with ISBNs as well as other related suggestions and tickets, here is our proposal for improvements:
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We are temporarily disabling the new automatic ISBN10 <-> ISBN13 conversion feature since we’re having so many issues with it.
- In the future we will not do the conversion automatically (see point 5 below).
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Separate the identifiers to be part of the main page, and not hidden behind a button click in a popup modal ([BB-343] Move the identifier & aliases editing to be part of the main editing flow - MetaBrainz JIRA)
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If an identifier type has already been manually selected by a user, don’t auto-detect or automatically change the type ([BB-508] Identifier type selection issue - MetaBrainz JIRA)
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Separate the ISBN10, ISBN13 and barcode fields from other identifiers, and moving them in the "What else do you know about the Edition?” section.
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Add buttons next to the ISBN fields to transform ISBN10 to ISBN13 and vice versa
- Proposal: also add a button to copy the barcode from IBSNs (barcode is often just the ISBN)
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Be more liberal with the pasted/typed formats we accept for ISBNs: with or without hyphens, spaces, etc.
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Store ISBNs and barcodes as a string without spaces or hyphens, and format them for displaying on the website according to ISBN authority specifications ([BB-645] Consistenly store and display ISBNs - MetaBrainz JIRA and [BB-650] Barcode (and ISBN) insertion and storage improvement - MetaBrainz JIRA)
- This will also make searching by ISBN usable (currently users need to know the exact format including hyphens and spaces)