Methods of presenting an artists' group, individual and pseudonym works

this came from an edit post

please evaluate these 2 pages
https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/d84ada68-4db2-35ce-906e-4ed7da0554ab/open_edits
https://musicbrainz.org/release-group/619e8f96-575f-43e8-afeb-154594b58dd5/open_edits

I want release group, release, recordings to all appear on group and each artists pages without duplication
It took several attempts
Please look these over and confirm that I got it right
I will have to do this on many pages where I exchanged artists for group so releases wouild appear on artists page
Now I realized I can have it both ways, my cake and eat it too
Please fellow editors, look these over for errors and miscalculations
I have a lot of work to do on my previous edits

and this is how I will do things going forward
this way we get artists with full listings with losing group or Luike the Drifter
I got this idea while I was writing a comment for this ticket https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-4683
make sure you vote for this if haven’t already

These tools will help us better present labels, imprints, artists, groups without unnecessary duplication, but also an artists indivdual, group and pseudonym works together and indivdually.

A few months ago, Hank Williams work was spread over about five different pages, I noticed when I couldn’t find stuff. At this point, I was just like a visitor to the site, and I was having trouble looking things up.
So as an editor, and with the agreement of other editors, I made it so they would all show up on Hank Williams page. But now Luke the Drifter’s page was empty. I would like it to show up there too, for those who go looking for Luke only. Well, no problem, I just have to go back and re-edit some items.
Gene Autry trio used to go to a Gene Autry Trio page, which only had one or two items, generated from various artists compilations. At first, I thought it was better if they showed up on Gene Autry’s page. Now I think it would be best if they show up on the GAT page, as well Gene Autry, Jimmy Long, and Smiley Burnette’s pages, so our readers can find stuff, and also see the full career accomplishments of each of the members.

Sounds good, but I must have overlooked something, so tell me what it is.

Haha - what? Now I don’t know the artists, but this seems like it will cause confusion somewhere. So is “Luke the Drifter” an alias for “Hank Marvin”? Your solution will end up with a link to him twice from a database lookup. It may fool the human eye, but it will confuse a computer.

And the Trio thing made me laugh. The Trio should rely on their memberships of the Trio. Otherwise “The Beatles” will become a link to five different entities. The = “The Beatles”, Be = “John Lennon”, At = “Paul McCartney”, Tl = “Ringo Starr”, es = “George Harrison”.

I’ll leave this to the experts, but I think you will get a “No” on those inventive solutions.

I don’t really understand what you’re trying to do, but I’m 99.9% you shouldn’t be doing it.
https://musicbrainz.org/edit/84726251

Hank Marvin? no it is Hank Williams and it is an alias used on 6 singles releases 1950-52
this will not cause confusion, it will relieve it
the Gene Autry ony 3 releases I believe, they are not the Beatles
thanks for your input, good to consider, and if any of your negative scenarios occured, it would have to be changed.
You should listen to Hank Marvin he’s good

I like what you’re trying to do (see also this discussion touching on similar concerns) but this approach seems very much a kludge. My gut feeling is it’s a cure worse than the symptom.

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I believe what @tillywilly is trying to accomplish is, for instance:

  • all the singles released under Hank Williams’ name, as well as those released under the Luke the Drifter pseudonym appear on Hank’s artist page
  • the singles released as Luke the Drifter also appear on a “Luke the Drifter” artist page

Those are both potentially useful views, but difficult to achieve in MB.

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Gene Autry had one listing in the 1930s before I started adding. The opinion of Hank Williams collectors would be welcome. These edits are very much based on managing these artists, I should have considered that before I shared my thoughts. I have no plans to apply this to anything current, which most of the world deals with. I live in the 1920-40s. Next time I will comment on something more relevant, I have mostly rock of the 60s thru 80s in my collection.

you are correct sir on all points

I think I’m with @IvanDobsky and @highstrung. It seems like a workaround that’s going to cause more confusion than it cures.

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Let’s just consider :Luke the Drifter
I edited everything to show up Hank Williams
If you look at Hank Williams, half of his items were spread under different artists before
All I am thinking of doing is adding back the Luke Drifter items so they show up under both
How is that confusing?

I added to Luke the Drifter

Annotation

see Hank Williams for all single releases

this is linked

i absolutely agree that something like this should be possible-- i would love a way to view everything Vito James has done in one convenient list instead of under his 70 fleshed out characters and aliases-- but until this is possible i think it is a bad idea to do things like this. apart from it potentially being very confusing for a computer to figure out, if a feature like this ever does get implemented in musicbrainz by default, we will have to do more work to undo these edits

as an alternative, i would like to ask: in situations like these, would it be acceptable to create a “release series” that could contain, for example, everything released under a hank williams alias for easy searching? for now i have been using collections to navigate artists with a lot of releases under different names and that works fine

more controversially, for some artists you could get away with merging the aliases into one artist, and then using the “aliases” tab to navigate between them, though it doesn’t work perfectly. an example for someone i edit a lot is $WAGGOT, if i want to see only what he released under his alias “jack2k”, i just need to find it in the “artist credits” list, and click here. this becomes problematic though if
a) they’re clearly separate projects and someone will get mad at you for combing them, or
b) there are a lot of “featuring” credits that will split it up

sorry for my novel lol

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It’s confusing because - looking at the data model, not just the page - it implies that these singles were a collaboration between two artists named “Luke the” and “Drifter”.

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Thanks for all of your viewpoints, I wanted to hear this
My advice is be careful
make sure you observe the effect of edits on releases, recordings, works
you may be screwing up areas you are not familiar with
stop merging live recordings with studio, I can’t fix that
most other edits can be fixed, but it may take hours if you change Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys to Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys << true story

These edits also introduce garbage sort names. Even following the guidelines, you end up with garbage sort names due to name variations, but these edits don’t appear to follow the guidelines at all.

Not sure what you mean by garbage sort names - can you give an example?

My brain causes some * really * weird typos some days. Where did that come from? :crazy_face: :upside_down_face:

I’ve got this terrible pain in all the diodes down my left side.

I get what you are trying to do, and agree with @teethfairy. What would be really great to see is a page where we can say “show me this Artist and all the other Bands they collaborated in on one page”. That would then show John Lennon with his Beatles work and Solo work on one listing. An option like that would then deal with Hank Williams (or Marvin) and their various projects in one place.

Currently MB is built around separating all projects and aliases. Which is a little odd, but this is a database and it does not always understand the RealWorld™.

I had a similar puzzle a few months back with Ian Dury. He had also been in multiple bands and solo and there is no simple way to show all of his work on one page. This gets confusing for Ian as some of his famous tracks are him solo, others are with the Blockheads. I could see no solution, so ended up just adding links to all the various band in the annotation to make it stand out more.

I am old enough to remember Hank Marvin… and know and appreciate his skills better than I know Hank Williams

I searched “Trio” inside-out, got back some interesting results, but nothing to do with Gene Autry and friends. If I ever see a negative effect, I promise to always revert an edit. I am waiting for an example yindesu rather than ‘garbage’ talk.

rotf
I think some imaginations are running wild. Tumbling Tumbleweeds and Ole Faithful are the only two by Gene Autry Trio (don’t quote me on that, there might be anothe), but there are plenty by GA and Jimmy Long, as well as GA and Smiley Burnette. That’s why a separate artist ‘Gene Autry Trio’ seemed wrong to me. It was just GA and his two performing and songwriting partners. I wanted their stuff to sort properly, not the other way around.

https://musicbrainz.org/edit/84727195 says:

  1. “Luke the” is sorted as “Luke the Drifter”
  2. “Drifter” is sorted as “Williams, Hank”

Altogether, you get “Luke the Drifter” is sorted as “Luke the Drifter Williams, Hank”.

It’s much worse in Edit #84726251 - MusicBrainz - I’m not even going to attempt to make sense of it. If it were to pass, you can view the results in Picard yourself.

So this is garbage IMO.

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