I guess the initial question would be - what does BookBrainz/CritiqueBrainz/MetaBrainz use? And is it working well for them? Is there any reason why we can’t copy their approach/ do we have some MB specific needs that require consideration?
@LordSputnik perhaps ?
It should be noted that good support for mobiles is almost a requirement now.
Current state will impact search ranking negatively over the time (especially with Google Search).
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182072