MB gets a lot of new artists, labels and maybe other data.
I wish it would be fine to have a Notability Policy.
E.g. no artist without a release, recording or work (or other relevant relationship) or no label without releases.
There are some automatic deletes but they will not work if the entity has relationships.
Since this is well known, guys add relationships.
There are also a lot of Wikidata links added but often the Wikidata page is deleted very soon (often by not fulfilling the notability policy).
I think the policy on MB should take care of notability.
It may also be fine to have an automatic delete of deleted links (e.g. check new linked Wikidata pages a few days later).
Maybe also new editors should have less rights for new data (e.g. no direct creation of new labels/artist but only in case of adding/editing releases or respectively recordings).
Thank you for bringing this up, as I had been wanting write a post on it for some time (even though I have touched on it many times over the years).
MB really should create some form of notability beyond âit has to existâ.
The creation of SEO troll farms and paid advertisements that are created to look like legitimate articlesâŚ
These situations are getting far worse as technology becomes more readily accessible to the masses.
There is one guy, who uses these âself-publishedâ websites as his own personal âhacking arenaâ.
I left WP because I didnât want to be the vandalism police. But he has me going to multiple sites every day⌠I see him add an artist on MB, I check WD/WP and find the same artist, I check IMDb and find the same artist, and if youâve ever listened to the audio files on Soundcloud, they are the same few files being upload to âcreateâ numerous artists. Even the images are all CGI.
But I do have to disagree with many of the points you made, such as
And that is because - not all artists fall into that category.
For example - that gig I played. It is an event. A live event. No recording. No streaming. Am I somehow less worthy of being considered a musician because I donât have a Facebook account? I just performed in front of 1500 people. How is me not having an album that only got 3 plays over 3 years on Spotify going to discredit my musicianship. I can reach more people in one night than many artist do in a lifetime - all without the internet.
Even editors⌠I add a person and their links. I donât add their music. Are you going to remove an artist because I was too lazy to create their albums.
Are you going to stalk my edits looking for newly created artists that donât meet your standards. (cough cough)
"other relevant relationship" !!!
A gig can also a relevant relationship! Just create it.
If you want to talk about your edits: Follow the Code of Conduct and write Edit Notes! This would help more than adding useless aliases or changing valid URLs to cryptic ones or adding Wikidata links, where it is foreseeable they will be deleted soon.
If I can only tag and edit artists that meet a certain notability threshold MB becomes quite useless for me and I will move on.
However I agree with a bunch of your points, for instance that SEO pushers etc shouldnât be allowed unless they are truly involved in making music - but isnât that already the rule?
I think it would be smart to check for dead wikipedia links/relationships as you mention. Curious, how big is the problem of people creating fake (e.g. non music related) pages?
Iâm happy with the âit must existâ threshold for notability.
This allows up and coming artists to have an ID in the database before they release an album.
The BBC use our identifiers when referencing artists on thair website by going to https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/MUSICBRAINZ_ARTIST_ID ie Daft Punk
We occasionally get musicians pop up on the forum that ask about thair ID and what they need to do to create an entry in the database.
This low threshold also has itâs problems as it makes it possible for the database to contain spam entries, Astroturfing, and include fake entries by people trying to establish a fake back story.
Occasionally poeple create fake artists and fake albums, add this to wikidata and add this to wikipedia to establish a fake back story.
This thread seems to be conflating two different issues: notability and fraudulent/incorrect entries.
We donât need to create/adjust a notability policy to deal with fraudulent/incorrect entries.
Also, even if someone is creating music just for the purposes of promoting some non-music enterprise, Iâd argue thatâs not necessarily reason to exclude them from musicbrainz.
AndâŚ
Iâm not sure you can (even if I thought you should) craft a policy to address this that wouldnât exclude entries such as John Cageâs (in)famous 4â33" and/or the entire âharsh noise musicâ genre.
Iâm interested in how big this problem is - if itâs just a few edge cases then I donât believe MB has a flawed system. I donât see how changing policy text would deter these people in any case to be quite honest.
I would rather we deal with edge cases (if thatâs all it is) on a âcommon senseâ basis, rather then do anything which might have a negative impact on legitimate users and artists.
I have yet to see any definition of ânotableâ that doesnât discriminate against hobbyists/electronic musicians/etc.
Limiting new users to editing existing entries is also not acceptable IMO, an especially common motivation for new editors is âI have an album I want to tag that doesnât exist in the databaseâ (and by extension, the artist may not exist either). These editors will probably make more mistakes than an experienced editor, but they are also the only way to eventually become experienced editors.
It should also be noted that no amount of notability rules will stop actively âmaliciousâ entries from appearing. If we notice incorrect or even entirely fake data, it should just be corrected or deleted as appropriate.
All in all I believe notability policies on other projects create more harm than they help, I know of multiple people who started Wikipedia articles only to have their hard work immediately deleted, with the frustration turning them away from ever trying to contribute again.
I very much agree with this. Letâs fight fraud by measuring the fraud problem and taking anti-fraud steps. Letâs not try to fight fraud by putting up barriers based on notability.
I agree with this also. I am in the habit of making MB entries for up and coming musicians in my townâs local music scene. I like to think that it is a small acknowledgement of their serious effort, that it helps make them a little more visible, and that it makes it easier to add entries for their albums once they release them.
Iâd hate to see a notability policy which prevents MusicBrainz from recognising legitimate musicians just because they are early in their career, or not earning much revenue for Music Commerce Inc.
Iâve noticed that making MB entries makes Google display infoboxes (MB still isnât indexed though) with all their information such as social media or YouTube channels. So it absolutely does work for SEO to make an entry, itâs mostly a good thing though in my opinion.