Odd results searching for "Under Construction" by Pink Floyd

Hi all,
The release group of the bootleg of Pink Floyd’s “Under Construction” can be found at Release group “Under Construction - Building the Wall” by Pink Floyd - MusicBrainz. I know this because I have the album and can see the MBID tags.
However when I search for the release, sometimes it appears, other times not. If I repeatedly refresh the url Release Group Query many times it does not appear in the results, other times it does.
This isn’t browser related as repeated cURLs behave the same:

# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit
hit
# curl --silent "https://musicbrainz.org/search?query=Under+Construction&type=release_group&method=indexed" | grep -q Pink && echo hit

Also, possibly related, I can’t find the release when filtering the discography on the artist page:


Am I going mad?
Thanks,
Scott

You get a paginated results.
It seems to be often in page 2 or 3.
You can make the same search with 100 results per page to find it on first page.

Or, more simply, search for Under Construction Pink Floyd.
Or even better but longer to type with “Under Construction” AND “Pink Floyd”.

Thanks @jesus2099.

The question remains though: why is there entropy in the search results? As you can see from the cURL results, I get a hit in the first 25 results from 25% of searches. Is this what users expect?

This is either a bug or some part of the search or rendering functions is adding randomness, which is even dumber.

2nd question: Does this explain why the release is not found from in this artist’s discography?

Thanks.

There is currently a bug that means bootlegs don’t appear in search results on the artist page. You have to manually add ?all=1 to the search result string after you have done the search to make the result appear.

https://musicbrainz.org/artist/83d91898-7763-47d7-b03b-b92132375c47?all=1?filter.type_id=&filter.secondary_type_id=&filter.artist_credit_id=&filter.name=under+construction

3 Likes

Agree there is something weird and unexpected. I did the search - not found on page 1. Click page 2, it is now at the top.
Click back to page 1 and now it is there too? I had always assumed these lists were static and not always changing when moving page to page.

I tried adding a search hint alias to the RG for “Under Construction”, but that does not seem to have changed anything.

Ignoring Indexed Search and using Direct Database Search seems to return more static results and it is now always on page 1.

Thanks @jesus2099 and @IvanDobsky,

Hopefully the bootleg bug gets fixed soon.

Regarding the search result oddness/bug I assume the best thing is to raise a ticket?

Scott

I think it’s normal when you search common title like this.
It’s like if you search for a recording called I LOVE YOU. How can you expect your recording to show up in the 25th first results, rather than someone else’s recording?

How would your artist be in priority if you don’t include their name in the search?

That’s right!

Same thing (random result order changes when you browse pages) with the web service on release groups and on works.
So apparently it’s not limited to web service / API.
And maybe it’s for all entity type searches, not only works and release groups.

@jesus2099 I don’t care where the thing I’m searching for lives in the search results. The randomness of the results can cause problems. Consider the following (exactly what happened to me):

  1. I search for a release
  2. The engine builds a results set
  3. I am presented with the first n results, however the results set has my release on page 2
  4. I click “Next”
  5. The engine builds a results set (yes, it does this every time)
  6. I am presented with the second n results, however this time the results set has my release on page 1
  7. I click “Next”
  8. and so on forever… I never find my release.

This is definitely a bug.

This is exactly why I then went to the artist to find the release and ran into the “bootleg bug”.

Should I raise another ticket? I don’t think either ticket you sent (thanks) concisely describes the problem. Nor are they assigned to anyone.

Scott

3 Likes

The bootleg thing is not a bug, FWIW - bootlegs are intended to be hidden by default. It’s just filtering non-official stuff was not really implemented yet (or at least not intentionally - the ‘?all=1’ thing working was mostly just an unexpected side effect of how two pieces of code combined, AFAICT). I have code in the works to make this better and extend it to VA releases too, it’ll get released eventually :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I was just using IvanDobsky’s phrasing :slight_smile:

So it seems I ran into a rare confluence of a bug (searches are not idempotent) and not-bug (bootlegs are not shown in artists’ discographies). Lucky me! If I didn’t have audio files already tagged with MBID I may never have found it.

Whoops. Never copy my language I always get it wrong. :smile: Sorry. I guess I am so used to the script I can’t use MB without that enabled. :smiley: Have too many concert bootlegs as a Pink Floyd nut.

The “undocumented feature” of tucking “?all=1” back in is really useful. It would be great if we can have that as a user setting somewhere.

What is a little confusing is the search used to work in that way without need of modification of the results. I hope we can easily search bootlegs on the artist page again soon as I do so much work in that area.

(The reason I called the search change a bug. My post from May: Confused by search )

2 Likes

As I said, I have code for this :slight_smile: Just not merged yet, we’ll get there! :slight_smile:

2 Likes