That’s what I was after: having the albums in MB so that I can just do that—change the settings and automatically rematch the album and apply the new settings.
What if I re-rip an album? Since I use k3b and it can access MB, will it just pull in the correct info (that others and I have painstakingly added)?
It will only instantly match itself to a file in the database if it’s got MBID tags in the file, which wont be present on a newly ripped file.
However if you’ve already added all the info to MB it should only take a few seconds to match it to the right album with lookup or scan 
Brotagonist, if you’ve got 20 minutes free it would probably help MB if you took the time to write down how you now think things would need to be on Picard and Musicbrainz for you to have had an easier time of being a new user.
The experience is still fresh enough in your memory.
(This isn’t to say that things will be changed very soon - just that your reflections could help with new user orientation and directions that a easy Graphic User Interface might head in.)
Edit: And you are now experienced enough to add your questions to the “Picard new user questions” thread. 
I don’t know how k3b uses MusicBrainz. But if it is able to match the right CD by disc ID and also writes the MusicBrainz ID tags you should be able to just load the albums into Picard and get it matched instantly. I use Sound Juicer and it does that well.
If in this painstakingly process you or somebody else has also submitted the disc ID, otherwise k3b won’t be able to match an inserted CD anyway. Usually when I add a new release I have as CD I start by submitting it’s disc ID, as this will automatically fill in correct track times and makes adding the release easier. I usually use Picard or Sound Juicer for this, but maybe k3b also has the option to submit the disc ID if it cannot find it on MB.
There are a number of rippers with MB support, some of these (morituri/whipper at least) also include MBIDs in the resulting rip:
https://wiki.musicbrainz.org/MusicBrainz_Enabled_Applications#CD_rippers
You’re honestly shooting yourself in the foot by not using browser scripts. After a bit of practice it should only take a couple of minutes (more with classical or if you’re adding relationships as well) to import or add a release.
I’m not saying this to invalidate your experience, but because it pains me to imagine you spending so long on everything in future!!
I also definitely don’t think global site =/= everything should be English.
it should certainly display the artist name that matches your browser language settings however 
Great feedback though, love your good attitude!
Really great post. As a relatively new user myself, it sums up my own experience perfectly. Especially the frustration of trying to correct an edit (especially one which was automatically applied) and finding it will take 6 days before the correction goes through. Surely the system should know I was just editing my own edit? This, coupled with the rather arcane interface makes newbie editors “afraid to touch it in case they break something” which is unhelpful for them and for MB.
That said, I still think MB is great and there are many aspects about the interface that work really well.
Thank you for writing that up! You bring up a lot of good points that definitely are confusing/annoying.
That would be nice!
AFAIK, the best you can (reasonably) do is get the release artists and track artists correct; don’t worry about the recording artists. Once you have ARs entered, you can use the userscript to fix the recording artists (or, alternatively, post in the auto-editor request thread for one of the auto-editors to do it).
I think the only way that could be done automatically is via AcoustID, and we’d have to be much more confident of our AcoustID data. Other than that, the name, performers, label, etc. is all that’s in the database… And often much of that information is missing.
Not only are they confusing until you’ve figured out what they do, but at least IMO they have the wrong defaults. Though they all just change the edit you’re working on but haven’t submitted yet. Until you actually submit the edit, you can change anything without a 6-day delay. And you can safely play with them (by editing any album) and just throw away your edit—close the browser tab without hitting the final edit button.
BTW: Using that track list parser makes entering classical much easier. Especially if combined with the Firtefox extension “It’s All Text” and gvim. Well, at least it does for vim fans. 
You can go to Log in - MusicBrainz and play around with it. Except for adding a new artist or label, everything is local-only until you hit “Enter Edit” on the final screen. So it’s safe to play with, and you can just close the tab to discard it.
Absolutely, especially when adding disc IDs. Almost everywhere else you can paste an MBID-containing link… but there you have to search. And wade through pages.
Elsewhere, you can use Search - MusicBrainz … and use the advanced syntax and that at least somewhat works. E.g., Search results - MusicBrainz — then normally you can copy the link & paste it into whatever wants you to find a release.
No way you can fully enter a release in a couple of minutes. It takes at least that long to check a release that someone else has already fully entered… Just the time waiting for the scanner is longer than that (and my 9000F MII is fast as far as affordable scanners go.) 1200 ppi scans to straighten, descreen, and downscale to 300 ppi are not quick 
(and anything less seems to decrease descreen quality).
I guess putting in a ~10-track non-classical album, without cover art, linked works, ARs, etc. is possible in a few minutes.
Scanning is a different story of course!
But importing a release from Bandcamp and adding the cover art can easily be done in <1 minute, if it doesn’t need (or have) further relationships or work attributes (so definitely not classical…). I would consider that a ‘full’ entry
And what’s an auto-editor? I read somewhere—here or on another thread—that auto-editors will jump in and complete your edits, or something.
Well, I was so determined to get my albums in that I just jumped in and entered them lol After the first dozen or so aerozol appeared and helped me get a handle on some things I was having difficulty with, but that didn’t stop me: I just went back and made the necessary corrections to my previous edits.
I had looked at the guidelines, a little, but when I saw how much there was to read, I just scanned it and jumped in. Better to have the albums in the database than not to have them in, I thought. This is a community project and someone will come along and ‘adjust’ my work, if necessary. And so @reosarevok appeared with lots of tips and help He corrected some of my stylistic errors and asked me to change many on my own. I learned as I went along.
Maybe someone will disagree, but I don’t think you can really “break something” if you stick to the album title, artist, label, catalogue and barcode numbers, etc. It is really pretty self-explanatory and if someone sees what you’ve done and isn’t happy about it, they’ll appear on one of your edits one day and tell you what you need to do to correct to get it right.
Someone who can apply any edit automatically without any voting period. MB equivalent of Superman (of whatever gender).
Of course I should have said "could make SOME newbie editors…"
One thing I still struggle with is adding disc ids- especially a missing disc id for an existing release.
If I have the cd in the drive and the release on screen it would be great to have a button like the tagger button.
I didn’t do ANY disc ids 
I suppose that’s something I really COULD do down the road. I don’t have to panic about it, like I did with the tagging. The tagging was VERY important to me, as I wanted to be able to enjoy my collection again, right now, like I used to enjoy it when I was placing CDs on the player drawer tray. Disc ids don’t really have any immediate benefit to me, but, should I (or anyone) need to (re-)rip a disc, they will surely get an IMMEDIATE identification. Shouldn’t they!?
Yes, quite possible. Perhaps even likely if the tracks on the discs have the same recordings on them.
That makes sense. I’ll try a few more over the next few days and monitor.
You can check the edit history of the release and have a look, and even ask the editor in a note on the edit!
A lot of people don’t bother to add new releases like you did, so it’s likely they just added the id to the only release they found. Even so, the disc id might be the same anyway.
It sounds like you did the right thing.
It’s reasonably likely that a reissue will have the same disc ID. It may even be an identical disc (as far as what’s on the data/audio side). No reason for a label to pay someone to make a new master when they’ve already got one.
BTW: disc IDs are based only on the times on the disc—the precise track start/times. So sometimes completely unrelated, clearly different discs will wind up with the same disc ID.
But notice all the Bernstein Mahler 1sts are up top (that’s the search I linked to—“symphony no. 1” by Mahler and Bernstein ("symphony no. 1" arid:8d610e51-64b4-4654-b8df-064b0fb7a9d9 arid:fa39bc82-9b27-4bbb-9425-d719a72e09ac, the two arid UUIDs are Mahler and Bernstein—you can find it in the URL for their artist pages.) It gives 78 pages of results, but you only need to look at the first few.
(And yes, search here definitely could use some improvement, to put it lightly).
To illustrate my problem (if I am being merely stupid, perhaps someone could enlighten me - I’ve read the help at How to Add Disc IDs - MusicBrainz).
I put a CD (in fact this one https://musicbrainz.org/release/204f546a-0381-4052-a068-20322925a2e7) in my CD drive. I click “look up CD” and the DiscID is not in MB so I click “look up manually” and it takes me to this page Log in - MusicBrainz
This just has general information. I know the release is in MB, so all I want to do is attach the DiscID to it. The only sensible link seems to be “Submit this CD using the simple method” - sounds great! I click that and I get CD stub not found - MusicBrainz
Now what? “Add disc ID to an existing release” sounds like what I’m trying to do. Click that and it just takes me back to the previous page - going round in circles now!
I can search for the release and find it, but the discID section does not seem to be editable.
I do the whole process again. This time Log in - MusicBrainz gives me a completely different screen with the TOC listed and the following “A CD Stub was found that matches the disc ID you provided. If the below tracklist appears correct, you may use it as a starting point as a new MusicBrainz release”. But I don’t want to enter a new release. Clicking “Search by release” yields nothing so I enter the MBID, which I know, but that doesn’t work either, so I enter the full release title - HURRAH I get the screen that looks like the one in the Help. I add the discID and finally we are done.
But seriously, am I going to do this every time just so the automatic lookup will work for the next person…?
It’s a bit odd, but once you’re at https://musicbrainz.org/cdtoc/attach?id=ON6Cj.RfASOHrqvmPah4w5ajp4Q-&tracks=7&toc=1+7+216825+150+32531+53532+80052+128560+148034+180879&tport=8001 start your search by artist or release, for example search by “Robert Schumann” and it will give you something like https://musicbrainz.org/cdtoc/attach?toc=1+7+216825+150+32531+53532+80052+128560+148034+180879&filter-artist.query=robert+schumann
Now comes the part that screws most people up. Select the radio button next to the desired name and NOT the name link itself. For example, selecting the radio button for the first name on the list (the composer) and clicking “Select” brings up https://musicbrainz.org/cdtoc/attach?toc=1+7+216825+150+32531+53532+80052+128560+148034+180879&filter-artist.query=robert+schumann&artist=32513 which is a list of all the releases which match the number of tracks on the media you’re trying to link. Now you can select the radio button next to the desired release / media and click the “Attach CD TOC” button at the bottom of the page. If you can’t find it in the list, you have the option of adding a new release.