We have several issues related to the behaviour of the “Split into separate artists” feature, and I am considering whether it should just be removed instead.
For those not completely certain of how it works, “Split into separate artists” is basically a combination of “Edit artist credit” (changing, say, “Foo and The BarBars” into “Foo” and “The BarBars”) and removal of collaboration relationships (“collaborator on”/“collaborators”), when they exist. This was added during the transition to the current MusicBrainz system (which introduced artist credits) as a way to easily deal with the existing collaboration artists that were required before we had this option (with only one artist per release, there was no other choice than creating “Foo and The BarBars” as an artist, even if it was a one-off collaboration). It only works for this situation - if the artist has any other relationships, it blocks the split tool (or is supposed to, see the part where it is sometimes buggy).
My feeling is that most of those old collaborations have been removed (admittedly there are still 7461 collaboration relationships left though, which seems like a lot) and it might make sense to just remove this option and use “Edit artist credits” to split new artists that need splitting, since most won’t have collaborator relationships anyway. But I might be wrong and other people might be using it very often. So I thought I’d ask here. Are you using this option? Would you miss it?
Often (please keep it!)
Rarely (wouldn’t miss it much)
Never (let it go go go)
0voters
If we decide to get rid of it, I’d suggest having a community effort to clean up the relevant report a bit (keep in mind a lot of these seem to be named collaborations though, which should still exist) and then once that period is over (maybe a month) the option could be removed.
If a fair amount of people are using this option, but just to split artist credits (no collaboration relationships) then it could make sense to replace it with a shortcut of some sort to the Edit artist credit function, since that’d be basically what it is right now in that case.
I rarely used it and surely won’t miss it.
The only issue I see with it: Some people will probably just edit artist credits to split a collaboration and forget to also remove the collaboration relationships (if they exist).
How about instead moving the split option to the /aliases (+artist credits) tab and only display it if there is just one artist credit? I’m guessing splitting won’t work for the collaboration “Foo and The BarBars” if they are also credited as ”FooBar and The FooBars”, right?
This is something that use a few times a year.
This was really useful a few years ago when there were lots of artists that should have been split up.
There is the occasional person that does not realize that you can have multiple artists with a join phrase and create a new artist so there should still be a way of cleaning up these entries.
That’s what I have in mind when I say that then it’s just a glorified “Edit artist credit” (since these people normally won’t add collaboration relationships). So if it’s to stay, it could be changed to just be that, and maybe to only appear when there’s no relationships? (of course, that might make people confused when it’s not there). Or just be a shortcut to the aliases page, where there could be a message if loaded through this option like “Edit the artist credit to split the artist”?
Yeah, anything except for a collaboration relationship will block it, since it was designed with that in mind. But I’m not sure I’d want it to remove more than that - it seems like it would make it more likely for a beginner (or a malicious user) to break things hard (click it, and accidentally split Simon & Garfunkel and get ALL the relationships removed if nobody catches the edit).
Is this feature hard to maintain (code that has to be changed with every upgrade) or does it take up a lot of space?
Just wondering why a working feature should be removed just because it’s not used very often.
I used it quite a bit when it was first added (because there were many “A & B” and “C feat. D” credits to untangle).
Haven’t used it for quite some time now (although I also haven’t been extremely active as editor this past year).
Heh I just (for the first time in ages) used this edit type for Edit #55914751 - MusicBrainz
It *is* convenient, but it’s just a “glorified” edit artist credit, so I approve of removing/changing to a direct edit artist credits link or something.
I’d like to see it go. It was needed back in the day when we had a lot of legacy collaboration artists. Now those are mostly fixed, but I still find I have to defend genuine duos who don’t fit the collaboration criteria from editors who want to split them simply on the grounds that their name is of the form NameA and NameB. Perhaps getting rid of it would make then think twice.
I’m in the group “Don’t use it much 'cause it rarely works”. If the feature was made more powerful (without breaking the system) then I’d be a bigger user of it, but if that’s unlikely I’d say just let it go.
(since these people normally won’t add collaboration relationships). So if it’s to stay, it could be changed to just be that, and maybe to only appear when there’s no relationships? (of course, that might make people confused when it’s not there). Or just be a shortcut to the aliases page, where there could be a message if loaded through this option like “Edit the artist credit to split the artist”?