I think it’s good to keep this part (the state), for the multiple same name problem.
But I don’t know the abbreviations.
I just copy them if they’re available or don’t write them.
I was born in LA, not the one you think. 
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I know Australia uses state/territory abbreviations for postal addresses (Sydney NSW, Brisbane QLD) but my impression is they’re not that commonly used in other contexts. China uses provinces in postal addresses but I have no clue about any other usage.
I do this too. I don’t think we should worry much about standardization in disambiguation comments, since by nature they’re not standardizable. Keep them brief and to-the-point and they’re more likely to be read.
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@chancey, are you interested in continuing this?
I think there’s a good basis for a guideline here. Plus some possible additions still to be confirmed, but enough agreed-upon facts to add now.
(there was recently a edit discussion - I can’t find the edit anymore sorry! - re changing US to United States, and I think codifying this would help)
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Edit for disambiguation ‘US rapper’ to be updated to ‘American rapper’ - https://musicbrainz.org/edit/108868328
Also while I personally think ‘US’ is more precise and clear than ‘American’, having a standard guideline would satisfy me most.
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Is it really the case that there are significant quantities of people for which “American” is not commonly understood to mean “from USA”?
I tend to suspect that for many people this is just of a case of “it shouldn’t be” or “It’s not fair that one country is coopting the name of the entire continent”, which, if so, reframes this as a question of whether Musicbrainz is going to participate in a “what the language/terminology should be” debate.
(see also: Taiwan/Republic-of-China)
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I tend to think this is a big “it depends”. What makes sense in a disambiguation comment may be different from what makes sense in a full-sentence context.
In cases where it’s “XX, USA”, I’d think that’s fine. On the other hand, I’ve added disambiguations like “Texas musician”, and I think that’d be preferable to “TX musician”, and I’m not sure if “TX, USA musician” is better/worse than “Texas musician”. (I’m assuming that many(/most?) people from other countries know what “Texas” is, but I don’t have extremely strong confidence in that assumption – and I wonder about some of the less “famous” states)
You are slightly misquoting me. I was not talking about a “Texan Musician”. I was meaning a place name when written as an address. (live, 1988-08-02: Somewhere, Dallas, TX, USA)
And yes, to some of us “American” is a weird word to use. A Mexican is also American. Maybe it is just Europeans being more fussy about language. But I would not worry too much if it appeared in a description as it is generally known what someone means.
Personally I find “US” is also not really correct as it is the USA. People have just got into a habit of abbreviating the country name in various ways.
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Yes, that’s why I removed your name from the quote. The quote was not meant as a “Ivan said this” sort of thing, more as a “On the topic of:” thing.
And in that case, I think the two-letter address is fine. I think in general in this discussion it is not always clear which usages are being referred to. And a few people (intentionally or unintentionally) are giving the impression that they are in favor of location guidelines being uniform across Musicbrainz, instead of having different guidelines for different parts.
I’m trying to emphasize that I think the guidelines can and maybe should be different for Artist disambiguations than they are for for Event disambiguations, than they are for Place names.
I’m also not sure we need guidelines at all, particularly as something that needs to be “enforced”. (I’ve seen edits that seem to take the view that “Yes, what you did makes sense here, but I’m changing it because Guidelines Must Be Obeyed”)
I wonder how many Mexicans view it that way.
In Spanish, most of them. In English, I dunno 
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The ones who look at the map and see Mexico is in “North America”? Same as Brazilians know they are South American.
Kinda funny that language as spoken has a Southern American thousands of miles north of a South American. 
As a Brit in our Geography lessons we were taught “The Americas” were the continents that strung from North to South.
Agree this kinda edit is dumb. Guidelines are a guide, not a rule. Discogs is the mad place with strict rules and it makes that place pretty dumb at times. A guideline allows common sense. Everyone knows what “American rock star” means. It reads weird if it has to say “Rock star from the USA”. Just not how language is used
But that’s not what the edit that sparked this discussion is about, it’s changing to the less correct, more ambiguous form.
I’m confused. The thread was about disambig type text and making it consistent. I thought the conversation has sparked back up due to a weird edit swapping “US rapper” to “American rapper”. Something that seems a plain weird edit to me. Maybe I should not be in this thread as I follow common sense. I thought my comment there was specific to that example? It is a pointless edit that should not need a guideline.
The way I read your post is that you would have agreed with the change.
The guideline proposed says ‘USA’ for all its examples. Where US has now come in is for disambiguations - I’m not sure anyone would say “United States of America grunge group”. So ‘USA grunge group’ looks wrong to me. But I can definitely be wrong, down here at the ass-end of the world
Definitely! My assessment at this stage is that nobody has any issue with the guidelines in the OP (?), and now the discussion is focussed on whether there should be a part/example that uses ‘US’ in a disambiguation. We should also include other useful examples like ‘Texan musician’. Personally I would add US in there somewhere as well, the rest of the world isn’t necessarily familiar with the 50 states, myself included (though I think that would change the syntax and we’d might be back to something like ‘Texas, USA, musican’)
If there are other situations where the guidelines could cause trouble then we should address them. If it turns out to be far too messy then maybe the guideline is a bad idea, but @chancey’s proposal seems pleasantly issue-free so far, compared to hairier ones.
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I live in Texas. I am an American. However, I always put “US rapper”, because the USA is not the only country in America. I am curious though how many people from other American countries call themselves American. Seems like they call themselves, Canadian, Mexican, Brazilian, etc. We seem to be only ones who call ourselves American. Because we are the only ones with America in our countries name.