Proposed text for STYLE-2760, sort names for releases

MusicBrainz Style
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Based on the September-November discussion in Sort names style for Releases?, I propose the following specific minimal changes to mention sort names for Releases and give a little guidance.

For clarity, I made the edits to the Style pages in the wiki. I provide links to the changes here.

  1. Add a new section “Sort name form of titles” to Style/Titles, with three paragraphs and a bullet list. Text is below.
    Style/Titles: Difference between revisions - MusicBrainz Wiki
  2. Add a phrase to Style/Release. Change “See the [[Style/Titles|titles guidelines]] for the release, medium and track titles.” to “See the [[Style/Titles|titles guidelines]] for the release, medium and track titles, and for sort names of those titles.”
    Style/Release: Difference between revisions - MusicBrainz Wiki
  3. At the beginning of Style/Artist/Sort Name, add one sentence: “It also applies generally to sort names for [[Style/Titles|Release Titles]].”
    Style/Artist/Sort Name: Difference between revisions - MusicBrainz Wiki

Are these changes acceptable?

Proposed new section for Styles/Titles:

Sort name form of titles

Release and Release Group titles can be rearranged into an order which is easier to sort correctly, just as Artist names can be. The Style/Artist/Sort Name guidelines generally also apply to titles.

Release and Release Group entities have no Sort Name field. So, to add a Sort Name, add it as an Alias. Follow the Aliases style guidelines. To make it clear which alias contains the authoritative sort name, fill out the alias as follows:

  • Set the Type to Release Name or Release Group Name, as appropriate
  • In the Name field of the alias, fill in the unmodified Title from the Release or Release Group
  • In the Sort Name field, fill in the sort name
  • In the Locale field, fill in the Release’s language
  • Check the “primary alias for this locale” box
  • The other fields of the Alias are typically not applicable to a Sort Name alias, and so are left empty

Note that while many taggers can store Artist sort names in music files, currently far fewer can store Release sort names. This may change over time.

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I don’t really agree with this one.

Artist sort names are forced to Latin for non-Latin artist names.

This shouldn’t be forced for alias sort names.

And more generally, I’m not really interested in release group and release sort names, because they are already sorted by original release dates.

I guess everyone sorts artists by name, but sort their albums chronologically.

Ah, except in classical, maybe, yes.

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You seem curiously confident about how everyone else behaves. What is the source of your information on everyone else?

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Me, myself and I. :rofl:

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will this allow us to sort the tables on the website finally? :smiley:

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I doubt it. Go look at your Collection. Sort by Artist. All the “The Artists” are under “The” and not sort order. I remember that there is a Very Good Reason™ for that but is lost deep in a forum reply somewhere…

This proposal here is more about having something you can extract and shove in your tags in your files for that handful of albums called “The Album” in your collection.

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The reason was that artist credits are not artists but combinations of them without a clear sort name (and it was very slow to calculate it in real time IIRC when I tried). In theory, it could be easier for something like a release or release group title, although we don’t currently use alias sort names for sorting elsewhere.

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I agree with @jesus2099 about this one - the artist sort name guidelines are very artist specific and also don’t match well with aliases because of the Latin bit. The sort name guidelines that make sense to follow here are the ones in Style / Aliases - MusicBrainz. There’s a potential discussion to be had about whether release sort names should also do “Surname, Name” for releases named after a person: should https://musicbrainz.org/release/a00be970-cb12-4a2b-80fe-689e87196393 have a sort name “Streisand, Barbra”?

Half of this is not a guideline but a how to. If we feel we need a “How to Add Aliases”, then we can create it as its own page (and link it from here or from /Alias). We could have “Releases and release groups don’t have a sort name field, but sort names can be added to their [[Alias|primary aliases]].” And the “Note that while many taggers can store Artist sort names in music files” note could be a footnote / reference (it might be useful if entered like that), but it doesn’t look like it should be part of the guideline text.

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Thank you for the review.

OK. I suggested this change because I thought the previous thread said, you don’t need to define new guidelines for sort names, they are already defined in Style/Artist/Sort Name. But I just re-read the previous thread, and I don’t find that comment there. So, I’m happy to drop the change to Style/Artist/Sort Name, and instead propose some additions to Style/Aliases to add the useful guidelines which are in Style/Artist/Sort Name which are not in Style/Aliases.

It is not intended as a how to. It is intended as a specification for what usage of the Alias fields make it clear the Alias contains the authoritative sort name.

I think there is a real need to be clear about setting these fields. An entity can have many Aliases for many different purposes. There can be search hints, legal names, translations of a name into a different languages. There are entities with partially filled-out Aliases which have unclear purpose. Think of how software looking for a sort name will know which Alias to choose. If editors are unclear in filling out the Alias, it will be difficult for software to identify the correct alias.

Is the problem the use of imperative verbs? I could reword it to be descriptive, for instance:

Does that wording qualify as a style guideline?

Great! At the very least, adding this to Style/Titles will be a step forward. Right now, the Style Guide says zero about Release Sort Names, and I believe zero is too little.

Also, I don’t see a comment from you on:

Does that mean we can add that phrase to Style/Release? Again, zero is too little. Adding this phrase moves us beyond zero.

I don’t feel strongly about this comment. Given the poor support for release sort names in software, I expect that some editors who enter release sort names correctly will be surprised and disappointed when their software does not use the sort names. But a style guideline does not need to prevent that surprise.

I am not proposing a “How to Add Aliases” document. I am proposing a style guideline which clearly describes the correct form of a Release Sort Name in a correctly-entered Alias. More How To help may be useful, but that’s off my topic.

I agree that there is a discussion to be had, but I think this is maybe not a very good example for that discussion. A better example would be a Release which has the same name as the Album Artist. We could find those with a database search. In contrast, the Release “Barbra Streisand” by Duck Sauce appears to be named for the song “Barbra Streisand” (work/6f2f). While the song may be named after a person, one can argue that sometimes using a name as a song title makes the words into a phrase, and so personal name sort name style guidlines to no longer apply.

Would you like me to modify my edits in the wiki pages according to this discussion?

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Search performed. Perhaps we could discuss this based on examples like:

However, I would not like the main topic of a sort name style for Releases to be bogged down by a side discussion on the detail about “Surname, Name” style for Release titles.

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It should just choose the primary alias for the requested locale, same as if was looking for the correct sort name for an artist in a specific locale (that’s the only way to get, say, Japanese sort names for Japanese artists as well).

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On a second review, it might even be better to add something to Style/Aliases that says that we should try and follow the appropriate title guidelines for aliases that are titles (release, recording, release group and work probably?), and add something to Style/Release that says that sort names can be stored as aliases and points to Style/Aliases. With those two, we don’t need to actually change Style/Titles except inasmuch as we want to have something specific about how titles should be sorted (so, if we want to add something about articles in titles sorting last or whatnot).

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Good. Now just to clarify, software should disregard “search hint” and “legal name” Aliases, right? Even if they are the primary alias for the requested locale?

When making a sort name alias in the same language as the Release title, there will be a Name field. What should the editor put in the name field? Leave it blank? Fill in something different than the Release name? It seems we will make an editor’s task easier if we give instructions for this field.

There will also be other fields, e.g. date valid from and valid to. What should the editor put there? I suggest they should be left blank.

I had a six-bullet list in my proposal. That covers what is in your sentence, plus the clarifications above. So, do you prefer being specific using a sentence over being a specific using a bullet list? I can rewrite the guidance as a list.

I think editors will be better served if we define what is a correctly-filled-out sort name alias.

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OK. Would you like me to rewrite my wiki edits as changes to Style/Aliases, Style/Release, and Style/Title? Or do you want to write the next revision? You are the one who has to be happy with the final wording.

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Search hint cannot be marked as primary nor have a locale. “Legal name” should not be ignored when it applies (if a person performs under their legal name, there’s no real reason to have a second, equal “artist name” alias) but that shouldn’t apply to releases or RGs since they don’t have “legal name” aliases anyway.

The name cannot be left blank anyway, and it should be expected that it would match the release title - in the same way the name for the Japanese alias for a Japanese artist would match the artist name. It seems self-evident, but we could add some more to the alias documentation about how it’s fine and even desirable to have a primary alias that matches the entity name for the entity name’s locale (since that’s not only for releases).

Leaving them blank makes sense to me, unless the release group has been renamed, in which case if we have dates for the different names it would make sense to use them, like for renamed artists. Renamed releases don’t make sense - new name would mean new release - so that doesn’t matter there.

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This is great. It is clarifying a lot of preferences or details which are not clearly written down.

OK, that’s a reasonable style guideline: for Artists who perform under their legal name, don’t add an Artist Name alias. I don’t see this written down. But it’s off the topic of Release sort names.

“It would be expected” is the sort of phrase that makes me say, “OK, let’s write that down in the Style guidelines”. Expecting doesn’t scale well to many editors. Explicit guidance scales much better. I hear you agreeing to a need to write this down.

So, that sounds like two Style guidelines: 1) for Releases, leave other Alias fields, e.g. date valid from and valid to, blank. 2) For Release Groups, fill in date valid from and to only in that unusual case where a Release Group was renamed.

Could we please turn this thread to a review of specific wording in the Wiki edits I made? I would like to see the thread result in actual changes to the Style guidelines eventually.

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I made a first draft of how I’d imagine a Style/Aliases that is a bit more clear about some of the things discussed, it’s at User:Reosarevok/Style/Aliases - MusicBrainz Wiki (see history to check changes from the current official version). Do those sound sensible? Is there anything which seems problematic to any of the people here?

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Thank you! I support these changes. They seem like a reasonable next step, and partially answer the call of this style ticket.

One suggestion for wording: in Sort names about Japanese names, I suggest adding the word “that” after “given”. It makes the phrase read better. This becomes:

…(given that the [[Style/Artist/Sort_Name|sort name guidelines for artists]] call for Latin sort names)…

I will point out that Style/Alias has English-language style guidance, around rearranging leading words like “The” and “an”. It is pre-existing, but with this discussion it seems more out of place. Perhaps this guidance should move to Style/Language/English . There should perhaps be corresponding guidance for leading “Le” and “Un” in Style/Language/French, for leading “Der”, “Die”, and “Das” in Style/Language/German, etc. Then Style/Alias would just have links to those language-specific guidelines. The Style guidelines don’t have to keep privileging English quite as much as they have done, in my opinion.

I still believe that another step to answer the call of this style ticket is to put something in Style/Release and Style/Release Group which talks about where to record sort names. Given this improvement to Style/Aliases, I think a minimal link from Style/Release would be sufficient. I have modified my proposed minimal change to Style/Release.

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Yeah - it does say “and equivalents in other languages” and I added a French example to hopefully illustrate it a bit more, but I certainly wouldn’t oppose extra info on the appropriate language guidelines about which words if any each language would generally put at the end for sorting. I don’t think that means we should move this out of here though, I think having a general suggestion here is still useful.

Yes, I agree we could say something, either in Style/Release or just Release :slight_smile: I’ll look into that further (including your suggestions) once we’re happy enough with the alias doc.

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Fair enough. Style/Alias first, Style/Release or doc/Release next, then Style/language is a good way to sequence the work.