Proposed text for STYLE-2760, sort names for releases

[reosarevok]

@Jim_DeLaHunt

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

Done!

Does the page read well to you now? @jesus2099: do you have any issues with the changes I’ve made? (I know you don’t think you’ll use release aliases, that is fine, clearly won’t be mandatory!)

[jesus2099]

@reosarevok Which page(s) and version(s)?

[reosarevok]

User:Reosarevok/Style/Aliases: Difference between revisions - MusicBrainz Wiki

[Jim_DeLaHunt]

While you have Style/Aliases open for editing, maybe give clearer guidance about whether and when an Alias should have no Type assigned?

I just counted^[1] in my mirror of the MusicBrainz database. Well over half of the Release Aliases seem to have no type:

Type Name	N	Percentage
Unspecified type	28,227	58.20%
“Release name”	13,954	28.77%
“Search hint”	6,316	13.02%
TOTAL	48,497	100.00%

This Style/Aliases draft mentions types in passing, but doesn’t really warn editors against leaving type unassigned.

doc/Aliases does say:

Aliases can also be an unspecified type. These should be used sparingly and be assigned only when you are unsure of the alias type entered. If you see an unspecified-type alias, please try to assign it to another type after doing research on it.

I think that 58.2% does not count as “sparingly” .

I suggest adding a sentence to “Localised Names”, saying explicitly to set the Alias Type to match the entity being described, and to avoid having an unspecified type.

I also suggest adding a section, “Alias Type”, parallel to the “Dates” section, which says that the Style is to never leave the Alias Type unspecified. I suspect that will get the attention of a few impatient readers who don’t read Localised Names and Sort Names in detail.

This is relevant to sort names, because any software searching for an alias from which to extract a sort name will have to decide whether to include or exclude aliases with no type. It would be helpful to have clearer advice in Style/Aliases, in doc/Aliases, and in the website UI. Of these, Style/Aliases is the one open for editing right now.

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1. The query I used is SELECT CASE WHEN GROUPING(rat.name) = 1 THEN 'TOTAL' ELSE COALESCE(rat.name, 'No type') END AS type_name, count(ra.id) AS n, TO_CHAR( COUNT(ra.id)*100.0/(SELECT COUNT(*) FROM release_alias), '990.00' ) || '%' AS percentage FROM release_alias AS ra LEFT JOIN release_alias_type AS rat on rat.id = ra.type GROUP BY ROLLUP(rat.name) ORDER BY GROUPING(rat.name) ASC, n DESC; ↩︎

[jesus2099]

@reosarevok

Does the page read well to you now?

Yes, why not, it’s good.

[reosarevok]

@Jim_DeLaHunt

Well over half of the Release Aliases seem to have no type:

I would expect most of those are not user-entered, but results of merges. The names of merged releases (well, all entities) are kept as aliases with no type IIRC.

[reosarevok]

@Jim_DeLaHunt

I suggest adding a sentence to “Localised Names”, saying explicitly to set the Alias Type to match the entity being described, and to avoid having an unspecified type.

I did add this, since I guess it cannot hurt: “The alias type for a localised name should generally be the appropriate variation of "Entity name" ("Artist name", "Label name", "Release name", etc.).”

[Jim_DeLaHunt]

@reosarevok

I did add this, since I guess it cannot hurt

Wonderful! Thank you.

[reosarevok]

I see no objections, so I updated Style/Aliases now. Thanks also @aerozol for fixing some Unicode punctuation.

I’ll look into further updates soon (for other pages to mention the sort name option).

[Jim_DeLaHunt]

Great! Thank you.

[reosarevok]

I added a quick clarification to the aliases guideline to indicate that the aliases should generally still follow the applicable guidelines (including Style/Titles for releases and RGs). And a release group example to the localised names examples, to make it more obvious they have aliases too.

I also added a small note to the release guidelines (well, moved and reworded the one by @Jim_DeLaHunt), and to the release group guidelines.

I dropped the proposed change to the artist sort name page, which seems unnecessary now. I also dropped the change to the titles guideline since it is linked to instead in the other direction from the alias one.

[reosarevok]

I transcluded the changes now.

[Jim_DeLaHunt]

@reosarevok

I transcluded the changes now.

Great! Thank you.

That said,

@reosarevok

I did add this, since I guess it cannot hurt: “The alias type for a localised name should generally be the appropriate variation of "Entity name" ("Artist name", "Label name", "Release name", etc.).”

I don’t see this sentence in the current Style/Aliases, nor in the edit history for wiki page Style/Aliases. Perhaps it should be a one-paragraph sentence in the “Localised names” section? Would you like me to make this edit in the wiki page, by way of a proposal?

[reosarevok]

Oh no. I think I accidentally dropped it while updated something else. Added back! Thanks for noticing.

[Jim_DeLaHunt]

Thank you. Style/Alias guidance on release sort names looks complete now.

I appreciate your attention to this change request. I think an important gap has been filled.