Some releases in MB are burdened with an excessive number of attached DiscIDs, e.g.:
As I understand it, large collections of DiscIDs are partly the legacy of the old database schema and partly the accumulation of DiscIDs attached to a non-matching edition. It is very well possible DiscIDs are shared among different releases. However, it should be less common to see any single release host multiple DiscIDs. Exceptions to this rule exist, e.g. discs containing data tracks can have two valid DiscIDs because old versions of Picard once included some bug that resulted in different TOCs.
Since we expect only one or a few valid DiscIDs per release, it is clearly desirable to detach superfluous DiscIDs. Although this topic has come up here and there before, we are still lacking guidelines on how to best clean up these releases. Here is my suggestion:
You can safely remove DiscIDs different from the one you can verify for a given release when:
- You made sure that your copy matches the MB release, as confirmed by close comparison of catalog number, barcode, track list and cover art.
- There is no annotation stating these are valid DiscIDs for this release
- There is no evidence in the editing history that the release was hijacked at some point
- The unverified DiscIDs are already linked to a different release within the release group
- You are not dealing with a CD with data tracks
Feedback, corrections and additions appreciated.