Should you be able to use the catalogue number to find an album?

The way the search handles (not) catalog numbers is completely bonkers.

I’ve tried to find https://musicbrainz.org/release/1fefe012-e227-4071-8486-79c73ab88d1c only by its catalog number: COCC-13058

Indexed release search:

  1. COCC-13058 (no results)
  2. COCC13058 (no results)
  3. *13058 (no results)
  4. COCC*3058 (returns a bunch of stuff but nothing remotely I was looking for)

Did I miss any combination or is the index broken for some entries?

Indexed release search with advanced query synax:

  1. catno:COCC-13058 (exact match)
  2. catno:COCC13058 (exact match)
  3. catno:*13058 (multiple results including what I was looking for, though it’s the last one)
  4. catno:COCC*3058 (exact match)

If I was a new user trying to contribute I certainly wouldn’t expect the default search to be that unreliable.

3 Likes

The default search, AFAIK, doesn’t take catnos into account at all, it’s searching for them as part of the title.

1 Like

Talking about making it easier to find stuff: :wink:
Perhaps a mod could correct the misspelling of ‘catalogue’ that I made in the topic title some two years ago?
(It seems I am not allowed to do that myself)

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Great. :upside_down_face:

Some tickets about punctuation in catalog number:

The example for SEARCH-34 provided by Paul Taylor no longer(?) works:

And as much as I personally like MBS-6740, it’s not a proper solution either. As argued by nikki, ordinary users won’t bother with advanced query syntax.


Done.

2 Likes

Funny we were talking about Search Bugs together only the other day. Now you have read this thread you can understand my response at the time.

MB search is just plain weird. :upside_down_face: :crazy_face: