Just wanted to write down some of my motivation to write this plugin (in addition to the technical interest, but this could have been satisfied with some other topic):
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I consider ListenBrainz the currently most interesting MetaBrainz project with the most potential. I think it is something that is turning into a useful tool that makes digital music interesting. As such it can drive new users to contribute to the MusicBrainz database. In the age of CD ripping and file sharing taggers like Picard motivated users to contribute *), LB can take a similar role in the time of streaming music. Hence I consider it useful to cross-link it with the rest of the MetaBrainz world.
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ListenBrainz is the most social MetaBrainz project, and the forums here are one of the important social platforms for the community (the other being IRC). Giving people the ability to cross-link can benefit the community.
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We all here have different musical tastes. But I think what unites the MB community is a love for music, a certain obsession with organizing and documenting music metadata, and in many cases a quite broad and open minded taste for music. I’m sure the primary topics of discussion here will stay around the technicality of MB metadata and tagging, but I also welcome all discussions that are more about the music, like the recent MusicBrainz Album Club initiative. Bringing projects like CritiqueBrainz and ListenBrainz closer to the community can help making this part of the community more active.
That’s just my motivation. In the end I understand of course concerns about maintaining the Discourse setup, and if it’s chosen to not install this plugin I’m absolutely fine with that. But personally I’d love to see this functionality added and I’m definitely willing to maintain this plugin and tackle any issues that might come with new Discourse releases, just as I do with the MB onebox plugin. Discourse is rather stable here so I don’t expect much work. And if there is too much trouble this plugin can be turned off (temporarily or forever) without a big impact on the forums as a whole.
*) And still does, of course. Don’t worry here, I’ll keep using and developing for Picard