To help clarify a little: The current Withdrawn status was created to address quite specific cases - releases that were never quite public, or accidental, or “illegal” (whatever that means to you), or a label or a artist has tried to expunge them from their discography.
Now we have the situation that the vast majority of editors, including experienced editors/staff/auto editors, have been using it for any releases literally “withdrawn” from digital platforms. Rather than fight the tide I think this shows that the “Withdrawn” status is actually more widely useful to editors than the initial intent, and it’s more practical to edit the guidelines to match the usage. A special case indeed.
That would leave us with the more extreme cases to differentiate, however. Particularly if we want to do things like hide releases that aren’t “canonically” part of a discography, or deadnamed, etc:
For the above ticket we would have to differentiate between “no longer available” (what editors are using “withdrawn” for), and the more extreme expunged/recalled (what withdrawn was initially meant to represent).
One thing that I think is confusing here @reosarevok is your mixing of the original withdrawn examples with the ‘new’ withdrawn description. The community (and you) had already agreed and discussed that those examples fit the “expunged” description. The examples for the re-drafted “withdrawn” status should be simpler, e.g.
- A release that has been removed from all platforms
- A digital release that has been updated with new cover art
- Artist name change
All the others should stay with expunged.
PS. There is also a nice “let’s find examples” thread for the original definition, here: What is "Withdrawn": a discussion thread + examples