But that only seems temporary. Is there any way to always display everything for an artist?
Also, when this is toggled on there is no hint as to which are the bootlegs. They are not highlighted in any way. They just start appearing among the albums.
Shouldn’t the bootlegs appear as their own separated group? Just the same as album, EP, etc do?
Is there any way a script can be used to sort something like this out? Or how do I put this forward to be looked at? Will these be easier to access on the new GUI? Do I need to chant the GUI designer’s name three times to see if she appears? @chhavi@chhavi@chhavi
The release status (official or - summarizing all others - not) is separate from the release group types.
You can have unofficial albums and official mixtapes.
Also a release group can contain the unofficial demo and the official version of the release. In that case the release group would appear in the list without clicking the “show all release groups instead” button.
I do agree however that release groups that don’t have any official releases should be distinguishable from the others and I’d love to toggle the “show all release groups instead” automatically for all artists. A script could probably do that (both).
@paulakreuzer yeah, totally understand your expanded description. You have put it a bit clearer than I did. It is the classic problem of “putting things in boxes” and many things don’t exactly fit a box.
Example “bootlegs” I am thinking about are Pink Floyd and the hundreds of unofficial albums out there of all kinds of gigs and goodies and unreleased bits. I only found out they were included here at MB because I saw some cover images appear on my Subscribed Edits list.
I also have a number of concert CDs of other bands. Certainly not authorised, but widely available.
Both of those examples would generate full Release Groups without any Official relases in them.
I also see how demo Releases of an album, or those Cold War editions of albums that appeared behind the Iron Curtain, would naturally still be under the original Release Group and would not affect this Artist page.
So it is those Release Groups without any Official releases that I’d want to see in a group of their own OR in a weird colour to stand out as unofficial.
We hid those to make official records stand out more.
We could have a script that adds all=1 to many artist links.
Anyway this display I think is good but not perfect.
Additionally to hide unofficial stuff, we should see all the original material (album, ep, single, live) first and then compilations last.
I can’t find my ticket back about this.
Or maybe it was only in the old forum.
Totally agree that these should be hidden by default. And bootlegs should be right at the bottom of any list. In their own sections. Not mixed into the official releases.
Problem is the current method has no clarity when the bootlegs are enabled. For a band like Pink Floyd you go from a small set of official albums to suddenly a huge list that is mostly bootlegs.
They should be kicked to the bottom in a new section - or at least shown in a different colour to point out they are bootlegs.
My dream would be a filter where you can select which release group types, secondary types & release statuses you want to see together in the first section and in which order the rest of the sections in the discography should be displayed. Also you should be able to choose whether the release groups should be ordered by first official release date or first ever release data.
And then you should be able to set a default filter for all artists and specific filters for artists where you want it displayed differently.
E.g. for Cookin’ Soul I’d like the first section to show all official and unofficial albums, mixtapes and remix albums ordered by first ever release date, then show the EPs, then singles and then compilations.
For Lucy Camp I’d like to see EPs and albums first in one section and then singles.
Imagine if you could drag the whole sections up and down the page… and it would remember the positions.
I’ll have to find a better less geeky example, but when working in the web-based controls of CPanel the different sections can be reordered just by grabbing title bars. Imagine being able to grab that “albums” title or “EP + Live” section and drag it up the page… but that would be extreme customisation as gawd knows where you’d keep all those choices… there are a few too many artists to keep a “per artist” setting.
Anyway - that is heading to Perfect Dream Land. Just being able to make out which are bootlegsRelease Groups with nothing Official would be a nice tweak.
I did try and find a thread about the new GUI but my search abilities failed me. All I managed to locate was the “name your favourite scripts” thread. I saw a bit of a ticket with a few replies under it and some mock-ups designed for very tall monitors. So I assume the discussion is happening somewhere. I am also not exactly that hot on the last tricks of designing websites. (I’m more Old Skool C\C++)
Maybe over Xmas I should get brave and use this as an excuse to go poking into scripts. Hack something out like this:
If members of ( Release Group ) includes (official items == 0)
then set colour of Release Group title to Pink on a Neon Yellow background
At the very least the ‘show unofficial releases’ button should be at the top. But I believe @Chavi has already peeked into this with the new UI last I saw…
