When a Place is no longer a Place

MusicBrainz Style
31

Okay, so there are a lot of question in this thread, some explicit, some implicit. I’ll try to tl;dr them.

  1. If a location is taken over by a new establishment, and its function is no longer relevant to MB
  • Should that new establishment be recorded?
  • Or is it enough to put an end date on the last MB-relevant establishment?
  • How do you even determine whether a venue’s function is relevant to MB?
  1. What is an MB-place?

  • Does it represent a location that can have many names/owners over the years? Use aliases and/or an artist credit-like system to indicate different names? If so

    • Is there a concept of an “historical” MB-place?
    • *How do you choose the primary name for an MB-place?

  • Or does it represent an establishment, so that many MB-places can share the same physical location? If so
    * Can/should two establishments be linked by a “same location” relationship?

    • Or is it enough that they share the same address and coördinates?
  1. What if an establishment moves? Is it still the same entity?

For me,

  1. If it’s totally irrelevant to MB, there should still be some way to find out “what’s there now?” If an address/coordinates answer that question, that’s good enough for me.

  2. I’m firmly in the place == establishment camp. If an address/coordinates is adequate to show that two establishments occupied the same location, that’s fine with me, but MB should definitely display this somehow.

  3. No, IMO that’s a new entity unless multiple address/coordinates can be associated with one place.

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