When is autoediting appropriate?

I’m looking at an auto-edit that has been passed instantly.

And thinking that it needed to be challenged and reviewed in the voting process as it appears to be using a digital Release page as the basis for a CD Release’s trackartists.

When should autoeditor abilities be used?
And when should they be not used?

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If see that, please change the edit and the autoeditor will revert it and redo it open and votable.
Or ask/search for more reference. But it should always be the editor doing the search for reference.

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I looked for a place where the MusicBrainz documentation answers your question. The closest I came to is the Editor page. It doesn’t answer your question directly.

What should autoeditor abilities be used? The Editor page says, autoeditors “should always align themselves to the Code of Conduct”, should “take an objective point of view regarding the data they edit”, and should have “basic editing fundamentals [so] that they are able to edit outside their realm of expertise”. My practice as an Autoeditor is that when I am confident that I am making edits which are correct information, and conform to the guidelines, and which make the database better, I apply them using Autoeditor powers.

The corollary is that Autoeditors should not apply those powers when they are not certain they understand the editing rules for a situation, or when they aren’t sure they are being objective. (When they can’t hold to the Code of Conduct, they should just log off MusicBrainz for the day and find some other use for their time.) When I am uncertain, I turn off Autoeditor powers, make the edit, and let it go to a vote. I am usually careful to write an edit note which explains what I’m not confident about.

The Autoeditor page doesn’t say this, but one benefit to the project of Autoeditors using their powers is that it lets the database improve with less congestion in the voting queues. The voting requirement is a protection, against incompetent and malicious edits; but also a problem, frustrating editors who have to wait days to benefit from their productive edits, and taking time for voting from other editors.

But Autoeditors are human, and can be confident but wrong. In this case, what I encourage you to do is to add a note that edit, even though it is already approved. The system passes that note on to the Autoeditor. If your comment has merit, then I expect most Autoeditors will respond. If the response doesn’t persuade you, I expect most will do as @jesus2099 describes, and redo the edit with Autoeditor powers off, and let it go to a vote.

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As others have said above me, do leave a note if you have the CD and feel the track artists should be different :slight_smile:

I’ll say that in many cases I feel it’s perfectly OK to add a CD with some data based on a digital if you don’t have reason to suspect they’re different (but you only have, say, front cover + barcode + number of tracks for the CD) with the expectation that if it’s a rare case where the data differs significantly another editor can improve it further :slight_smile:

If this is a case when the edit didn’t make the data worse and you can just improve it, then I wouldn’t contest the edit as such, but improve the data and leave a note on the original edit saying “the artists from the digital didn’t quite match what’s printed on the CD, made some improvements with edit #12345” or something like that.

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Thanks all.
The physical Release in question has tracklist coverart that has apparently never been sighted by MB editors.
There is a claimed tracklist for the physical Release and a tracklist for a digital Release.

I think the best available thing is an annotation warning of the uncertainty that exists in the exact tracklist with the aim of reducing the liklihood of a duplicate Release being created on the basis that, “the coverart tracklist is different”.

You haven’t given the URL to the release but I don’t think it’s an automod ability issue as, unless you are still marked as a beginner user, unless you check the Make all edits votable checkbox, your Add release edits will always be auto edits, without being an auto editor.

I think it’s more about:

But auto editors should indeed show the good example by not adding release with no edit notes.

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