Why is Simon Rattle highlighted as if for pending edits?

MusicBrainz
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I am looking at a release by J.S. Bach (https://musicbrainz.org/artist/24f1766e-9635-4d58-a4d4-9413f9f98a4c), the Berliner Philharmoniker (https://musicbrainz.org/artist/dea28aa9-1086-4ffa-8739-0ccc759de1ce/), and Sir Simon Rattle (https://musicbrainz.org/artist/80c3bce9-0b54-409c-aa10-3b0c7dbbc597). A few hours, all three name were highlighted with a yellow background, as if for a pending edit. I see the same thing on each artist’s page. Now, Bach’s name is no longer highlighted, but the Berliner’s and Rattle’s names are still.

I tried to understand what edits were pending by looking at the open edits for each artist. For instance, right now Rattle’s open edits list (https://musicbrainz.org/artist/80c3bce9-0b54-409c-aa10-3b0c7dbbc597/open_edits) has exactly two entries:

  1. Edit #41818184 - Edit artist credit https://musicbrainz.org/edit/41818184 .
    • Changes from: Artist Credit: Schoenberg; Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Artemis Quartet, Simon Rattle, Jeffrey Tate
      Arnold Schönberg as Schoenberg, Phyllis Bryn‐Julson as Phyllis Bryn-Julson, Artemis Quartet, Simon Rattle, Jeffrey Tate (conductor)
    • Changes to: Schoenberg; Phyllis Bryn‐Julson, Artemis Quartet, Simon Rattle, Jeffrey Tate
      Arnold Schönberg as Schoenberg, Phyllis Bryn‐Julson, Artemis Quartet, Simon Rattle, Jeffrey Tate (conductor)
    • This appears to be a change to artist credits in a Release, but I don’t see which Release is the source of this edit.
    • There is an edit comment: “The artist name has been changed in edit #41818161.”
    • Edit #41818161 https://musicbrainz.org/edit/41818161 is a change of name spelling for Artist “Phyllis Bryn‐Julson” https://musicbrainz.org/artist/f0f0d88c-d107-44cc-861c-450aedbf999d .
  2. Edit #41818174 - Edit artist credit https://musicbrainz.org/edit/41818174
    • Changes from: Artist Credit: Phyllis Bryn-Julson, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle
      Phyllis Bryn‐Julson as Phyllis Bryn-Julson, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle
    • Changes to: Phyllis Bryn‐Julson, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Simon Rattle
    • This appears to be a change to artist credits in a Release, but I don’t see which Release is the source of this edit.
    • There is an edit comment: “The artist name has been changed in edit #41818161.” (same as for edit #1)
    • Edit #41818161 (same as for edit #1) https://musicbrainz.org/edit/41818161 is a change of name spelling for Artist “Phyllis Bryn‐Julson” https://musicbrainz.org/artist/f0f0d88c-d107-44cc-861c-450aedbf999d .

So I don’t understand, from looking these set of edits, why the Simon Rattle name should be highlighted as if for a pending edit. Nor do I understand why a name spelling change to one Artist, Phyllis Bryn-Julson, should result in an open edit for a different Artist, Simon Rattle, simply because both Artists were mentioned together in the same artist credit. I don’t understand why the change in Artist credit involving an Artist, but not changing any of the Artist’s data fields, should cause the Artist’s (Rattle’s) name to be highlighted in yellow for a pending edit. And if these open edits aren’t the reason for highlighting Rattle’s name, I don’t understand how to find out what is the pending edit which is motivating the name highlighting.

This isn’t about Rattle or Bryn-Julson’s entries. I see several Artist names highlighted, and I would like to understand how to find out exactly what that highlighting is trying to indicate, for any Artist. The exact set of Artists affected will vary as edits get created and closed. It turns out that at this moment, Rattle is a simple example.

What am I missing?

1 Like
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Good question, I noticed the same for the artist “Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks”

From comparing the open edits of your example to mine, maybe the edit type “Edit artist credit” might be the cause? If this is in fact the reason, I would call it a bug, as it is not a direct edit to the highlighted artist.

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Although it does not change the way Simon Rattle name is spelled, “Edit artist credit” change #41818184 still affects every recording/release/release-group that uses this credit. Similarly, “Edit recording” change #41742756 changes the title only of the recording, it is still listed in Simon Rattle editing history. They both are edits related to this artist, although they do not directly change his credit. It allows for subscribers to follow such edits, see https://musicbrainz.org/doc/Subscription.

5 Likes
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Yes, this isn’t a bug. The highlighting is intended to notify users that edits are pending for the highlighted entity, so that they might look into the pending changes and possibly vote on them.

(Technical note: Which entities are highlighted for a (pending) edit and which ones have the edit put into their edit history is independent of each other, though the sets of entities are obviously similar or identical, depending on the edit type. Subscriptions refer to the latter.)

3 Likes
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I can understand that the highlight says “edits are pending”. I can understand that I might want to “look into the pending changes and possibly vote on them.”

How can I do this?

If the “open edits” option on an Artist page gets me the edits put into an artist’s edit history, and the changes which are highlighted for a pending edit may be a different set, then how am I supposed to “look into the pending changes”? What other way of “looking into” is there apart from the “open edits” list?

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There may be edits in the edit history that don’t cause an “edits pending” highlight. I’m not aware of the opposite.

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I got curious about what edits exactly would cause the Artist name to be highlighted. I read the code for musicbrainz-server a bit.

The name is highlighted if the <span> includes class='mp'. This causes a CSS rule in common-0721a8bf19.css:1646 to set background: #FD9 !important, a yellow colour. The template formatting the Artist page (root/components/common-macros.tt:320) ends up generating class='mp' if the artist object in the server code has an value of greater than zero for edits_pending. The edits_pending option appears to be read from a column edits_pending in the Artist database table. This column is mentioned in the database schema. This value is an integer of 0 or greater.

I haven’t been able to see clearly what code sets the value of edits_pending in an Artist database record to non-zero values. I suspect that the code which performs or handles edits is also responsible for adjusting the value of edits_pending. If I’m right about it, then the edits_pending highlight is not simply the result of making a database query and checking how many entries there are. The value of the column exists in parallel to the database of open edits. Thus it’s theoretically possible for the value of edits_pending, and the highlighting, to be out of sync with the open edits.

Now I may be wrong about all this. I am unfamiliar with the MusicBrainz server code. I may be misinterpreting. But that’s how it seems to me so far.

I hope this exploration is informative for other editors.

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