On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Don Redman wrote:
Robert and me talked on the telephone today, and I asked him what he thinks about this. He said that he does not like the idea that possibly thousands of nonmusical artist get added to the db, just because they were maried to a musician.
This decision doesn't only affect the married relationship, but all the ones that are none musical: parent of / has sibling etc.
There was one example earlier in the discussion where the addition of one non-musical artist is the only way of linking two other artists, this non-musical artist will now need to be removed and this link lost.
This decision effectively makes these relationship types useless as they can never be used to show complete data.
If they can't be used to show complete data they may as well be removed, along with all the current links using those relationship types.
The alternative is that there will be less of the quick decisions and more of the "OK, sum the debate up and then the Elder will decide" mails. This means more work for you, but it also means you are in control of the arguments that get presented, and the whole decision process is public (although still dictatorial).
I would have been happier to present a valid argument weighing up the pros / cons of going one level further in the scope of the data that is held, instead of a quick decision being made.
As you just mentioned, Rob hadn't seen the emails on the subject, therefore he is possibly making a decision on a whim without seeing the whole discussion.
What do you think?
I'm disappointed that the normal process for style changes has been effectively short-circuited without having a adult discussion.
MusicBrainz has an innovative method for showing this type of data, I'm not aware of anybody else doing anything similar. It is a real shame it will now never be used to full effect and fail to provide what could be a valuable tool to a larger audience.
Instead of being a one-stop-shop for this data relating to an artist, we are limiting the scope and possibly the target audience.
Currently MusicBrainz is promoting itself as attempting to be a comprehensive database of information relating to music and the artists, this is clearly not the case. If those relationship types are retained, a disclaimer is needed, to indicate the information may be incomplete because only musician -> musician relationships are allowed in the database.
Steve (inhouseuk) _______________________________________________ Musicbrainz-style mailing list Musicbrainz-style@lists.musicbrainz.org http://lists.musicbrainz.org/mailman/listinfo/musicbrainz-style
