Edit Artist Name Edit

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Revision as of 08:58, 19 March 2009 by Zout (talk | contribs) (removed author(s))
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Use this EditType to change an Artist's aicon.png name on every release he appears on. (this is valid for the artist's own releases, as well as various artists releases and advanced relationships)

How to do it

Guidelines

Editing

  • Usually, if there is a change that needs to be made to an artist's name, you should make corresponding changes to both the ArtistName and ArtistSortName (that's why they are both on the same edit page). This doesn't apply to artists with names that are written in non-Roman alphabets, where the ArtistSortName should remain in Latin characters.
  • When changing an artist's name, consider also adding an alias (AddArtistAliasEdit) for the existing name. If it was used before, it will probably be used again; having an alias will help prevent the creation of a duplicate artist that needs to be merged with a MergeArtistsEdit. (This is less important if only case or accents are changed, since searches will ignore both of those, nor if the edit is only adding to the artist's name, not changing what was there before.)
  • Also consider adding an alias for the new name as well; having an alias that is the same as the ArtistName (a SelfAlias) saves the next moderator (who knows better than you, and changes the name to something even more accurate) the trouble of adding the alias. Plus, even if your EditArtistNameEdit change is voted down, a similar AddArtistAliasEdit will often pass.
  • Check for variant names:
  • Before changing an artist's name, consider the possibility that it is a duplicate entry for the artist. A quick artist name search may turn up a number of variants. You may wish to merge them with MergeArtistsEdits instead (this is done automatically for an exact match, but it's worth checking manually because near-misses are very common).
  • Add artist for changed name:
  • When an artist changes names, it may be better to use a AddArtistEdit to create multiple artists (e.g. Jefferson Airplane which later became Jefferson Starship) rather than combine all the releases under a single artist and create an endless battle over which is the "correct" name.
  • An exception to the above is when an artist is legally required to change names to avoid confusion with another artist; in that case changing the artist name is usually the right approach.
  • Don't change the ArtistName because of a single track:
  • Don't change the artist name because it's wrong for a single track on a Various Artists release; use a ChangeTrackArtistEdit in that case. Similarly, if the artist name is wrong for a release, use a MoveReleaseEdit to move the release to the correct artist.

Voting

  • Don't assume that an edit fixing a typographical error is correct. Artists can have names that are deliberately misspelled.
  • Look for a reference to an official artist home page that documents the artist's preferred name.

Notes

If you change the artist name to one that belongs to another artist (ignoring case differences, but not accents), the edit will be converted to a MergeArtistsEdit instead, merging this artist into the other one.

Otherwise, if the only change to the name was case and/or accents, the change will be instantly applied (no voting required; this is an AutoEdit).

Prerequisites

An EditArtistNameEdit will fail due to a FailedPrerequisite if another EditArtistNameEdit changes the name.

Dependencies

An EditArtistNameEdit will fail due to a FailedDependency if the artist is deleted by a RemoveArtistEdit or merged into another artist by a MergeArtistsEdit.

Internal Errors

An EditArtistNameEdit will fail due to a NameClash if another artist is created with, or renamed to, the target name after the EditArtistNameEdit is submitted. If an artist with that name already existed, it would have been converted to a MergeArtistsEdit as noted above, but in this case it is too late to be converted.

Symbolic name and id

MOD_EDIT_ARTISTNAME (1)