How Editing Works

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See also the Moderation FAQ or the Classical Music FAQ on our wiki.

Moderation Philosophy

The MusicBrainz moderation system is designed to give MusicBrainz users the power to update and maintain the database. Maintaining a comprehensive database for popular music is a large task, and MusicBrainz will depend on its users to spot mistakes in the database and then to take the initiative to correct these errors.

The data in MusicBrainz has been collected from a number of places including the EMusic collection, metadata submitted via FreeAmp, the CD Index database, and freedb.org data. While some of these data sources are better than others, there will always be mistakes in the data in MusicBrainz.

I hope that the people who use MusicBrainz will take it upon themselves to look up a few of their favorite artists and then make sure there are no mistakes in their artists metadata. If MusicBrainz can get up to 10,000 users, each user would only need to check out and update a few artists in order to clean up the entire database.

Moderators should familiarize themselves with the Style Guidelines that define how to organize and capitalize the data in MusicBrainz. When other Moderators votes on your suggested changes, they will judge your changes against these guidelines.

Moderation Guide

To moderate (change) the database, follow these steps:

  1. Create a MusicBrainz account and log in. Anyone can create an account. We don't ask for any private information, so there is no chance for us to give this information to anyone!
  2. Search/browse for your favorite artist and view the albums by that artist.
  3. If you spot a mistake, a typo, or a mis-classification click on the Edit/Move/Add link next to the incorrect/missing data item. If you are not logged into MusicBrainz (see step #1) you will not see these edit links.
  4. The moderation links will take you to pages where you can edit/add the information for that artist. On the edit pages you will find further instructions and links for style guideline popups that will provide a guidance for your moderation participation. Please read and follow these guides -- they are important in order for the entire database to have a consistent look and feel. If the edit page has more than one field that can be edited, but not all fields need to be changed, just leave the correct fields alone.
  5. Once you click on submit on the edit/add pages, you will be taken back to the album/artist page that you just came from. A moderation request will be entered into the database, and if you click on the Moderate button at the top of the page you will be taken to the moderation page, where you can view/vote on moderations.
  6. The default moderation page lists all the moderations that are currently pending. Please vote on other people's suggestions to edit the database. Each row in the moderation table will contain information about the suggested change and it will show how many peope have voted yes and no to the suggestion. You may only vote once on a change and you may not vote for your own modifications.
  7. For all of the modifications that you have not voted on, you may select the Yes, No or Abs radiobutton for Yes, No or Abstain (DUH!). You can go down the list of moderations and vote for each by selecting the appropriate radio button and then clicking on submit at the top of the page. If you are not sure about a modification or you have no idea if the suggested modification is correct, then simply abstain from the vote.
  8. If 3 people unanimously vote for or against a suggested change, the change is immmediately accepted or rejected, respectively. If the votes are not unanimous the system will wait for 1 week and then accept the suggested change into the database if the simple majority of moderators voted yes. If the vote fails to achieve a simple majority it is dropped from the moderation table without being applied to the database. Some moderations, such as the add album moderation, will add data into the database at the time the moderation is entered into the system. If such moderations get voted down, the data that was entered for the moderation will be removed from the database.
  9. The default moderation page shows new moderations, but you may also view your past votes or your past moderations by selecting the Old Moderations and My moderations links at the top of the moderation table. The expiration times show on the moderation page are in GMT.

Auto Moderators

Automoderators are moderators who have made a large number of contributions to MusicBrainz, and some basic moderations made by automoderators are not required to be voted on by other moderators. The following moderation types are automoderations:

Add Album, Add Album Annotation, Add Artist, Add Artist Alias, Add Artist Annotation, Add Relationship, Add Relationship Attribute, Add Relationship Type, Add Track, Add Track (old version), Change Track Artist, Convert Album to Multiple Artists, Convert Album to Single Artist, Edit Album Attributes, Edit Album Language, Edit Album Name, Edit Artist, Edit Artist Alias, Edit Artist Name, Edit Artist Sortname, Edit Relationship, Edit Relationship Attribute, Edit Relationship Type, Edit Track Name, Edit Track Number, Edit Track Time, Move Album, Move Disc ID, Remove Relationship Attribute, Remove Relationship Type, Remove TRM ID

The policy for suggesting more automoderators is as follows: Any automoderator can suggest a new moderator to be promoted to an automoderator. The suggested moderator must then be endorsed by two other automoderators. Once endorsed, the automoderators have one week to vote on the promotion of the endorsed automoderator. A simple majority is required to be promoted.

Any moderator who suggests or endorses a moderator cannot vote on the new moderator. The suggesting/endorsing/voting will happen in the mb-users mailing list and should be facilitated by the moderator who suggests the new moderator.

Get Moderating!

If you're ready to get moderating straight away, go to the moderation page. If you'd like to participate in the moderation process, but don't know where to start, check out the moderation suggestions page.