Main Page
Welcome to the MusicBrainz Wiki!
The MusicBrainzWiki is a dynamic and growing information resource to help you understand MusicBrainz, learn how to use it and contribute to it more effectively, and to help shape the direction it takes into the future. It complements the other MusicBrainzForums, being used for collaboration on detailed and specific discussions about MusicBrainz and documentation of the MusicBrainz community, conventions, interfaces, and internals.
This page is a summary outline of thematic clusters for these documentation efforts and discussions:
- Introductory Material to MusicBrainz
- FrequentlyAskedQuestions
- MusicBrainzGuidelines
- AdditionalMetadata and information
- MusicBrainzDevelopment
- MusicBrainzDocumentation
- About this MusicBrainzWiki
Introduction to MusicBrainz
New users can find an introduction to MusicBrainz in this Wiki, as well as ModerationPhilosophy, an explanation of the MusicBrainzTagger, HowMusicBrainzWorks, HowToContributeToMusicBrainz, and MusicBrainzPress information.
Frequently Asked Questions
The FrequentlyAskedQuestions might provide answers to questions that are not answered in the general FAQ on the main site. These FrequentlyAskedQuestions in the Wiki are maintained by the MusicBrainz community and are more up to date than the official pages.
MusicBrainz Guidelines
This Wiki contains all important MusicBrainzGuidelines, which address issues for new and expert users on how to add to and improve the MusicBrainz database.
- The StyleGuidelines have information on how the data in MusicBrainz should be formatted and organized, including OfficialStyleGuidelines, CapitalizationStandard and ClassicalStyleGuide.
- The EditingGuidelines provide InformationOnEditing and suggestions on the most effective ways to add new data and correct data that has errors or doesn't follow the StyleGuidelines.
The MailingList archives also hold many discussions and informal agreements on formatting entries.
Additional Metadata and Information
The MusicBrainz database can only hold some types of information; this Wiki can be used for AdditionalMetadata that is helpful when editing or voting, such as information on IdenticallyNamedArtists, and lists of artists & albums that are NotDuplicateArtists and NotDuplicateAlbums. There is also information on InternationalArtists.
Now that the database supports ArtistAnnotations and AlbumAnnotations, some of this information can and should be moved to the database; for example, the ArtistDiscography information.
MusicBrainz Development
MusicBrainz is being developed in small evolutionary steps and this Wiki provides an important resource for this process. The section MusicBrainzDevelopment lists work depending on its status:
- NewFeatureSuggestions are just that suggestions. This is the place to add cool feature ideas (or even better, discuss them on the MailingList).
- FutureWork are features we have agreed to implement, but nobody is working on it yet.
- CurrentWork is work that somebody is working on now, possibly on one of the TestServers.
- FinishedWork is well, finished.
- DormantWork is um, not finished because of different reasons.
MusicBrainz Documentation
The MusicBrainzDocumentation is a major current project on the Wiki. We have started RestructuringTheDocumentation; i.e. to move the MusicBrainzDocumentation from the main pages into the Wiki. The docs on the main pages are often quite dated, so we will try to update and intertwingle them here. This will finally lead to WikiDocs, a homepage that is completely based on the MusicBrainzWiki
The intertwingling is quite awful currently. It should be something like this: (--DonRedman)
- RestructuringTheDocumentation -- about the project, can also help with backlinks if you say "We are RestructuringTheDocumentation here" on doc pages.
- MusicBrainzDocumentation -- an index of everything there is. No matter what the current status is.
- Category Documentation Official -- should replace 'OriginalVersion' which is a terribly BadWikiName
- OfficialDocumentation -- currently does what RestructuringTheDocumentation should do. The full WikiName of this page should be OfficialMusicBrainzDocumentation BTW.
About This Wiki
See MusicBrainzWiki for more information on this wiki.
- StatusOfThisWiki should give you an idea which parts are stable and which are in progress.
- MoinMoinWikiSyntax and TextFormattingRules are about the technical details of editing the wiki.
- GoodWikiStyle (especially GoodWikiName and BadWikiName) are more about how to behave well in this wiki.
- The WikiDocs concept outlines the future plans for this wiki.
- Finally you can test anything in the SandBox or the Sandbox (don't ask me why we have two of them!).