Talk:Artist Role Inheritance

• In "At which level do we enter AR's" mb-style list posting (Nov 2007), BrianSchweitzer argues that adding ARs to a Release as a way of saying they apply to every Track is more complex and therefore less desirable than adding ARs to each Track explicitly. First, some ARs are genuinely Release-level (e.g. photographer) while some are actually Track-level (e.g. composer). Second, it's likely that some ARs attached to the Release don't actually apply to each and every Track, just to some, and it will be complex to fix those. -- Summary by JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-18
• In Edit #7814443, BrianFreud (same person) argued at 2007-11-25 18:29:23 PST that the above proposal 'has pretty much been flipped to the reverse as preparations are made for track masters, which would require that to be reversed ("All information should be recorded at the lowest possible level.").' -- Summary by JimDeLaHunt 2007-12-18
• First a disclaimer: I'm relatively new at MB (one week) and don't understand every single bit in all its flavour. I think the goal should be a system where its possible to get maximum information (about a track perhaps) with a minimum of typing (entering information) effort. So I don't agree that it is the best to enter every bit of information at the lowest possible level. I have done this myself today half by accident on "Crash! Boom! Bang!". You can see every single track is written by Per Gessle and in addition track 12 is also written by Mats Persson. Second all tracks except track 15 are composed by Per Gessle where track 15 is composed by Marie Fredriksson. So instead of entering 31 single ARs it would be possible to enter just 4 and one "stop mask". Let me explain this: It would be possible to add one composing and one lyrics AR to the release crediting Per Gessle. Now we have 2 of the 4. Assuming we had full inheritance it would be sufficient to add another composing AR to track 12 crediting Mats Persson. So we would have both in composing track 12. On track 15 however we would need something what would sound in English like "except for track 15". Here I would like to introduce a thing I call "stop mask" for lack of better term. A stop mask would take a ARClass as argument. You could add such stop mask with the ARClass "composed on" to track 15. So any inheritance of "composed on" from higher levels such as release level would stop here. That said Per Gessle would no longer composing track 15. So you are able to start fresh from here and add Marie Fredriksson. Here are my 4 ARs and one stop mask to save me from adding 31 ARs. What I have in my mind to support this system are ACLs (Access Control Lists) on file systems. While POSIX did not have inheritance at all there are implementations in the good old Novell Netware where you have full inheritance of ACLs from higher directory levels to lower with help of such "stop masks" which stop inheritance. So you can give read rights for all users on some common directory tree, excluding some deeper directory in the same place per adding a stop mask. Further reading at this edit. -- AlexanderKiel 2008-03-03

Further to the mailing list discussion, I would like to add my unhappiness about a proposal to refer to Release-level performance ARs as "fuzzy". I don't have a problem with track-level ARs being "more important", but I've always applied release-level ARs when they are only true for the entire release, or at least according to the sleeve notes. Like Olivier and Lauri, I think the correct place for "fuzzy" information is in the release annotation. Editors should not be encouraged to add "performed guitar" to a release if one track only contains piano, but equally an edit should not be voted down if the Release level AR is entirely correct. --ArtySmokes