History:Bad Terminology

From MusicBrainz Wiki
Jump to navigationJump to search
Status: This Page is Glorious History!

The content of this page either is bit-rotted, or has lost its reason to exist due to some new features having been implemented in MusicBrainz, or maybe just described something that never made it in (or made it in a different way), or possibly is meant to store information and memories about our Glorious Past. We still keep this page to honor the brave editors who, during the prehistoric times (prehistoric for you, newcomer!), struggled hard to build a better present and dreamed of an even better future. We also keep it for archival purposes because possibly it still contains crazy thoughts and ideas that may be reused someday. If you're not into looking at either the past or the future, you should just disregard entirely this page content and look for an up to date documentation page elsewhere.

Problems with Terminology used in MusicBrainz

A complete list of all articles containing BadTerminology Template:FullSearch

There are also a number of groups of related terminology that could be improved by changing them. In approximately decreasing order of acceptance, they are:



Album => Release

  • While popular, this is tightly coupled with various database change propsals like ReleaseGroups that haven't really been taken up

Album -> Release

This helps eliminate the confusion between "Album Albums" and "Compilation" or "Live" etc. "Albums", so that Albums and Singles become types of release - this is almost done in a branch of CVS, but not on the main site.

  • Which CVS branch? I would guess it's a bit dated by now. @alex
    Does MCs count as "albums"? I would never have called an MC release an album before I started working on MusicBrainz... --FrederikSOlesen

A Release should eventually be able to contain multiple Discs (what are currently called Albums) in order to properly represent multi-disc releases, box sets, etc.

  • So is it Album -> Release or Album -> Disc? This is where the terminlogy gets tied to database changes that will come slowly, if at all. @alex
    • It's Album -> Release - a release can be an MC (or other forms of cassettes or non-discs). --FrederikSOlesen
      • Not necessarily. The current terminology changes are album -> release. But if NextGenerationSchema gets implemented, the current release "object" will get splitted into album (if we can't find a better word), release and medium. -- Shepard 09:51, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Release -> Release Date

We currently use the word Release to indicate a release date (in a country). An actual release would include the Label and the media. Or be a replacement for 'album' (see above).

  • I'm not sure what should happen to what is currently called "Release information" or "Releases", which consists of dates, countries of and possibly types (CD, Vinyl, Tape etc.) of release. --RjMunro
    • The current release information should become attributes of a Release, including other data such as ASIN, BarCodes, and other unique identifiers. --Agrundma
      • Calling them "attributes" is confusing because we currently use these for (Single, Official, etc.). I prefer "Release Data" -- not date -- because there's a country (and maybe media type, UPC, etc.) as well. @alex
    Please see ReleaseGroups for some related notes on usage of terminology, particular regarding Album and Release. As it stands there doesn't appear to be a good term for "one piece of media which contains a number of audio tracks" that doesn't have another common meaning in the music industry (Album and Release both have multiple uses). It would be nice to find a term that won't be potentially ambigious. --TarragonAllen 2004-06-07


Karma System => Editor Rating

  • People seem to agree not to use the term "Karma System", but since there is no such system in place, it's somewhat moot. Now JohnRamsay has raised the issue again, I do not really understand why. Maybe we interpret the past discussions differently? --DonRedman (pretty confused)

Karma -> EditorRating

Again, it's inherited from slashdot. It's a slashdotism, not a real use of the word. When I first showed a friend of mine the SurvivalOfTheFittest proposal, he said "Yuk... This page uses words like paradigm and Karma" and was immediately put off. This person owns a company that does things lots of design for usability etc. so he knows what he is talking about.

  • What is better: EditorRating or EditorRanking? English is not my native language, so could please someone else decide by creating one of the two pages. --DonRedman Rating is a measurment. Ranking is position in a list. Ranks go first, second, third etc. There's no reason not to have both. Currently, we have several rankings on the site - top moderators ever, top moderators per week, top voters ever, top voters per week. We could use these to help generate ratings, and/or we could have rankings based on ratings. --RjMunro I'd go with 'rating' for just that reason, Rj. With ranking, someone has to be at the top, regardless of qualification. Ratings are independent of other people, just a statement of this person's qualifications. So if we are aiming at a system that rates people according to their editing skill, and voting accuracy, then rating is what we want. The rankings for top voter/editor/etc., remain great incentive to do more, though. --Jinxie Agreed 100% -- rating sounds like the right approach --Ruaok Maybe we should also have EditorRanting...! Ratings are more useful because they allow other moderators to guage the reliability of the mod by getting a sense of the depth and breadth of the moderators edits in the past. Of course the numbers skew at either end of the spectrum. There should be a minimum number of moderations before rating starts or possible starting all mods with 100 points and max at 250 points or zero. If a time factor was introduced then time would heal all wounds moving all mods back to 100 over time. It would give those who start out misguided but who learn by trial and error a chance to not just scrap the login ID and start over. Look at the system E-Bay employs alerts all buyers to new and inexperienced sellers and rewards the long-term consistent service providers.

What about a "member since" star (or similar) system for loyalty growing/ bragging rights, instead of mod ratings, since competition among moderators is counter-productive. There are also the 'pieces of flare' reward systems that some forums use to recognize above average posters. --JohnRamsay

Pages to Rename

Difficult