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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
• MusicBrainz StyleGuidelines
• CommunityProjects
• AdditionalMetadata and information
• MusicBrainzDevelopment
• MusicBrainzDocumentation
• About this MusicBrainzWiki

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Introduction to MusicBrainz

New users can find an introduction to MusicBrainz in this Wiki, as well as ModerationPhilosophy, an explanation of the MusicBrainzTagger, HowMusicBrainzWorks, HowToContribute, and MusicBrainzPress information.

Frequently Asked Questions

These FrequentlyAskedQuestions are maintained by the MusicBrainz community. Chances are, that if you have a question on how to use MusicBrainz, you will find the answer here. There is also a reviewed read-only version of this FAQ on the main site.

If you cannot find an answer in FAQ, search this third-party discussion archive (hosted by Nabble) which combines messages from Musicbrainz's user, developer, and announcement MailingLists. You can search, browse, or post your questions there. The search is fast and the UI is clean.

MusicBrainz Guidelines

This Wiki contains all important StyleGuidelines, 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 information HowEditingWorks 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.

Community Projects

The Contributors who take care of the MusicBrainz database have started to found small CommunityProjects around specialized areas. This helps people to coordinate their editing efforts and to find like minded editors and with knowledge in similar areas. Feel free to contact, or join these groups, or found a new one!

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 & releases that are NotDuplicateArtists and NotDuplicateReleases. There is also information on InternationalArtists.

Now that the database supports ArtistAnnotations and ReleaseAnnotations, some of this information can and should be moved to the database.

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.

Other music metadata efforts

• http://microformats.org/wiki/haudio - a microformat.

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 is about the technical details of editing wiki pages.
• GoodWikiStyle (especially GoodWikiName and BadWikiName) are more about how to behave well in this wiki.
• The WikiDocs concept outlines how we use content of this wiki to show it on the main site.
• MusicBrainzWikiLicense for details about our license
• Finally you can test anything in the Sandbox.