Proposed Style Guideline

This page is for new style guidelines that are not yet official. This page is overseen by StyleDude, who is TarragonAllen at the time of writing. There is some related information on UnresolvedStyleIssues and TarragonAllensTodoList.

Do not propose guidelines here! Instead you should propose and discuss new guidelines on the user's MailingList. If some rough consensus is reached there, then the new guideline can be listed here. Eventually it should then make it to the OfficialStyleGuidelines page, at the discretion of the StyleDude.

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Tentative Summary of proposed and discussed StyleGuidelines

Note: As this page has been getting very long, I started to split it into sub-pages similar to the way OfficialStyleGuidelines are spit. The main purpose of this list is to start a reference for intertwingling. New style-proposals should then get a new page (Think of the WikiName carefully!!!) and discussion on StyleGuidelines should happen on the respective page to that guideline. --DonRedman

• PartsOfATitle:

• TarragonAllen proposed to define the parts of a TrackTitle or AlbumTitle as follows: MainTitle, SubTitle, VolumeNumber, ExtraTitleInformation and DiscNumber (I changed "Distinguisher" to "Number" because it is already inuse in the wiki -DR). Accordingly we should make the following pages descibing their style: MainTitleStyle, SubTitleStyle (better than SeparateTitleStyle), VolumeNumberStyle, ExtraTitleInformationStyle and DiscNumberStyle.

• VolumeNumberStyle:

• Apparently this has become an OfficialStyleGuideline by now.

• ExtraTitleInformationStyle:

• Includes some discussion on how to order the different parts of the ExtraTitleInformation. Also it was proposed that ExtraTitleInformation be always in english. (see below for more details)

• NoAudioBookStyleGuideline:

• You can enter AudioBooks into MusicBrainz, but there are no StyleGuidelines for them and there won't be any in the near future. (see below for more details)

• AudioBookStyle:

• We prefer to have an AudioBook guideline, this is currently under discussion.

• FeaturingArtistStyle:

• This one actually is an OfficialStyleGuideline, but one of which even the StyleDude himself is not very convinced. It will be abolished as soon as AdvancedRelationships come out.

• LiveTrackStyle:

• Describing how the ExtraTitleInformation of live tracks should be done.

• ReleaseCountryStyle:

• How to represent albums that were released in more than one country.

• ArtistRoleInheritance:

• How to record artist roles when there's more than one way (artist, album, track) to do so.

• SoundtrackStyle:

• Soundtracks are currently being handled based merely on a mailing list conversation a year or so back. This is a first attempt to actually build a complete set of guidelines to codify this.

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Full Proposals and Discussion

Status: The following might still be up to date, but it is not well maintained. If you update this, then please take the time to put it on a page of its own --DonRedman

Proposal: NoAudioBookGuideline

By TarragonAllen, 2004-08-28

As the database is set up primarily as a music resource audio books and other related spoken word releases do not map very well into the current data-set. As such, audio books and other related spoken word releases are allowed in the database but there will be no official standards for how they are entered, sorted or categorised, nor will there be any official style guidelines for them. If people wish to create their own style guidelines for audio books and other related spoken word releases they are free to do so, but there will be NoAudioBookGuideline.

• WolfSong and g0llum are going to write an AudioBookStyle, which should be applied to AudioBooks for some consistency of the Track Titles. (The most important characteristic of such a guideline is to ensure that the tracks are sorted in the right sequence, if a user chooses to rename the tracks without the track number -> encode Chapter and Sub-chapters into the trackname) --g0llum

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Proposal: ExtraTitleInformation

2004-11-18

• Extra title information should always be in English, except for volume identifiers which are considered part of the title and should be consistent with the language used in the title.
• Expand all abbreviations within extra title information unless they are part of a title, ie: RMX or MX can sometimes be considered part of a remix title and so should not be blanketly expanded. Featuring is the only accepted abbreviation (as "feat."), all similar abbreviations should be expanded.

As discussed on the mailing list. --MichelleW