Style Council

The MusicBrainz Style Council

The official Style Council is the institution in MusicBrainz that creates and edits the OfficialStyleGuidelines.

As of Nov 2005 the Style Council is being restructured, since it did not work very well. During this period TarragonAllen (who was the last StyleDude before the creation of the council) will be the council's leader.

How the New Style Council Will Work

This has not been fixed yet, but there seems to be general consensus about more or less these points:

1. The Style Council will have a leader. This leader will act as a benevolent dictator and make decisions, but should not do any of the actual work involved with the issues discussed.
2. The Council will consist of members, who agree to become delegates for a specific StyleIssue. Once a person has become a delegate, she/he is responsible for the progress of this issue according to the process described in HowToSolveAStyleIssue. That means that a delegate is responsible to do the actual work, if nobody else does it. Delegates should be assigned to StyleIssues in a rotating fashion to avoid burnout.
3. All subscribers to the StyleMailingList form an interested public and take part in discussions about StyleGuidelines.
4. Each StyleIssue has a person who raised it. This proposer also has some responsibilities; see below.

The roles of these three people are distributed like this:

The Proposer's Job is to

• Open the issue in the IssueTracker and start a thread about it on the StyleMailingList.
• If the proposal is a complex one, CreateAWikiPage describing the initial issue.
• Collaborate with the delegate on summaries etc.
• In some tough cases it might be necessary or at least helpful to summarize the finally proposed change and make sure it addresses all objections raised on the StyleMailingList.

The Leader's Job is to

• Make sure that an issue is assigned to a delegate who then has the resposibility to do the work involved with it. The leader her/himself should never do the actual work, to prevent burnout as we experienced it with the StyleDudes.
• Check that all important aspects of the issue have been touched
  • impact on existing data, including edge cases and Various Artists albums (an often forgotten problem area).
  • conflicts with other style rules.
  • editor time required to implement the change.
  • developer time required to implement the change (if any), keeping in mind that developer time is limited and we wish to avoid wasting their time if at all possible.
  • impact on paying clients.
  • can the change be automated?

• Make a decision. This can be just a statement, that apperently concensus has been reached or that the outcome of a vote is positive/negtive. It can be a final and dicatorial decision.

The Delegate's Job is to

• Acompany any documentation in the wiki in a way that makes sure that a neutral description of the issue is available during discussion. This means that they must be prepared to write such a summary, should no one else do that.
• Write up a final version of the proposed change on the wiki.
• When a decision has been reached, blog about the proposed change (ot should this be done by the leader?)
• Finally, make sure the change is implemented. Agian this means to be prepared to edit the wiki or the AR definition or to collaborate with developers.

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Old Style Council

• The following section describes the members and their roles in the old Style Council. This is going to be superceded by the reform described above.

Members of the Style Council

(a.k.a. StyleModerators)

Secretaries (Ministers of Style)

• JohnCarter
• RjMunro
• Dupuy

Editors

• ClutchEr2
• DJKC
• Gecks
• G0llum
• Mcymd
• MichelleW
• Nikki
• Steinbdj
• WolfSong

editor-without-portfolio (ombudsman)

• DonRedman

Emeriti

• TarragonAllen
• NeilCafferkey

Areas of specialization

1. MetaData -- Dupuy
   1. AdvancedRelationshipTypes (basic advanced relationships) -- WolfSong / Gecks
   2. AdvancedRelationshipAttributes (instruments, etc.) -- Mcymd
   3. AdvancedRelationshipUsage (what to represent with advanced relationships, what to omit) -- JohnCarter
   4. OtherMetaData (ExtraTitleInformation, artist comments, annotations) -- RjMunro

1. DataPresentation -- RjMunro
   1. FormattingStyle (CapitalizationStandard, punctuation, etc.) -- G0llum
   2. InterNationalization (language stuff) -- Nikki / Dupuy
   3. NonMusicalStyle (data cds tracks, silence, etc.)
   4. SpecialCaseStyle (VariousArtists albums, SpecialPurposeArtists) -- MichelleW

1. GenreStyle -- JohnCarter
   1. ClassicalStyle (orchestral & classical music) -- ClutchEr2 / WolfSong
   2. SoundtrackStyle (musicals, anime, & movie soundtracks) -- Steinbdj
   3. ElectronicStyle (electronica, DJ & fan remixes, mash-ups, etc.) -- Gecks
   4. AsianStyle (J-pop, K-pop, C-pop, etc.) -- DJKC