Talk:Style

Getting started

1. Quickstart

   contains a summary of the guidelines, reminiscent of http://web.archive.org/web/20070106165630/http://musicbrainz.org/style.html .

2. Style Principle

   〜I think we can merge in ConsistentOriginalData〜

   【and Artist Intent and Strong Guideline】

3. Adding a new release

   should be added last, when the guidelines are done, more below.

Detailed guidelines

1. Artist

   Deals with how to pick a name for the artist, LegalName, performance name, this can be based on the current ArtistName page, but with rewrites due to the changes of NGS, also links to PerformanceName and other relevant ARs. Also touch on gender, country, etc.. though these should be mostly self-explanatory and hardly mentioned in the guideline itself.

   【a lot of the current guidelines are aimed at not creating new artists, when that won't matter anymore, because we'll be able to link as many artists as we like】.

1. /Release

   use this for things like release type/status/language, release events and any other release-related stuff

1. /Release Group

   A guideline describing which releases should and shouldn't grouped in a release group.

1. 1. /URLs

   Most relationships have enough information on the page which documents their use, and don't really need guidelines in addition to their regular documentation. The only things I can think of now are:

   1. the cover AR because I see a fair amount of edits which don't take into account that you're not allowed to link to certain things -- though perhaps it would be better to solve that on the server itself (don't allow links to be added we don't approve). [MBS-950]
   2. the current track relationships will need updating because these will be moved to recordings and/or works
   3. some of the release relationships will move to release groups

1. Unknown and Untitled

   This should really be called "Special Purpose", as this is the page which collects all the special purpose artists/labels/etc.. so they don't clutter up each of the other pages. I don't like a title which starts with "Special Purpose" though, it isn't clear to new users what is so special about them. So, we need a better title, "Unknown and Untitled" is better IMO, but doesn't fit all the things I would like to collect on this page. Suggestions welcome.

1. /Miscellaneous (existing page with the url stuff removed)

Other unaccounted for bits

• Live Track Style - email sent to style
• Versus Style - email sent to style
• Disc Number Style - remove?
• Box Set Name Style - impossible to apply?

Post NGS styleguide "Adding a new release" page

NOTE: This should not be a guide on how to add a release. It is a tutorial on how to read and apply the guidelines when adding a typical (pop) release.

It should deal with the basics, possibly as a step by step instruction for a particular album which happens to touch a few interesting guidelines.

• Release title (link to CapitalizationStandard)
• Track titles (use an example which neccesitates linking to AbbreviationStyle or FeaturingArtistStyle, reiterate CapitalizationStandard)
• Choosing / adding the artist (Point out the difference between the legal name and the artist name used on the release)
• Quickly explain the remaining stuff (release type, language, label etc..)

Actually, the above probably contains too many links to other style guidelines, should decide which of those are important and which of them can wait... and write the most readable introduction to the subject. Or described two releases instead of one, introducing some interesting guidelines on the second example.

Probably mention that certain releases have different rules and conventions, linking to Classical/Soundtrack styles.

Seperate edge cases and exceptions from the core guideline

I want to have some way to clearly seperate a core guideline from the examples and edge cases. A bit similar to CC has a human readable and a proper legalese version of their licenses, although the seperation should not be that drastic.

I would like some help from our user interaction / graphic designer volunteers on how to improve the layout of the style pages. We don't have to limit ourselves to what we can do within wikipedia, I think we have some more control over the rendering of the transcluded versions. Perhaps we can get a consistent look & feel for each of the guidelines with some nice icons and bigger text for the proper guideline.

Another idea would be to have the example and edge cases sections collapsed on page load, with an easy way to expand them (nikki mentioned wiktionary doing this for translations).

• I don't think this is a good idea. The ordinary user will enter the data he has without even thinking of the possibility the exceptions are saying something about it. --Mineo 09:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

To re-iterate why these changes are need, I want to achieve the following:

1. The core guideline should stand out, must be easily understood and remembered.
2. The edge cases shouldn't get lost in a structureless mess where only guideline lawyers can find them.

Old style practices

We should have a page which talks about old style practices, e.g.

• Using "(disc n)" for disc numbers
• Using "(disc n: Foobar)" for disc titles
• Putting release event information in the annotation
• Putting release variation information ("European", "Japanese", "iTunes") in the annotation (replaced with release comments)
• "A & B" collaboration artists
• Using the "part of a set" relationship and/or entering in separate discs as releases
• Earliest release track-track relationship (deprecated since recordings that are the same should be merged)
• Earliest version track-track relationship (deprecated since they should normally be the same work, although there will be some cases where we'll need a more specific relationship)
• ...

/Old style practices