User:Hawke/Proposal/Circa

“Circa” dates

reference MBS-2954

Currently there is no way to store an approximate date in Musicbrainz. This applies to performance dates as well as artist birth/death dates.

The ticket above lists a couple of options for how to deal with them.

Examples:

• “Recorded in the Italian Institute in Budapest from 21st to 23rd April, 1987”
• “c. June 1928”…“These recordings evidently took place from July to October 1928…”

Option 1: Circa checkbox

A single “circa” (or “approximate”) checkbox. This would indicate that listed date or dates are approximate:

In AR displays it would be:

• composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (classical composer) (circa 1787)

Option 2: six checkboxes

Six checkboxes: “circa”, “before”, “after” for each of start/end. This would give finer-grained details on any start or end date.

Votes and reasons

I prefer a single “circa” box because…

• It is sufficient: lets us enter approximate dates without needing to go into messy details or deal with six checkboxes(!) every time. Also, I’m not sure how the '6 checkboxes' option will work for displaying ARs. “Artist (1922–1930)” could become… what, “Artist (after circa 1922–exactly 1930)?” Hawke (talk)

I prefer a lot of checkboxes because…

• There may be instances where we know an event could not have occurred before or after a certain date. For example, we don't know exactly when Kurt Cobain died, only that he was discovered dead and estimated to have died a day or two before his body was discovered. -- HibiscusKazeneko (talk) 18:16, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
• If we're going to add an "advanced" feature like this, there's no reason not to go for the one that allows us to get the most precise possible data. Also, sometimes "circa" isn't something we know at all, say, we can know a composer died "after 1553" because that's the last year we have stuff written by him or whatever, but that certainly doesn't translate to him dying "circa 1553". Or if something is released in 1975, it is likely that it was recorded reasonably close to that date, but the only think we can know without guessing is it was recorded before 1975 --Reosarevok (talk) 18:25, 5 March 2013 (UTC)
• See above. :) --Freso (talk) 18:46, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

I have a better idea:

Additional comments

I’m fairly certain that most people, given a vague date will put it in anyway because some information is better than none. I know I do. —Hawke (talk)