Virtual Duplicate Release

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Revision as of 13:47, 27 April 2007 by Dmppanda (talk | contribs) ((Imported from MoinMoin))
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A virtual duplicate release is a release that was never released with this form of the tracklisting but is another representation of a release entity in the database. As this it is a legal DuplicateRelease and is not to be merged!

Examples of virtual duplicates

This lists some examples of releases that were duplicated to have a representation of them in other scripts or to have a version without Unicode characters that could cause tagging issues. It does NOT list releases that were actually released in different countries (so with different track listings) - therefore these releases are virtual. Also this cannot be a complete list since there may be hundreds of them under Japanese artists.

In a future database version it might be possible to store the different representations together with the original. Until then please leave notes in the ReleaseAnnotations.

Update: A couple people seem to be in agreement of an AdvancedRelationship to bind translated and transliterated releases together until a permanent solution to merge versions is completed so we won't have to add ReleaseAnnotations. An RFC is being submitted to MB-style for input.



You gotta love how the LFO artist is different on http://musicbrainz.org/album/0c878edd-3973-4e2a-a8c2-29422aae693e.html... :-| DeleteWhenCooked --azertus

Discussion

Some people think the word "virtual" in this instance may be an example of BadTerminology, and could perhaps better be replaced with "translation" or "transliteration"; to use BrianG's words. I disagree, there may be many instances of "Virtual Releases" that should be kept in the system that are not language related. By using the term "virtual release" we can allow for future growth without added complications in the future (especially going into NGS when releases may be able to delived multiple types of info). And to use proper terminology, only the tracks are transliterations or translations, the release as a whole is a duplicate that never physically existed; it only exists as a virtual copy in our database. This definition of "Virtual Release" defines those virtual copies; transl(iter)ations are a subcatagory of this larger group. --Kerensky97