Aha, I didn't know that. Many thanks.

Again I'll bring up a couple search fields that I'd love for the Advanced Search:

* the ability to search by song length
* the ability to search for artists by gender, genre played in, etc.

EDIT: Also, it wouldn't hurt to put a little space between the end of the name field for an artist and the beginning of their instrument field...

To see what I mean, look at this lineup: http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Bla ... ab_members

There's practically no space between Michele's name and the instrument he plays. It's very clumsy-looking.
__
Finally, is linking to an artist's actual Facebook PROFILE (i.e. the one they use to post statuses, not a fan page or anything like that) acceptable if they're generally the kind who friend everyone anyway?

I think the ability to search for any artist would be a highly valuable feature. It'd also be nice to have a complete list of artists missing countries of origin (those who were added before the country field was set to the first band's by default), as well as searching for artists with "Unknown" line-ups (so links could be disambiguated in future once the last of the legacy line-ups are finally ground into dust).


I think a good rule of thumb is if the artist's made their profile mostly visible to the public (and not just to mutual friends, mind you) as well as visible in search results, it's probably acceptable (particularly if they accept messages from people who aren't on their list). If an artist wants the link taken down for whatever reason, it wouldn't offer them that much more secrecy if anybody who's interested does a basic Facebook search for their name.


Possible solution would be to add "padding-right: 10px" as an inline style to the table cell holding the artist's name.

I gave this some thought and I think I'd have a suggestion: remove the Live tab from lineups. For band lineup, show current live members below the current lineup (separated perhaps like active and past live members are currently separated in the live tab), and place past live members similarly. Same with the tabs in artist profiles.

Why? Well, in my opinion it's far more relevant to know who is currently active in the band, like who you can expect to see playing on stage, than who is a full member and who is a live member. I don't know whether the Live tab is built deep in the site's design, but imho it would be far more logical the other way around than it currently is (ie., how I just suggested it).


Slightly related to this, what exactly should band lineups exactly contain? Some of them could be considered too extensive. Since release lineups were added, they can sensibly contain all the information of an artist's instruments and roles per album.

Edge of Sanity is a good example. Dan Swanö played various instruments on albums, but his role was mainly vocalist. His entry in the band's lineup looks currently like this:

Dan Swanö Vocals (1989-1997, 2003), Piano (1992-1993), Guitars (1993, 1996-1997), Keyboards (1996), Bass (1997), All Instruments (2003)

Are the more random instruments/roles relevant? They can be seen from the album lineups and from his artist profile. This is assuming he never played those instruments live (which I don't know). If he did more than vocals live, then it would be relevant imho. But if it was studio work only, I could consider narrowing his entry down to this:

Dan Swanö Vocals (1989-1997, 2003), All Instruments (2003)

The rest are more album specific anyway.

When I think about it, doesn't "Official Merchandise" sound rather redundant? Maybe rename the tab category to just "Merchandise", since there's no clear distinction between "official merch" and "unofficial merch"; and users add links to third-party merchant sites that sell their gear as "Official Merch" anyway.

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EDIT: 'Ey, refresh my memory: when encountering things like "Rhythm and Lead Guitars", we're free to collapse those into just "Guitars", right? I mean, Rhythm and Lead practically covers both of the main roles a guitarist could cover, so... Just wanna make sure I'm doing the right thing. xD

... uh... wasn't it previously possible to select 2012 as the release year for albums? What happened?

You still can, but you gotta select the month first.

That doesn't work either. I tried to update this album http://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Ab ... ine/320949 and tried to add a new one for testing, but there is no 2012 in either case.

... erh, I thought I added that album?

Yes, but I deleted it again because of the release date issue. It only read "January 2012", IIRC. oogboog added it again after they had twittered the official date.

Quick question... What's the deal with seeing so many pages with two single quotation marks ('') instead of a proper double quotation mark? (")

While it is kind of a nuisance to come across when working with text, it leaves me wondering... Do some users simply lack those keys on their keyboard, or is it reminiscent from some act of database surgery in v1.0?

I'm pretty sure it's just retarded users. Whenever I see them used to describe an album I change them to italics anyways.

For albums, I like to replace the names with links wherever possible. Which is why I think it'd be sorely handy to have an {album 777} syntax for albums the same way we have for artists, bands and labels. <_<;

Not a bad idea.

is it possible to add for this artist?

Bug Genie?

I could've sworn I included it in the "Alternative Text for Artist/Band/Label Links" ticket. *opens*

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EDIT: http://www.metal-archives.com/report/view/id/346431

Okay, not to gripe, but what was wrong with simply deleting the new one and changing the title of the old one? Some users might've had the first split in their collection... which is now removed, and they won't know about it either. >_>;

Hey, I just noticed that artists who're only added to draft line-ups don't appear in artist searches...

Is this intentional? Because it's suddenly making it impossible to link artists between drafts...

Actually, artists in bands who were not accepted don't appear in the artist search. Yes, it is intentional.

Can we at least make artists who're not accepted in bands visible to searches for draft line-ups...?

I don't know why I didn't ask this before, but, what is the difference in the names of "guitar"? The legacy data always had "guitar" while the options when adding artists to line-ups is "guitars"?

Just use guitars.

I was wondering if adding a search by continent, in advanced search, is a good idea? Sometimes when I'm looking up a style from no particular scene or country I'd search through some of the big nations in, say, Europe or South America. But what I'd really prefer is just music from said continent. Well I guess then problems like; well instead of continent how about region. ie: middle east, central america, scandinavia, and etcetera. But even still, I think one country or all countries is to slow.

... we, uhm, kind of need to get the "2011/2012" problem for release dates fixed...

you should tell/encourage people not to use nicknames when they enter members names

ex: Party Cannon, the newly added band, MutantClannfear entered all members with the nicknames (ex: Jack "Polyp Boy" Welsh)

problem; all memberes were already existing so I had to delete them and add them again

Better just enter 1st name, surname and use (as ... ) to add the nickname

Whoops, my bad. I usually check without the nickname when I'm adding legacy lineups, but I didn't think about it in the case of adding an entirely new band. Sorry.

What do I do in the case of a split release while adding misc. staff? lets say, i'm adding the person who did the artwork for the release, but they aren't attached to any one band on the split in particular. what should i do for the "This artist belongs to which band from the split?" field?

there should be an option to get around this field for misc. staff. such as, simply choosing misc. staff from the drop down menu.

Agreed.

For the time being though, I simply pick any band, since it technically doesn't matter.

This. Probably already in the owner's to-do-list somewhere.

Hmm, do reports automatically request moderator attention after five replies are made to it? I've seen a few where an active discussion was going and no one requested mod attention, yet the report was flagged anyway.

Sure the original report wasn't a "Should be removed" or "Duplicate Entry" type report?

Wait, never mind. I see what happened...I accidentally resolved the report, then opened it back up.

an option (tab) for contact information for bands; mailing address, e-mail, etc?

Okay, I'm getting very mixed signals regarding the use of full / live lineups of bands. I just noticed Radagast deleted a live role of an artist who was later made a full member, without reflecting that anywhere. There was also some slightly off-topic discussion earlier here, where mods didn't seem to really agree.

So...

1. What exactly to do with artists who are first live members and are later made full members? I see at least three alternatives.
a) A past role in the live members, eg. "Guitars (2005-2010)" and a role in the full members "Guitars (2010-)"
b) Two roles in full members, eg. "Guitars (live) (2005-2010), Guitars (2010-)"
c) A role in full members, eg. "Guitars (2010-)"

2. What exactly to do with artists who are full members but whose roles differ in studio/live?
a) A role in the full members for studio stuff, eg. "Vocals" and a role in the live members, eg. "Guitars, Vocals"
b) Two roles in the full members, eg. "Vocals (studio)" and "Guitars, Vocals (live)"

3. What exactly to do with artists who were full members but are currently/were later live members?
a) A role in the live members, eg. "Guitars (2007)" and a role in the full members, eg. "Guitars (1999-2004)"
b) Live membership reflected in the full membership, eg. "Guitars (1999-2004), Guitars (live) (2007)"

And yeah, I'm asking because I think I've seen all of these being used.

(I'm not channeling the entire staff here, these are just my personal views)


a).


If they are full members who perform different roles live, then I would say b). They are after all not "live-only" members, and that's what the respective tab is for, as I see it. If they are not full members, but only session, then add a "(session)" after their studio role. And before you ask, a session tab is a whole other story.


As this is basically question 1., but the other way round, I'd say a).


And now for something (not so) completely different:

Some bands have legacy lineups containing members from earlier incarnations (which don't have their own page and are only mentioned in the additional notes; "Formed as XYZ in 2000. Changed name to ZYX in 2004"). As with bands which have their previous incarnations in the database, the year of creation given is the one when the name change occured. This results in a problem for the legacy lineups when year ranges are given. A year earlier than the band's year of creation cannot be entered, so artists who only played in earlier versions cannot be entered (with the correct years at least).

What to do?

Put the members in question in the additional notes (with years)?
Enter them (without the years), then put the years in the notes?
Set the year of creation back to when the first incarnation of the band was formed?
Completely disregard them?

My answer would be number 3; if a band's first incarnation isn't listed on the archives, then there's no need to clip the year of formation to the year they changed their former band name:

"Formed in 2000 under the name Slutstain. Changed name in 2006 to BanHammerFall"

If Slutstain had no releases (and therefore, no entry on MA), there's no point trying to isolate any relevant information that happened to the band prior to their name change. So the year of formation should logically be 2000, as long as the name changes were outlined in the Additional Notes.

Sorry for the delay, haven't been working a lot lately... >_> I haven't caught up with all the thread yet, but the 2012 issue should be fixed.

I'm ok with Azmodes views on it.



Just set the initial year to the one when the band changed name. I don't see anything controversial with that solution.

That is how i do it. If it is known when the band changed name to the current one in the archives, then I use that as the year of creation.

Live sets at the Internet Archive:

Iron Man

http://www.archive.org/details/IronMan_ ... -31.flac16
http://www.archive.org/details/IronMan_ ... -23.flac16

Can we add them?