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  1. MusicBrainz Server
  2. MBS-3669

Merge dated and undated relationships

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      Proposal: when two entities are merged, and they each have the same AR, but only one AR has a date, only keep the AR with the date.

      Problem: There is a post-NGS merge frenzy going on, and the current behaviour is causing a lot of duplicate data and unnecessary work. I see this sort of thing all the time:

      Work_A and Work_B are two works which were auto-created during the NGS migration. Work_A has a relationship :
      Work_A was composed by Composer_X
      and Work_B has :
      Work_B was composed by Composer_X in 1885

      so a MergeWorks edit is submitted. After it completes we have TWO composed_by ARs. So then a Remove Relationship is neeed to remove the undated one.

      The same goes for Recording - Work relationships and also for Recording - Artist relationships, e.g.
      Recording_N is a performance of Work_A (in 2001)
      Conductor_Y conducted Recording_A (in 2001)
      and so on.

      Discussion:
      Obviously it's possible to work around this, but also bear in mind that while my examples are about merging only two works, many of these duplicate works and performances run into double figures. So you >could< pre-edit all dates of all the ARs such that they will all merge to one, but most editors won't bother, and it all makes for a lot of extra clicks.

      More importantly, in almost every case, the dated AR is simply a more specific relation than the undated one, and preserving the undated AR adds no value. If the dates were actually different, that's a different question, and they should not be auto-merged without individual attention and justification.

      AFAIK the current behaviour is not part of any agreed guidelines, so this change would not need an approval process?

            ianmcorvidae Ian McEwen
            monxton monxton
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              Created:
              Updated:
              Resolved:

                Version Package
                Schema change, 2013-05-15