Discourse supports showing details about an URL that was posted on a separate line. This info is called "onebox" and is developed as a separate Ruby library [1]. I started work in using oneboxes that display details about the core MusicBrainz entities. The implementation is pretty easy, see https://github.com/phw/onebox/commit/1ea7b06a4aff417e6405a7b609c608593e62d59c for the MB artist onebox. The release box is also done, I just need to find the time to do the rest.

I would like to finish this. Going forward we have two options:

1. Add the MB oneboxes as a plugin to our Discourse installation using the Discourse plugin API [2]
2. Push the MB oneboxes upstream and wait for Discourse to ship them.

I would like to first start with 1., as it allows us to roll-out the oneboxes quickly and do any changes necessary once they are actually used. When we are satisfied with the result we can move forward and try to upstream them.

[1] https://github.com/discourse/onebox
[2] https://meta.discourse.org/t/brand-new-plugin-interface/8793