This is the first of (hopefully) a series of posts on interesting or dubious edits (moderations). I don’t know if I’ll be able to deliver a post on a regular basis; the word week in the title might be misleading 😉 Any way, I’d welcome suggestions for edits to discuss.
This first attempt was inspired by edit #4229934, an Add Album edit for artist Sesame Street. Although the edit conforms to the style guidelines, there was an objection: Sesame Street is a so called bogus artist. There simply is no person or group of people performing under that name. Since the album being added is a music release, it is a valid MusicBrainz entry and is therefore ‘allowed’ to be added, even if the album artist is a fictitious artist.
Still open for discussion is the question what a valid fictitious artist is, and what is not. Sesame Street has proven its validity; a lot of albums are released under this name. But what about the different Sesame Street characters like Kermit, Bert, Ernie, etc. and the characters from the television series South Park? It is impossible to formulate a definition and rules for artist names that capture all people, bands, orchestras, fictitious artists and special purpose artists like [unknown], [no artist] and [anon.]. The only certainty is that Three Flute Players and a Singer of the Atutu, Baule and that sort of ‘artists’ definitely do not deserve an artist entry in the database 😉
Happy editing.
MetaBrainz Blog 
I just wanted to say: I like this column! On the one side this brings important edits to the attention of the whole community, on the other side this is a nice way to let newbies learn. Like a “did you know?”.
Please go on with this.
indeed, this is a *very* good idea !
I’ve actually done this a little bit. I don’t see why you can’t just add the voice actors, and then say they perform as the characters in question, and that, if neccesary, the characters are members of the fictitious group (i.e. Sesame Street)
I would just file all that noise under ‘various artists’. But that is because I would be REALLY reluctant to add ‘sesame street’ as an artist 😉
Your server is really getting hammered with the Digg today…