NGS Bug fixes 2011-09-21 and the New "Split Artist" Feature

Apologies for being a few days late here, but we’ve just finished updating the servers with the latest set of bug fixes and new features. This release brings a new feature that people have been asking for since NGS – the ability to “split” an artist into artist credits.

Split Artist

With NGS, we had the ability to link multiple artists to recordings/releases/etc. While our migration script handled most cases, there are some cases when it was unclear how to automatically split artists, and we opted to leave that artist unchanged. While it was possible to manually edit references to this artist, it was painful. We now have a convenient way to make this process easier. In the sidebar of artists there is now a “split into separate artists” link:

Clicking this link will present you with a form where you can choose the new set of artists. For example, here’s me splitting the single “Alix Perez & SpetraSoul” artist into the correct separate artists:

As with the other types of editing in MusicBrainz, this edit has to be voted on by other editors before it is applied.

The split artists edit type can only be used on artists that have no relationships, other than “collaboration” relationships. If the artist does have collaboration relationships, edits to remove all collaboration relationships will be entered at the same time. Note also that this will not remove the now empty artist entirely – that will happen when ModBot does its daily cleanup.

Bugs

We’ve continued working through the bugs as well, and here are the tickets that have been closed in this release.

• [MBS-1133] – Don’t try to delete relationship types that are still in use
• [MBS-1343] – Add AR instrument search function has problems with accented letters
• [MBS-1380] – An URL ending in closing parenthesis gets broken when listed in edit notes
• [MBS-1396] – Allow for URLs longer than 255 chars
• [MBS-1411] – Don’t lowercase relationship attributes
• [MBS-1520] – Tag lookup page has odd search results
• [MBS-1879] – Remove the non-functional /search/plugins page
• [MBS-1934] – Inconsistency: “see other versions of this release” vs. “see release group”
• [MBS-1936] – Historic MusicBrainz::Server::Edit::Historic::EditArtist incorrect: doesn’t include artist names, always use “[removed]”
• [MBS-1950] – Artist Sortname is shown instead of Artist Name in historic edits
• [MBS-2047] – Email sender addresses have regressed
• [MBS-2195] – Don’t allow submitting relationships where the relationship type has no description
• [MBS-2335] – Other Lookup ISWC search should strip spaces
• [MBS-2495] – Auto-edit status in edit documentation is misleading
• [MBS-2529] – Orphaned release group and recordings after rejecting or cancelling a release/medium
• [MBS-2911] – URL decoding should not decode non-utf-8 strings
• [MBS-2934] – “Change release group” edit doesn’t appear in artist’s edits
• [MBS-2944] – Vote on all edits control should only be shown to auto-editors
• [MBS-3226] – Multi-artist credits with no artist selected produce very confusing behavior
• [MBS-3227] – Lookup TOC page incomplete for logged out users.
• [MBS-3269] – Track #s get automatically added to track titles every time the tracklist tab is opened
• [MBS-3274] – Editing track names using with the basic editor removes track artists and disassociates recordings
• [MBS-3278] – Warning about using various artists as track artist flashes on screen
• [MBS-3347] – When trying to add cover art from disallowed sites, no error is shown
• [MBS-3351] – ws/2 stacktrace browsing release by label
• [MBS-3358] – “Open Edits” and “All Edits” tabs not marked as open
• [MBS-3373] – URL cleanup stuff doesn’t always run in time
• [MBS-3381] – Orphaned release groups/recordings created by release editor should be automatically removed
• [MBS-3391] – Don’t allow to enter “performs instrument” without instrument
• [MBS-3399] – No edit links for relationships in the appearances section on the artist relationships tab
• [MBS-3402] – Do not allow subscriptions to “Various Artists” or “Deleted Artist”
• [MBS-3403] – “Change release group” edit doesn’t show up in edit history / open edits of target release group
• [MBS-3405] – Remove leading / trailing / double spaces in titles
• [MBS-3434] – High DQ Release allows Auto-edits + incorrect edit conditions for merge
• [MBS-3436] – “Wiki Version” column on transclusion page shows ERROR
• [MBS-3443] – Inconsistency in sorting of “Edits by subscribed editors” ≠ “Edits for subscribed entities”
• [MBS-3445] – Cannot search edits by editor name
• [MBS-3453] – “Related works” on recordings page shows same work and AR set twice if there are two work<->recording ARs for the same work/recording pair
• [MBS-3464] – Do not redirect http://www.musicbrainz.org to musicbrainz.org for /ws requests

Task

• [MBS-1914] – Run script to remove “later/earlier release of” ARs

Improvement

• [MBS-2669] – Filter edits by language
• [MBS-2670] – Filter edits by artist country

The Git tag for this release is v-2011-09-21-ngs-bug-fixes. Happy editing!