Category: Updates

Server update, 2015-11-30

The major updates in today’s release are:

  • Non-auto-editors can make auto-edits to their release additions within 1 hour of adding them.
  • There’s a way to report editors for bad behavior, from their user profiles. The reports will be sent to our account admins. We’d prefer people use this method from now on for reporting unresponsive editors, or for any Code of Conduct violations. Account admins have also received an easy way to restrict a user’s editing/voting capabilities.
  • Auto-editors can change a release’s data-quality level via auto-edit. Previously, this was always put to a vote. We still don’t display release quality as well as we could (currently it’s only visible in the release sidebar). Low-quality releases can be found via our edit search, though.
  • Everyone can enter “Add recording” and “Remove alias” edit types as auto-edits.
  • Edits to events can be searched via our edit search interface (thanks chirlu).

There were a lot of comments on last release’s blog post saying that it’s harder to review release additions now that they’re auto-edits, and worrying about database quality suffering due to this. The next server release should allow showing auto-edits entered within the most recent voting period (7 days) in your subscribed editor/entity edit listings (MBS-8647), and hopefully a way to hide auto-edits you’ve reviewed from these lists (MBS-8654) to get them out of your way. I hope these and future changes can strike a balance between allowing people to see and remove releases that are clearly wrong or non-existent, vs. encouraging merging/fixing existing releases rather than voting them down.

The git tag for today’s release is v-2015-11-30 and the complete changelog is below.

Bug

  • [MBS-8460] – Add to collection link on entity page doesn’t show the collection name
  • [MBS-8636] – Adding duplicate entities to a series causes an internal server error
  • [MBS-8639] – Instrument merge gives ERROR: duplicate key value violates unique constraint “link_attribute_pkey”
  • [MBS-8641] – Release editor breaks with “error: 0” if a submitted edit throws a NoChanges exception
  • [MBS-8648] – Historic relationship edits no longer display the source entity

Improvement

  • [MBS-1880] – Allow an editor to apply edits without voting within a short timeframe after his/her ‘add release’
  • [MBS-8208] – Add a way to report a user to an admin
  • [MBS-8271] – Add a way to prevent a user from editing/voting which doesn’t involve removing the email address

New Feature

  • [MBS-8645] – Allow searching for edits to events

Task

  • [MBS-8385] – Make change release quality edits auto-edits for auto-editors
  • [MBS-8386] – Make add recording edits auto-edits for everyone
  • [MBS-8388] – Make remove alias edits auto-edits for everyone

Server update, 2015-11-16

Today we’ve released several changes decided at the recent MusicBrainz Summit:

  • German, French, and Dutch translations are now usable on the main server, via the language menu at the top right of any page. Previously these were only accessible on the beta server. Don’t forget to help contribute on Transifex if you find any issues in the translations. You can also help translate some of the less-complete languages over there.
  • “Add relationship” edits have been made auto-edits for everyone. By a recent calculation, only 0.78% of these have been canceled or voted down, yet they make up a large percentage of our open edits and are easy to remove.
  • “Add release” edits have been made auto-edits for everyone. Since releases added to MusicBrainz are available immediately through the website and web services, there’s no telling where the MBIDs are being used. Permanent and reliable IDs are a core tenet of MusicBrainz, so duplicate releases should always be merged to avoid MBID loss, not voted down or deleted. I’ll be looking at ways to better detect duplicates during the add-release process, though.
  • “Add release label” and “Remove release label” edits have been made auto-edits for everyone. Like the previous two edit types, release label additions are among the most common types of open edits, and are rarely canceled or voted down. Release label removals are also easy to revert because all of the removed data is contained in the edit.
  • UPDATE 2015-12-03: It was neglected to mention here that “Edit release label” edits were also made auto-edits, since they are equivalent to a removal plus an addition. For statistics, see the comments at MBS-8666.

In addition to the above changes, Roman Tsukanov has added some new reports, and we’ve fixed a few editing bugs.

The git tag today is v-2015-11-16 and the complete changelog is below.

Bug

      • [MBS-8607] – JSON-LD has bugs
      • [MBS-8612] – 404 page has incorrect/outdated menus
      • [MBS-8614] – Release merges can fail if a recording is both a merge source and merge target
      • [MBS-8615] – Non-conflicting mediums appended after a release merge is entered block the merge
      • [MBS-8620] – Can’t add an example to an Artist-Series relationship
      • [MBS-8623] – Duplicate checker entity list lacks a space between name and disambiguation

Improvement

      • [MBS-2255] – Create a report to show stuff that’s linked to Various Artists, but may be an incorrect link
      • [MBS-6759] – Release German translation on the main server
      • [MBS-8616] – Add links back to transifex so people can help improve the translations

New Feature

      • [MBS-8489] – Report for all entity.disambiguation = entity.name

Task

    • [MBS-8387] – Make add release edits auto-edits for everyone
    • [MBS-8389] – Make add relationship edits auto-edits for everyone
    • [MBS-8596] – Make add release and add/remove release label edits autoedits

Server update, 2015-11-02

Today’s release fixes some editing bugs and adds a useful option to the edit search for finding edits by newbie editors (those who have a low accepted-edit count). The git tag is v-2015-11-02 and the changelog is below.

(This release is a day late because I’d been traveling back from the MB summit all day yesterday.)

Bug

  • [MBS-8580] – “Reorder mediums” edit is stuck after being left open and trying to move a medium into a position that already has one
  • [MBS-8590] – Can’t clear relationship credits

Improvement

  • [MBS-2677] – Filter by edit count of the editor (newbie search)
  • [MBS-8588] – Improve ContactUs page
  • [MBS-8611] – Refactor query_to_list into a role

Sub-task

  • [MBS-8610] – Convert 404 page to React

Server update, 2015-10-19

Today’s release fixes some bugs causing certain open edits to get stuck, and improves on our URL auto-selection code. Notably, URL shorteners are now detected and blocked from being entered.

The git tag is v-2015-10-19.

Bug

  • [MBS-8571] – Stuck edit: medium_positions does not account for all mediums in all releases
  • [MBS-8572] – Stuck edit: update or delete on table “recording” violates foreign key constraint “recording_alias_fk_recording” on table “recording_alias”
  • [MBS-8573] – “Edit artist” edit can be entered with a disambiguation comment containing only whitespace

Improvement

  • [MBS-6534] – URL autoselect LinkedIn → has a social networking page at
  • [MBS-7904] – Block URL shorterners

Task

  • [MBS-8244] – Add “social network” autoselect for foursquare

Server update, 2015-10-05

Besides the changes listed below, this release should mark the completion of the incremental sitemaps work required by Google. Practically, this means I’ll have more time to work on user-facing features from now on.

Thanks to Gentlecat and Zas for their work on today’s release. The git tag is v-2015-10-05.

Bug

  • [MBS-7828] – Seeding secondary types doesn’t work
  • [MBS-8553] – Internal server error when an automatic series reordering involves multiple of the same entity
  • [MBS-8561] – The entity type should be preselected when following an “Add to a new collection” link on an entities page

Improvement

  • [MBS-8554] – Cache area containments
  • [MBS-8560] – Add Google Play to the sidebar

Server update, 2015-09-21

We just have a small release today, so I’ll let the changelog speak for itself. I’m currently focused on finishing implementing the hourly sitemaps required by Google (to indicate when our embedded JSON-LD markup last changed), and Roman Tsukanov is continuing to familiarize himself with our huge codebase. So, development in other areas will pick up in time. 🙂

The git tag for today’s release is v-2015-09-21.

Bug

  • [MBS-8370] – « Format: Medium » is shown instead of, for instance, « Format: CD »
  • [MBS-8534] – Label-only release label edits no longer display the catalog number

Improvement

  • [MBS-8523] – For Places, rename “founded” and “defunct” to “opened” and “closed”

Server update, 2015-09-07

The 2015-09-07 server update is released today (a day late). Late because I wanted to investigate a fix for cover art uploading, which many people have reported issues with lately. Notwithstanding troubles at the Internet Archive, the server should hopefully give less errors now when uploading.

The other changes deal with edit-system bugs and URL cleanup enhancements.

Thanks to Gentlecat and reosarevok for their work on today’s release. The git tag is v-2015-09-07 and the changelog is below.

Bug

  • [MBS-8531] – Delete release label edits with no label fail to display
  • [MBS-8532] – Can’t edit a release label to add a label
  • [MBS-8533] – Catalog number-only release label edits no longer show in a MB Label’s edits
  • [MBS-8543] – Error uploading image: MalformedPOSTRequest

Improvement

  • [MBS-8124] – Recognise and clean up Loudr.fm URLs
  • [MBS-8182] – Improve Deezer URL cleanup

August Community Revisit

Ohoi m’hearties, it’s time for the first monthly Community Revisit, where we’ll revisit what happened in MetaBrainzLand during the last month. Ready for the ride? Leggo!

The primary thing happening this month has likely been the changes in the MetaBrainz employee line-up following Ian’s departure in July. In the beginning of the month, Freso (wait, hey, that’s me!) was pulled on board as Community Manager (a brand new position for MetaBrainz too!), and just at the end of the month, GSoC wonder child Roman “Gentlecat” Tsukanov was hired as the new software engineer. So hi to us two! 🙂

Speaking of GSoC, the Google Summer of Code, this year’s edition is also fast coming to an end, and our four students and their projects are closing up and giving their work the final touches to have them ready to go live. Don’t be surprised if you hear more about these projects soon.

One thing that did go live during August, in no small part thanks to Ben “LordSputnik” Ockmore and Leo_Verto: the new IRC chat logger! Chat logs from IRC are now available at http://chatlogs.metabrainz.org/ – the site still needs some MetaBrainzifying, but Ben has done a great job of importing (pretty much) all the old chat logs to the new system and the bot is running in all the official MetaBrainz channels. If you’re on IRC (or you just like poking at the IRC logs), be sure to say “Thank you!! <3” to LordSputnik and Leo_Verto next time you see them around!

Another person who has made a mark in the last month was Alex a.k.a. caller#6, starting up the discussion about the current situation of MusicBrainz’ Area entities. Be sure to check out that blog post and let your voice be heard, if you don’t feel like it’s being represented already. The next instalment should be out before long.

We also had two server updates (pretty much all bug fixes) and an updated Virtual Machine image was finally released for the more tech oriented people.

This about rounds off the August Community Revisit. What do you think about the format? Did I miss any important community happenings? Any other comments? This is a brand new venture, so nothing’s set in stone yet!

From Denmark with love,
Freso

There will be no autumn 2015 schema change

Schema changes are always a lot of work for us and we end up spending much time preparing for it and then even more time cleaning up/catching up after it. As a result, some critical non-schema change features keep getting pushed back… to the point that we never get to them.

To try and break this cycle, we’re going to skip the Autumn 2015 schema change. Instead we will focus on other tasks such as hosting and community features.

We will resume our schedule with the next planned schema change around 15 May, 2016. After that release we will determine if we want to go ahead with 1 or 2 schema change releases a year.

Server update, 2015-08-24

Today’s release contains only bug-fixes. We’ve fixed an issues with “downvoted” tags being lost after a merge, and made release label edits more robust when the related releases or labels are merged. The git tag is v-2015-08-24 and the changelog is below.

Bug

  • [MBS-3867] – Edit release label fails prerequisite when labels are merged
  • [MBS-8462] – Webservice can create tags with upper-case letters
  • [MBS-8505] – Up/down vote for tags that contains uppercase letters updates a lowercase version of that tag
  • [MBS-8515] – Can’t edit or add entities related to an URL
  • [MBS-8516] – Relationships used as documentation examples can’t be merged
  • [MBS-8517] – Internal server error loading /ws/2/collection?fmt=json
  • [MBS-8518] – Edit release label edits get stuck after the release is merged
  • [MBS-8524] – Merging entities can corrupt tags up/down-votes
  • [MBS-8528] – Trying to search for an example to add to a relationship type gives “Lookup failed: Not Acceptable”
  • [MBS-8529] – compile_resources.sh: Error: ENOENT, no such file or directory ‘/home/i18n/musicbrainz-server/po/javascript.<lang>.po’