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Old Feb 24, 2010, 03:58 PM
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Secret Squirrel Secret Squirrel is offline
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* Standardizing the inclusion of names in artist albums (e.g., Hoshizora no Sakamichi / Haruka Shimotsuki)
I don't think we've quite converged here, though it seems like more are leaning towards dropping the artist name as part of the title. That's still not my personal preference. It seems like the correct stance may be to not propose any standard for this, and just let them be added at the submitters' discretion, which is how it is now.

Automatically generating and appending the artist name like Discogs is a little tricky, since we'd want to apply the rules that Cedille mentions (restrict it to vocal and arrange albums with one artist). It's doable though, but I'm not sure we should go that route. Speaking of auto-generation, another thing to bring up is the addition of (Limited Edition) and (iTunes) extensions to the titles, which we can also generate.

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I also prefer using artist's sites as a source for the correct title OVER how it's printed on the jacket, as the typography used on the jacket isn't always correct (such as this for instance.)
I think one example is here. These guys seem to be all over the place about whether they are Tecno Soft, Tecnosoft, Technosoft, or Technsoft. We chose the one from the copyright over the one from their logo (though we should continue to investigate as TecnoSoft might be the correct one) regardless of what was spelled on the cover.

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* Inclusion of Japanese titles on albums whose title is already in English
Cedille makes a good case for this. Generally I'd put them in the alternates.

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* Standardizing the separator for multi-line titles (~, -, EM DASH?)

(Seanne's idea)

In cases where there is no clear separator(s) between two (or more) parts of a title, or where they are on two lines on the covers, I tend to prefer either a : or a / depending on what the title is like.

A main title and a sub title = :
Two titles of equal standing = /
It looks like most agree with this standardization, and I like it to. The only thing I'd add is that it can be superseded by what's on the cover/obi (for example, if they offset a subtitle by enclosing it in tildes or dashes).

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Should subtitles be split out into a separate field?
Looks like there's not real support, and no good rationale for doing this, so unless anyone has some additional info, we can toss it.

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Dag's suggestion -- Follow caps more strictly at least for trademarks or clear, consistent use of mixed case like Gigablah said (if this annoys people simple css or js magic can fix it). This means "FINAL FANTASY Original Soundtrack" and such for Square albums in glorious CAPS. Specially if the title is only written in Latin letters (FF again).
I like this, and in practice it's how I do my submissions.

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Ira's suggstion -- A large pet peeve of mine regarding titles is stuff like "X Y Z album '[name here]'". I think the display title should be well, the 'name' of the album and that the name prefixed with whatever the album is supposed to be of (usually stuff like 'X arrange album' or 'X compilation', or 'super hyper something') should be an alternate.
I guess you knew it would be a hard sell, but I'm not a fan of this. I tend go the other way in prefering titles with more information. In this scheme, this album would just be titled "Rose Crimson."

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Dag's 2nd suggestion -- Consider separating the display/romanized/alternate (US, fan-translations) names and the printed title(s) in different boxes, so there is a clearer distinction (it doesn't need to be too apparent to the user, just when editing). Currently you can't tell them apart. For albums without scans or digital releases long gone, it's info lost forever.
I wanted to bring this forward to see what people thought about it. In some ways it might be cleaner, but it presents the user with more fields, so as an interface I'm not sure I like it. On the back end, these titles are all stored in the same text field in the database, so this also raises the question about whether those should be split out as well (they don't have to be.)
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