#1
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Artist name variations
Editors and staff now have access to a new field for artist profiles: Variations of artist names. It's for alternate spellings, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. of the display name (not for aliases that do not resemble the display name). Here's how it's used:
It's mostly for organizational and aesthetic purposes, since name variations will not be listed after album titles in the discography as aliases. Here's a comparison of the discography listing: before and after. Notice that the "Nihon Falcom", etc aliases are still kept for display. Or just check the artist page itself. Additionally, a bug with the artist edit history code was fixed in the process (it always registered an edit for the artist type field, whether or not it was actually changed) |
#2
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Nice work!
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Larry "Liontamer" Oji Community Manager & Submissions Judge, OverClocked ReMix OC ReMix ~ twitter.com/ocremix ~ facebook.com/ocremix ~ youtube.com/ocremix |
#3
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Not sure if here is the best place to ask about this, but how would you deal with some artists who have an variation in kanji, like Hamauzu or Sakimoto? It appears 濵渦 (instead of 浜渦or濱渦) and 﨑元 (instead of 崎元) are their officially registered names and the latter seems to start using 﨑元 recently.
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#4
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You're right, the system currently doesn't account for kanji aliases or variations. That'll have to wait until later since it involves quite some changes to the interface, but for now kanji variations can be placed in the newly added field with no problems. It should be open to regular members soon.
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#5
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What's the matter with those Kanji variations anyway? Are they valid changes (like nick names perhaps?), all actual valid variations, or are they plain "typos"?
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#6
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Some are valid, some are typos. One example of a valid change (off the top of my head) is Hiromi Sato, from 佐藤裕美 to 佐藤ひろ美. There's plenty of cases like this.
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#7
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The thing is, while the Kanji they registered with the office are regarded as their 'true' forms, they're often forced to use simpler and easier forms in actual lives, actively or passively, for the sake of various things (most notable is readability and writability). That's why their family names have variations, like 斉藤 to 斎藤 or 齊藤 and 渡辺 to 渡邊. Sakuraba is a possible multi-kanji name; he might be 櫻庭, not 桜庭 despite there being nothing to confirm it.
This may not be a big issue, but given VGMdb's completeness and enthusiasm, I just thought I would listen to what the staffs had to said about this. |
#8
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I imagine if we add aliases of that nature, it'll be something that actually showed up in print somewhere, such as liner notes, or an official online source such as the artist's website.
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#9
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Just a thought in regards to your Falcom sound team example above. Technically all of the names used here refer to the same thing (people working at the Falcom sound department), so even though 'Nihon Falcom' and 'Falcom Music Staff' aren't name variations, they aren't aliases either. So in cases such as this it might be better to put everything under 'variations'?
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#10
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Well, aliases refer to the same thing as well. Here we take aliases to mean anything that isn't evident to other people that it's referring to the same artist based on the display name, rather than what it represents.
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#11
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Alright, that's fine then. I figured alias was to be used only when an artist went under several names at the same time.
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#12
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I just set "M. FUJISAWA & Pre-Project" as a name variation for M-FUJISAWA & Pre-Project, but it's still showing up as an alias as well.
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#13
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I think the problem lies within this entry since the alias is linked to the page.
http://vgmdb.net/album/1727 I didn't go ahead and edit it in for you since I'm not familiar with the artists involved. EDIT: Edited in for you actually. Just removed the alias that was entered and updated the album. All artist variations should now appear correctly. Last edited by eternal_tsukasa; Dec 7, 2008 at 03:42 PM. |
#14
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That's not the problem, though. What name variations does is to remove the alias only in the discography listing. Otherwise the alias functions as normal in album pages and the artist linking interface.
My guess is that '&' symbol. I'll take a closer look. Edit: well, adding that alias back fixed it. I think I'll run a script on the alias fields to fix all other instances of this in the db. |
#15
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I'll be more cautious with the variations now that I have a better idea of it's purpose. Artists in the Beatmania scene have a few variations, but will take some time since there's tons of aliases for the artist that contribute. There shouldn't be whole lot of work to be done in that area now that most of the artist in here have their full names displayed and aliases listed below, so everything's correct.
If an artist has part of their first name in the alias, would that count as a variation or just alias. I'm thinking alias is fine as it is, but I just wanna be sure so I don't make any mistakes if I come across an artist and decide to edit. |
#16
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There's no hard and fast rule, if you feel that the partial name isn't sufficient to identify the artist (e.g. their first name is a common one) then you can keep it as an alias rather than a variation.
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#17
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I think this is a good addition! I'm sure there will be some places where the alias/variation line is blurry, but hopefully we can just use our good judgement, like most of the other things on the site.
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hi~ |
#18
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A doubt: names that occasionally mixed kanji and hiragana also count as a variation?
Two examples: Motoaki Furukawa –古川元亮 (もとあきもとあき) :古川もとあき Masahiro Andoh – 安藤正容 (あんどうまさひろ): 安藤まさひろ |
#19
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For artists who usually use some mixture of kanji/kana in their name instead of the full kanji, I've been putting whatever they prefer to go by in the name field and the kanji with an explanation in the biography field. See Motoki Matsuoka for an example.
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#20
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I think it'd be beneficial to add it to the variations field just so it shows up in the artist search. (I've accidentally added a couple of duplicate artists because I didn't find them when searching the kanji.)
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#21
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OK, I think that add in variations field is the best choice.
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#22
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Yeah, if the variations field is included in the artist search, then putting the full kanji name in there is a pretty good idea if they usually go by some kana-substituted name instead. I'll do that.
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