Sadesper Record (#13241)

[cal]

There should be an Alias box for linked group members.

For this group NARASAKI goes by the alias Goro Watari (or, at least, he did originally) and Masaki Oshima goes by the alias WATCHMAN. But I can only link them with their display names.

[cal]

I just ran into the same issue elsewhere so I'm still requesting a fix for this.

[Efendija]

I know it doesn't solve the problem as it should, but it's not awfully far from that - I've made an alias page for WATCHMAN and adjusted the links so for the Sadesper Record unit, artist now shows up as WATCHMAN. As a temporary solution, it's not completely bad (at least I hope so).

[CHz]

Yeah, that works, although it gets a bit wacky when the person doesn't have any album credits under that name. It's pretty ridiculous creating an alias just for the purpose of linking to a group. 8)

I usually just end up putting the alias info in the notes in lieu of there being a real solution.

[Efendija]

Well yup, it is... Only here alias is used for almost all of the artist's work though. However I have no problem with changing everything back to how it was, if it's deemed better to be like that.

[cal]

Well it'd certainly be nicer if there were a less roundabout solution. I'll just wait for SS to post here.

Thanks though.

[Secret Squirrel]

Well, from the technical point of view, I would need to add an alias field to the artist-group table, and then write some code that lets you specify an alias for an artist group membership.

From a non-technical perspective, how common a thing is this? It seems like if you were looking for a list of members, you would want to see their real name, rather than an alias to de-reference. For these anime character groups, would you alias them with their character names?

So yeah, it's doable, but first lets make sure it's the right thing to do, and then we can hammer out what it should look like (such as CHz's example "Kousei Muraki as Kousei (コウセイ): Keyboard").

[cal]

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

From a non-technical perspective, how common a thing is this?

I've no idea how common it is in the database but I don't think stage names are very uncommon.

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

It seems like if you were looking for a list of members, you would want to see their real name, rather than an alias to de-reference.

What if an artist is known by their alias rather than their real name? There's more than a few artists that have their real name as their display name despite only using it once or twice. And if an artist wishes to use an alias then shouldn't that be the name that we use?

It could also look odd if one member is linked with their real name and another with their alias (because their real name is not credited in the database).

Originally Posted by Secret Squirrel

For these anime character groups, would you alias them with their character names?

Well I don't alias character names on albums, so no.

[Efendija]

Just to add - what if the artist likes his/her real name for credits alright, but he/she wants to use a specific alias when being part of a certain unit? Even that is a good reason to link the artist with that unit by using alias rather than the real/display name...

...also this doesn't have anything to do with anime character groups where (an example) the voice actors are let's say singing as the characters they play, no alias there, those are simply roles, at least I see it that way; otherwise there would be a shitload of "aliases". However, there are some anime units that have their own pages and that's totally ok, but even there the members of those fictional units (again, almost always voice actors) are linked with their real names as they should be.

Stage name as an alias is a different matter.

Carry on xD

[Secret Squirrel]

I have this implemented for linked group members, so go ahead and test it out.

If you want both an Kanji and Romanized alias to show up depending on settings, then you will need to create an alias page

[cal]

Thanks. Looks to be working.

[CHz]

SS, looks pretty neat, thanks.

I did notice that there's some weirdness now in the members listings. Previously when you added a person to a group, there'd be a text field for the name, and after you linked that person to an artist account, the text field went away. I didn't know this before, but apparently the database held on to the contents of the text fields? It looks like those values are now being used as the default display aliases, which is making the larger group entries look kind of sloppy. Take the SEGA staff group for example, there we have:

• A bunch of lowercase names
• One long vowel mismatch (Seiro Okamoto)
• One kanji name that returned
• Two invisible people (Naofumi Hataya and Kenichi Tokoi)

I can find cases like this all over the place.

So what I'd like is if all those links were reset to the display name of the artists. That would blast away any work that nextday or anyone else has done with setting custom aliases, so maybe it could be restricted by modification time? Do you think that'd be possible?

Also, a question about the implementation: if I change an artist's name, will that automatically be reflected in groups like it is on album pages, or will I have to go into each group and change the alias text as well?

[Secret Squirrel]

Yeah, it looks like the problem is that the alias field has some other uses (though only for/while unlinked.) That field is static once it's there, so it never reflects any changes to the artist pages.

To fix it, I started over and created a new "display alias" field, which is always empty until you fill it. So yeah, we'll have to redo all the new aliases we submitted already.

Also, I added the Group Member modifications so they show up in the Recent Artists page. Looks like there may not have been any edits other than my 1st one to Shadespar, though you made a lot of fixes to Koei BGM Division. Maybe you were fixing up the problems you outlined here.