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  #1  
Old Nov 16, 2007, 07:37 AM
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Gigablah Gigablah is offline
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Default Artist alias entries and alias linking

NOTE: The procedure for creating aliases has changed. Please refer to the 2nd post!


Creating an alias entry is pretty straightforward (I hope). For this example, we'll submit Hikaru Nanase as an alias of Masumi Ito. Enter the artist details as usual (using the artist submission page), and set it to an alias type. You'll get the following:



Note that the system searches through the artist/album relationship table for existing entries with a matching alias, and provides suggestions for linking to original artists in the dropdown.

Save the artist entry again, and you're done:



The system will automatically link all the aliases to this entry ID. Check out the alias profile now:

http://vgmdb.net/artist/1241

The alias now has his/her own discography, consisting of all titles where the alias name was specifically credited.

Also, if you click on the artist link on an album where the alias is credited and linked, it will bring you to the alias profile instead of the original artist profile.

The original artist will still retain the full discography with works credited to his/her alias included. Also, under the alias listing to the left, the linked alias will be clickable.



You can also look for the (clickable) icon that shows up beside linked aliases:




IMPORTANT: WHEN SHOULD I DEFINE AN ALIAS ENTRY?
If the following conditions are met:
  • The alias is significantly different from the original artist name. (No abbreviations/partial names, alternate spellings, nickname insertions, that sort of thing.)
  • There is purpose in having a separate discography for the alias (i.e. the alias is credited in a significant number of albums).
When in doubt, please consult me first (through PM or IM) before adding an alias entry.

A note here: Cataloguing convention states that a person should be recorded with their most well-known identity. Therefore, in the case of ZUN whose real name is Jun'ya Ota, but is universally known and credited under his alias for all his works, ZUN should be a regular artist type, and his real name specified in the biography section (once it's implemented).

What happens if I change the alias entry to a non-alias type, or delete the alias entry from the database?
All corresponding artist/album credit entries will be unlinked from the alias, and artist links will return to their normal behaviour (i.e. clicking on the alias will take you to the page of the original artist). Setting the parent artist ID to 0 will also trigger this behaviour.
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  #2  
Old Nov 23, 2007, 01:20 AM
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I've changed the mechanism for linking aliases to the original artist. From now on, the discography for the original artist is now generated by pulling all credits linked to itself as well as its aliases.

This means that you don't need to go changing all the credit entries for the associated aliases to point to the original artist; they can stay linked to the alias artist ID.

An example is available here:
http://vgmdb.net/artist/978

If you click on the album links where Maiko Iuchi is credited as Miu Uetsu and check the artist management interface, you'll notice that the links point to Miu Uetsu. Hopefully this is a much more intuitive system.
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  #3  
Old Nov 23, 2007, 07:50 AM
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I'm not sure what exactly is happening, but the linking might be producing superfluous entries:

http://vgmdb.net/artist/1745

This seems to have materialized after you linked KIYO and Ryo Mizutsuki.

Also, will the new alias replace the old-style aliasing, or should we still use that for instances where there is a one-time alias for an artist (like here?
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  #4  
Old Nov 24, 2007, 03:21 AM
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That's actually a duplicate entry which Teioh added. I've fixed the links and replaced #1745 with a new artist.

Alias linking is not intended to replace one-time aliases -- although that also depends on the nature of the alias. Your example does fulfil the first condition (alias is distinct enough from the original artist name to be confused as a separate person).

Note that aliases which are quite obviously aliases -- stage names, nicknames and so on which are very unlikely to be the name of an actual person -- should best remain unlinked (i.e. using the regular alias text field in artist management)*. KIYO/Ryo Mizutsuki is an exception because both names were credited in the same album.

* but of course, if the artist is only known by a stage name, then the profile should default to that.

You'll have to determine whether the benefits of having a separate profile page (with kanji/hiragana/romanized names and other details) outweighs the brevity of the discography listing. In short, if you think an alias deserves a profile page, you can convert it to an alias-type artist.
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  #5  
Old Jun 29, 2008, 06:21 AM
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NEW UPDATE

The name matching system will now match kanji names to their romanized versions. For example, if you put 橋本みゆき in an artist field, the system will suggest linking up Miyuki Hashimoto.

Once that's done the artist list will display Miyuki Hashimoto, but 橋本みゆき is still present in the album artist field, so there's now a "reverse propagate" feature (in the unassigned artists section) which enables you to copy the entire assigned artist list back to the corresponding album fields. This action will be recorded as a regular album edit. Reverse propagation is available whenever there's anything that doesn't match up between the album artist and the assigned artist list, including different artist order, upper/lower case, and missing suffixes.
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  #6  
Old Oct 6, 2008, 02:28 PM
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What do we do in those cases where in individual is using a taken name, and that taken name only (as in quite common in the Japanese entertainment industry)? Should we make an entry for the person's real name and link the taken name to that, or should we just go with the taken one and perhaps make a mention of the real name in the biography/notes?
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  #7  
Old Oct 6, 2008, 02:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by seanne View Post
What do we do in those cases where in individual is using a taken name, and that taken name only (as in quite common in the Japanese entertainment industry)? Should we make an entry for the person's real name and link the taken name to that, or should we just go with the taken one and perhaps make a mention of the real name in the biography/notes?
As long as they're specifically going by that alias for the album, list the alias in the album info, not the real name. You can then associate that alias with the artist profile. If no artist page exists, you can create one and that would be where the real name is featured.
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  #8  
Old Oct 6, 2008, 06:43 PM
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What I think seanne's getting at is cases like ZUN, who has a real name but never uses it in any of his works. In that case we just create an entry for ZUN and mention his real name in his bio.
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  #9  
Old Oct 6, 2008, 08:45 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
create an entry for ZUN and mention his real name in his bio.
Speaking of that, done.
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  #10  
Old Oct 7, 2008, 06:10 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
What I think seanne's getting at is cases like ZUN, who has a real name but never uses it in any of his works. In that case we just create an entry for ZUN and mention his real name in his bio.
Yeah, this is what I meant.
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  #11  
Old Dec 4, 2008, 08:04 AM
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The code for the discography listing has been adjusted so that all distinct aliases of the artist are pulled for every role credited to any particular album. Thanks to eternal_tsukasa for pointing this out. An example is DJ hiro and his many aliases used in a single album: http://vgmdb.net/artist/5343

Also, this marks the first bit of VGMdb code committed under revision control. A huge thanks to CHz for setting up Subversion and the development sandbox. This project is finally getting some proper organization!

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  #12  
Old Dec 4, 2008, 03:38 PM
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I just made my first commit under the new version control as well.

The alternative names field has been added to Artist Search. This is going to be especially useful once we start adding those Kanji variants.
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  #13  
Old Dec 5, 2008, 08:47 PM
Zorbfish Zorbfish is offline
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Just starting to use version control now?! O_O
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  #14  
Old Dec 18, 2008, 03:18 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Gigablah View Post
Also, this marks the first bit of VGMdb code committed under revision control. A huge thanks to CHz for setting up Subversion and the development sandbox. This project is finally getting some proper organization!
Oooh, Subversion and TortoiseSVN! I use this stuff at my job. Sometimes I use a diff program called KDiff3 instead though.
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  #15  
Old Dec 18, 2008, 03:23 PM
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So, how does this new Alias page feature work? How would I go about creating alias pages for Sota Fujimori (for example)?
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  #16  
Old Mar 29, 2009, 06:58 AM
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Whoops, didn't see this post earlier...

Anyway, you submit a normal artist entry, then edit it to change it into an alias entry. Then you link it to the original artist by specifying the artist id.
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  #17  
Old Aug 24, 2009, 09:22 AM
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I like the system, but is it necessary to spread it over multiple pages?
Couldn't you just for instance
  • List all albums on a single artist page and note those done by an alias with '(as aliasname)' (as is already in place.)
  • Tag other information specific to an alias in the same manner (units, etc.)
  • Allow filtering of an artist's discography by alias.
Is it just too cluttered for some artists?

And as a side note, I love the quicksearch update, thank for that.
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  #18  
Old Aug 24, 2009, 09:42 AM
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Alias filtering is being planned for discography pages, but in any case the main reason we have alias entries right now is to record information beyond the alias name (such as Japanese names, website, etc). Currently, if you link an album to an artist using only a text alias (without making a separate entry for the alias), you can't add additional languages for the alias name.

A way to solve this is to decouple artist name fields from the artist table (and make a general table for name translations). But that will come after we do the same for the track/tracklist table.
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  #19  
Old Nov 19, 2010, 06:57 AM
Cedille Cedille is offline
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I think it may be better to uncheck "APPLY" by default when multiple artists are suggested in the drop down menu. Nine times out of ten, it's too generic a name which we end up refraining from linking by manually selecting "None", but an automatic prevention would work better.
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  #20  
Old Nov 20, 2010, 08:17 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cedille View Post
I think it may be better to uncheck "APPLY" by default when multiple artists are suggested in the drop down menu. Nine times out of ten, it's too generic a name which we end up refraining from linking by manually selecting "None", but an automatic prevention would work better.
This is a good idea, and I've made this mistake before too. It's implemented now, but let me know if anything isn't working right..
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