As I've written in my first post, if a band has never recorded anything under a given name, then you shouldn't add it as an ANS.

I must have missed that. I apologize. It won't happen again.

I'm not convinced by all these alternate names for Harbinger.
http://www.metal-archives.com/band.php?id=46325

Deleted

You got to be pretty drunk to misspell that or substitute the name. There's is only harbinger, and not all the other crap that was in that field.

List of bands with alternate names:
http://www.metal-archives.com/lists/alternates.php

That list will really help me be a lot more efficient in cleaning up ANS fields. Thanks Evenfiel.

The french band 1000 Vierges have 3 ANS :
Mille Vierges, 1,000 Vierges, 1.000 Vierges

Do we really need the last 2 or is it correct to remove them ?

All removed.

How about 'looks like' translation names. For example:

http://www.metal-archives.com/release.php?id=211027

This band, If I were to make a loose guess at finding the band on here from that cover art (Which I did try), I would search for "Ekkaecnact" rather than "Ekklesiast" since I don't know shit about Cyrillic and it's conversion to english, would that be an alright thing to put as an ANS?

Go ahead.

User motherfucker666 keeps adding "Goddess of Fire" to Angra's ANS field. I have looked through the band's entire discography and they have released nothing under this name. According to this interview, this is merely a translation of the band's name. I have removed it twice now and he has re-added it both times.

I'll contact him.

I've gone and added International/English alternatives to bands whose names might be spelt differently, depending on locale. E.g., "Colour of Darkness" for "Color of Darkness", "Colonise the Rotting" for "Colonize the Rotting", and so forth.

I tested the search and it didn't perform any arbitration between different spelling. Rather than swear at the Yanks for insisting on doing everything different to the rest of the world, I added alternative spellings so said bands would show up in search results...

Was doing this acceptable, or...?

I had never thought about that issue before. I guess that's fine.

I've noticed that there are quite few bands that have "the true (name of the band)" in the ANS field. For me it looks like some sort of vandalism. Should it be deleted?

In some cases seems to be fine, but there are cases like Funeral (Nor) or Dawn (Swe) that I do believe it should be deleted.

Thanks

Reeks of bullshit to me.

Yes, the "true" variant should only be left, if the band released something under that name.

Yes, the true Dawn was led by Tony Orlando.












(Couldn't resist, sorry!)

When a band has a name such as "XXX", should I remove alternates such as "X.X.X."? It seems unlikely that anyone will search for that unless the band has also gone by a full, non-abbreviated name.

Use common sense. If X.X.X. is an alternative that the band uses or is a highly recognizable alternative (that users would actually use to search for the band) then perhaps it should be kept. But if it's not something that the band uses, or any reasonable fan would refer to the band as, then it should not be kept. Sometimes users believe that abbreviations should have periods as they believe it's more correct grammar, no questions asked and no regard for whether or not it IS an actual recognized alternative name for the band.

From my own perspective (not one that is official nor necessarily shared among my colleagues), an alternative name for a band has two primary purposes here at MA. Firstly, it should provide actual, relatively alternative names for that band's specific entry (notwithstanding multiple entries if a band changes its name); these should be recognized alternative names, not ones that one single fan made up. Secondly, it should (by the nature of it being a recognizable alternative name) assist users in finding the band on the database. As Evenfiel noted in the OP: "Will this information help someone to find this band more easily?"

Ask yourself, is X.X.X. a recognizable alternative name for the band XXX; Does the band use it, and/or is recognizable? Would a fan legitimately write "X.X.X." to find this band on MA?

I seriously disagree with this 'looks like' alternate names, it seems like junk information to me. Not everyone knows every system of writing on the planet so the database should accommodate that by allowing for garbage data like 'Ekkaecnact' that is one person's bizarre interpretation of cyrillic letters? That's just silly.

By the same token, should I add 'Lmmortal' for the band Immortal?? Because, you know, uppercase i's can kind of look like lowercase l's, right? I'm a user who doesn't know latinate letters, should I add 'Яауеи' in cyrillic letters for 'Raven'? Absolutely not. It's all totally junk information and I don't think that need be included in the database.

Reading this topic, I asked myself about adding the Names without apostrophe for bands which name have one, i.e. "Satans Fall" as an ANS for an hypotetic band called "Satan's Fall". I think it's kinda useful for lots of people that don't know the correct spelling of certain bands and/or people from non anglophone countries whose keyboards don't have that kind of apostrophe as an accesible character (Like me, in fact, I have to use Alt+39 every time I wanna do that character).

So, can we start adding ANS for bands with that kind of name, or is it illicit?

To be honest, I was completely unaware that any Latin keyboard existed that lacked an apostrophe key.

However, you raise an interesting point: Bands whose names include an incorrect possessive *should* have the correctly formatted name added as an ANS. Sanitys Dawn already have "Sanity's Dawn" added as an ANS, so I think this is acceptable.

Oh man, you misundestood my point, the idea was the opossite one: adding the incorrect possesive form to bands which name is correct, like putting "Sanitys Dawn" as ANS if the band official name were "Sanity's Dawn", in order of making it easier to type.

Most bands whose names have a possessive apostrophe will have an ANS will the apostrophe dropped out, for the accessibility reasons you describe. So I think it's appropriate.

HOWEVER, I've a tip for you. Instead of searching for the entire band's name, just drop the part that follows the apostrophe. The search will do a partial match for "Satan Fall" and show you the result.

I had noticed that the alternate name field for Judas Priest said "The Metal Gods". It's true and all, but I deleted it anyway.

About the apostrophe, the search engine in v2 does not take it into account. "Sanity's Dawn" and "Sanitys Dawn" yield the same results.

So there'll be a holocaust of apostrophe-ridden ANSs once V2 has been finalised?

Yes.

Whoot. What about ANS' with umlauts?

I hardly think those are comparable. It's something I wasn't sure of which is why I asked here in the first place. I don't think there are a lot of cases like this, so I doubt we'd be filling up the database with junk information (Both your other points are silly overreactions). Also, this isn't information being listed on their page, it is entirely restricted to the searching side of the site, so there are no issues of haiving incorrect information and names appearing on their actual page, the whole idea is making things easier to find, and personally this sort of information works with the Cyrillic letter set. Admittedly I have only looked at this from an English speaking standpoint, but the archives in general seems to take a similar stance. I'm unsure of any other character sets which have enough similarities to have this sort of thing listed, for instance I doubt anyone is trying to make chinese names look like english characters.

Same thing.

I was being very sarcastic with my examples but I do think both your suggestion and my silly examples are equally ludicrous looking. I know the ANS field doesn't actually appear on the page, that this is an english-oriented site, and that this wouldn't occur so often as to totally fill up the servers with junk information, but I highly doubt that it would be as useful as you think. It took me a minute to figure out how on earth you turned Екклесиаст into Ekkaecnact so I wonder just how many people would actually interpret it like that... but then again, to be fair to you, I'm completely at ease with both alphabets so maybe this is ultimately just a matter of perspective. Honestly, it's not that big of a deal to me but the suggestion did strike me as quite pointless and seeing that type of bizarre transliteration was just hilarious.

Still, I maintain that if your suggestions are considered valid, perhaps Яауеи should be too. This site does have quite a number of russian and cyrillic-using visitors after all.

I'm downright against this sort of "interpretation" of Cyrillic characters into Latin ones.

So am I. Foreign alphabets aren't literary play-dough.

I have a demo of a band called "Jesus Fucking Christ" from Dekalb Illinois/USA . They made a demo called "Unalive From Golgotha" in 1994, I have the demo tape and the cover sleeve artwork, which has a pic of Jesus being butt raped by Satan on it..don't know anymore about the band the genre, other releases if any, status of broke up on hold etc. if anyone else has info plz submit lets make a page for this band this band dont' seem to be on here notify me too at:
realevil@hotmail.com
or im me at satanicondevil2005 on yahoo ims

Rules updates for v2.

Is it still acceptable to add American VS International English for band names that might be entered differently?

E.g., "Demonize" / "Demonise"... "The Organization" / "The Organisation"

That should be fine. I'll updated the op.

Can I help even if I'm not a Veteran? I guess not... but still wondering.