New Rule 8(a): No More Friends

There's a new Rule 8(a) which was created to remove any bands named "Artist And Friends."


Kevin

For crying out loud. I'm sure you can guess exactly what I think of this rule and why.

Someday in 10 years if the site is still around, you'll have 457,692 rules created to slice off specific bands that you decided didn't fit your idealized definition of the word "band". ...

PK,

I believe I can imagine how you feel about it and I'm sorry if you are somehow offended by minute rule adjustments. Unfortunetly for you it would seem, I have no problems adding / editing the Rules to conform to our world view of what should and should not constitute a band. 3 pages of rules for 3000 bands is a ratio and I can live with and if another page for the next 1000 bands is needed, so be it.


Kevin

BOOOOOO!!!!
That means no more Starfleet Project. And that's just because the record company thought it was more interesting to release it as "Brian May + Friends" instead of a s/t release of the actual band: Starfleet Project.

Nevermind me, I just had to let off some steam :-)

OK, move along, nothing to see here.

Oh, my indignation has nothing to do with the results of the rules, good or bad. They offend me as incorrect hacks, regardless of their outcome, because I find them illogical and your definition of a "band" silly. Besides, there are several hundred thousand bands out there. The limiting factor on the database expansion is the two of you guys' time, not the quantity of rules, and it will probably stay that way over the life of the page.

But, just as you have no problem adding more rules, I am still perfectly capable of submitting more bands to the site and will keep doing so. Disagreeing with someone doesn't mean you have to stop helping them.

That's the spirit. And even with all our rules, I've noticed that some of you have found ways to eventually get some of your submissions into the tree, even if the path is a little longer than reality outside the rules would reflect. I keep looking for a version of the Starfleet Project that was credited to something other than Brian May + Friends. So far no luck...

Hey, no problem :) I just liked the idea of having Brian May and Eddie Van Halen together in the same band. They did release a single off of that EP I believe but I'm not sure who it's credited to.

... why?

That's a good question. There are a couple reasons that I can think of and Kevin might have others in mind.

One is consistency. The majority of the rules adhere to a vision of a band as a cohesive collective of band members performing as a unit. (There are probably a bunch of other ways to say that, but this works for now.) "Solo And Friends" releases sound, to us, like solo releases that just happen to give a tiny bit of acknowledgement to the supporting cast. Rule 8(a) just calls them out for what they really are: solo releases.

There's also the issue of administrative convenience. It can be really hard to figure out the "core" group of friends that qualify as "band" members on a "Solo And Friends" release. With Brian May + Friends, it was easy because there were just a few of them and they all played on all the songs (I think). But with something called Pavarotti & Friends, we could go nuts trying to figure out if the person who plays gong on one song is "in the band" or not.

Then there are false shortcuts, which we go to great lengths to avoid. If we accidentally include a member who doesn't belong and then we build further connections off that member, we are in for some big trouble later on when someone corrects us by pointing out that Member-X, who played gong on one song, was actually just a "friend" and not a band member. There's great potential to mess up the database in ugly ways, and Kevin and I have seen that happen in the past. Obviously if we took a very open PK-style approach to what qualifies for inclusion, some (most?) of the risks of data corruption would be defeated, but I think others still would remain. By making the rules as tight as possible, we keep the data "safe" from danger.

Re-reading what I've just written, I realize that I would not be against including Solo And Friends releases if we listed the Solo artist as the only band member. We've done that type of thing with Probot and Desert Sessions. That would, of course, allow the band into the family while providing no additional connectivity.

Thoughts?

Including bands with only one member is kinda stupid. They do not create new branches in the tree and basically, they're like solo artists. I think it's more consistent to not have Starfleet Project in the tree at all rather than have it in the tree with Brian May as the only member of the band.
Just my 2 cents...

"...the rules adhere to a vision of a band as a cohesive collective of band members performing as a unit."

The Wombles! Surely no 'band' included here could less satisfy the spirit of that requirement. Words like 'cohesive' and 'collective' just don't apply. This is session work exemplified, with the possible exception of Mike Batt's 'creative' input but even then 'writer for hire' would be most descriptive. If Brian May getting together with a fairly select bunch of 'friends' for a mini-LP doesn't qualify, then I can't see how the ecologically-sound South Londoners do. Sorry, like you I really thought I'd let this one go :-)

I argued a while back that "Brian May and Friends" shouldn't be counted as a "band" (under existing rules) but was told it was a band called Starfleet Project, so that was all right. Now it isn't.
Now you see it, now you don't.

Including "and friends" bands as bands with one member seems consistent with existing rules to me. Other bands with one member + session musicians (which aren't credited in your database) already exist in the tree. The fact that such bands don't create links is a poor reason to deny them inclusion in the tree; at the very least, they link THEMSELVES, so now someone could find out how "Brian May And Friends" links to some other band. And besides, I like seeing what other albums people have played on, regardless of if they're leaf nodes. Just getting bands which link things into the tree is certainly not _my_ sole goal when I submit stuff.

I admit, I have a hidden agenda here, which is to defeat rule 8(a) (and most of the other rules). But I really do think including them as single-member mbands is consistent and allow more things into the tree, both of which are good.

Yeah well, maybe you have a point there that bands with only one member are interesting because, well, basically, they're bands. However, in that case I wouldn't consider "Brian May and friends" to be a band; you might as well list Brian May as a solo artist. It's totally illogical to list May as the only member of "Brian May and friends". Either you list all the members or else you don't list "and friends" bands at all.

There's no added value to listing "Brian May and friends" with only Brian May as a member since that raises the question: "Who on earth are his friends?".

I don't agree. The website isn't here to answer question like "who are Brian May's friends". You put a band into the database, which has one "member" and a bunch of non-members who play on it. According to Kevin and Mark that means you list the one person. You don't judge the worth of the band based on whether you're answering an apparent question raised by the title. The name of the band could just as well be "Zerocool" or whatever you want, it doesn't affect whether you ought to list one member or all.

Of course, I think you always should list all members, and you should allow all bands into the tree, and the sole discriminant should be "who was listed on the credits for an album". So Brian May AND all his friends would get into my database. But I haven't been able to prevail in that argument, so I'm fighting for what lesser victory I can achieve.

Patrick Moore for one ...