[x] Rule 5 - Band Name Changes.

looking at the Zoviet France entries, wikipedia tends to take the punctuation on the albums quite literally where, in some cases, Zoviet France perhaps should be aliased as :Zoviet*France: etc.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoviet_France]

Ajweitzman is adding an album by the band under the name Soviet France. The cover and wikipedia seem to suggest it should be :$oviet:France: but perhaps it should even be under Zoviet France with the Soviet or $oviet title aliased.

I was just wondering if someone could confirm the rules on this. A similar situation arises with A Silver Mt. Zion who change their name every album [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_silver_mt._zion]. I've noticed that the Godspeed You Black Emperor releases in the database are treated as such and their changing punctuation marks are treated as aliases, even though the punctuation change seems to be a conscious decision and semi-permanent [see: [en.wikipedia.org] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanqui_U.X.O].

i guess the problem might arise is what is the actual band name to be applied to all entries (e.g Soviet or Zoviet France? A Silver Mt. Zion or Thee Silver Mountain Reveries?) and what is the alias.

Silver Mt. Zion is easy. They fundamentally change their name and so they are different bands every time.

The middle character in Zoviet France' current style is obviously not truly '*' but maybe we could agree to use this and yes then alias the various permutations of punctuation they're used round their name. I think Soviet (or I agree possibly $oviet) France is a separate band name - the change is a one-off. For a single letter or other simple changes our rules allow use of aliases - but this seems a one-off change from 'S' or '$' (which is simply a stylised 'S' I think) to 'Z'. (eg Thin Lizzie / Thin LIzzy).

The alias is the name without the not-always-used punctuation. Given that - it's obvious that Silver Mt. Zion's incaranations must all be separate bands and that is hopefully consistent with how we have Godspeed You Black Emperor listed.

That's my view of how the rules work...

thanks for that, i can see the reasoning.