Problem

Inori Minase vs Minase Inori

current RC:
When romanising an artist's name yourself and no official romanisation is available, it must be romanised in the order it is printed in the unicode field.

New RC:
when romanising a Name (real person or character name), it must be romanised in the order it is printed in the unicode field with exception of artist stage name (example: JJ Lin = 林俊杰). official sources should be used to identify correct spelling

Example of official romanised name order:
JP: https://mausu.net/talent/hata-sawako.html
EN: https://haikyo.co.jp/profile/profile.php?ActorID=12765

Pls vote in poll above

Case 1
Person 1 has full name = A B
Person 2 has full name = B A

you can't tell who is who once Romanized and no strict order is enforced.

Case 2
Person 1 has official source saying B A, another official source saying A B -> its ambigious which one to follow, creates inconsistency

Case 3
Person doesnt have any official site today, so we follow unicode order (B A)
map is ranked
10 days later a website is made and it says A B
now map 3 is ranked with A B, inconsistency with old map

Case 4
Multiple artist

Artist1 has name in JP order when romanised
Artist2 has name in EN order when romanised
Artist3 has name in JP order when romanised

now artist field is: JP, EN, JP
very inconsistent

i think the purpose of metadata RC is to enforce consistency, so we should enforce either original order or EN order regardless of official sources

Personally i think JP order is better as thats whats in current RC when no official source is present, and the majority of ranked maps is like that
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Related RC to reword later

Rule:
When romanising an artist's name yourself and no official romanisation is available, it must be romanised in the order it is printed in the unicode field.

Above clause enforces original ordering when no official romanisation is available
There are no instructions for when official romanisation is available

Guideline:
If multiple metadata options are available, priority should be given to the option which is most easily recognisable and traceable back to the original song or source. Official romanisations and translations are preferred for romanised fields so long as they are easily found and commonly recognised.

Above clause gives preference to official sources
There is no explicit disallowance of custom romanisation when official sources are present

Allowance:
If a Unicode song title or artist has an official translation or romanisation provided by the artist, it may be used in the respective romanised field. If both a translation and romanisation are available, either may be used.

Above clause allows official translation or romanisation
It does not explicitly enforce using it when available

From what I heard, in Japan the government encourages the order LN FN (last name, first name) when addressing Japanese people. I'm not sure why, but this should fall into standardisation instead.

The name order should follow whichever region that person resides. In case of Japanese, I propose to enforce the order by LN FN regardless official source (i.e Unicode character print order). This will solve most headache of artist romanisation. Breaking the standardisation should only be allowed if the song is released exclusively with different name order, and that's the only metadata available.

Ryu Sei wrote:

From what I heard, in Japan the government encourages the order LN FN (last name, first name) when addressing Japanese people. I'm not sure why, but this should fall into standardisation instead.

The name order should follow whichever region that person resides. In case of Japanese, I propose to enforce the order by LN FN regardless official source (i.e Unicode character print order). This will solve most headache of artist romanisation. Breaking the standardisation should only be allowed if the song is released exclusively with different name order, and that's the only metadata available.

JP and CN both follow LN FN order. but artist page says different order sometimes as examples i have given above

there's always artist page that's available, and that name may or may not be same order as the song that you mapping, so i dont think there should be any exceptions. They could have a different alias, but i dont think their name order should change in different songs

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

JP and CN both follow LN FN order. but artist page says different order sometimes as examples i have given above

there's always artist page that's available, and that name may or may not be same order as the song that you mapping, so i dont think there should be any exceptions. They could have a different alias, but i dont think their name order should change in different songs

It's true that said artist might have different alias, but what I mean is the exclusivity. Consider these cases:

1. Song released to artist's region, but not worldwide-focused
2. Song released to worldwide
3. Song released exclusively outside of the artist's region

Should we enforce the name order regardless? I'm all in to song released in their native region and global, but unsure for outside-native exclusive edge case. Please enlighten me.

even if the song was mainly used somewhere else the artist is still the same person from the same country

Ryu Sei wrote:

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

JP and CN both follow LN FN order. but artist page says different order sometimes as examples i have given above

there's always artist page that's available, and that name may or may not be same order as the song that you mapping, so i dont think there should be any exceptions. They could have a different alias, but i dont think their name order should change in different songs

It's true that said artist might have different alias, but what I mean is the exclusivity. Consider these cases:

1. Song released to artist's region, but not worldwide-focused
2. Song released to worldwide
3. Song released exclusively outside of the artist's region

Should we enforce the name order regardless? I'm all in to song released in their native region and global, but unsure for outside-native exclusive edge case. Please enlighten me.

it is the same person afterall, i dont think there's any difference in meaning between different order.

I think a good comparison is how mania use terms for patterns:
a double is 2 notes
a jump is 2 notes

both means samething, but some ppl might not be familiar with the other term, so isnt it much clearer in communication if only 1 term exist?

someone living in US might be more used to FN LN order, so its weird for them to see LN FN
but someone living in China who is used to LN FN order will be weird to see FN LN for JP romanised. since CN and JP is same order.

dont you find it weird that if you talk to your JP friend and you say the JP artist name in reverse order, your JP friend just could be confused right? isnt it better that everyone use the same name regardless which country? less confusion

i dont think we need consider where the song is released for deciding the artist name. it becomes complicated and creates confusion. if its same person it should be easy to tell its same person.

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

someone living in US might be more used to FN LN order, so its weird for them to see LN FN
but someone living in China who is used to LN FN order will be weird to see FN LN for JP romanised. since CN and JP is same order.

dont you find it weird that if you talk to your JP friend and you say the JP artist name in reverse order, your JP friend just could be confused right? isnt it better that everyone use the same name regardless which country? less confusion

having a mix of LN FN and FN LN in the game is also just confusing for most foreigners cause it's basically impossible to tell, for example, whether any given Japanese name is a first name or a family name if you don't know much about that part of the culture

That sounds reasonable. I'm agree with you this time.

No thanks, I'd rather not enforce more name order changes than necessary, if an artist has an official order they go by primarily then we should use it, if not then unicode order is the most reliable option. Dipping into this territory opens up discussions based on unofficial ordering.

The problem is artist name sometimes inconsistent between what would it be if it's romanised versus official source. We need to enforce name order or else more potential debate will arise due to romanisation of official source is incorrect by few letters.

Is the artist name official? Yes.
Is the artist's name is correctly romanized? Not always. (Pointing finger to you, Japanese artists)

The inconsistency issue will escalate even further when multiple artists contributed in a song, with some artist have their own preferred/official romanisation, while others don't. That is the true headache of metadata.

aceticke wrote:

No thanks, I'd rather not enforce more name order changes than necessary, if an artist has an official order they go by primarily then we should use it, if not then unicode order is the most reliable option. Dipping into this territory opens up discussions based on unofficial ordering.

enforcing order is very simple, theres no discussion needed. it just follows original or EN order all the time

I... must've mistaken the OP proposal then. Well, I think it might be fine to enforce name order, and use official source solely for the romanisation purposes.

aceticke wrote:

No thanks, I'd rather not enforce more name order changes than necessary, if an artist has an official order they go by primarily then we should use it, if not then unicode order is the most reliable option. Dipping into this territory opens up discussions based on unofficial ordering.

I agree, enforcing name order is just going to cause more confusion for metadata, especially when there are conflicting sources.

Talents belonging to different agencies that use different naming orders can also cause a headache as you've pointed out in your example.

While I think following unicode order is the smartest thing to do, especially for cases like above, I don't agree with hard enforcing it because there are cases where the artist does have a preferred romanization. I think it should be an either/or case where both are allowed, but to at least have some common sense to keep naming order consistent

Doormat wrote:

I think it should be an either/or case where both are allowed, but to at least have some common sense to keep naming order consistent

That's basically falling back to "follow existing ranked metadata". It's better to make it clear that we have standardisation rule to follow, and enforcing name order is simply falling back to "romanise Unicode character print order".
It's more consistent and clear than having a mix of "LF, FL, LF, FL" kind of stuff in the romanised artist field.

Now, I want to ask: in that particular case, why do you think mixing up L and F order in one artist field is fine?

Ryu Sei wrote:

That's basically falling back to "follow existing ranked metadata". It's better to make it clear that we have standardisation rule to follow, and enforcing name order is simply falling back to "romanise Unicode character print order".
It's more consistent and clear than having a mix of "LF, FL, LF, FL" kind of stuff in the romanised artist field.

Now, I want to ask: in that particular case, why do you think mixing up L and F order in one artist field is fine?

By "using common sense to keep it consistent" I mean like, in the example of multiple artists, to keep the naming order consistent regardless.

So for example, if Song X had Artists A and B, and there's no agreed upon name order, then both should be either FN LN or LN FN order instead of having FN LN for Artist A and LN FN for Artist B.

If Song Y had Artist C, and there's no agreed upon name order, then the mapper has the discretion to go with either FN LN or LN FN.

However, there may be cases in which the artist field DOES have an artist that has conflicting naming order (for example, a fictional western character FN LN that is voiced by seiyuu LN FN). This is why I said I personally think it's smarter to follow unicode order, but I also don't think this should be hard enforced.

That makes me thinking. Basically, what do you say is we don't change the rules/guidelines and keep it as-is, right?

It's really a rare case unless I'm mistaken of something. I can only think of case with artist name, but not for character name. Can you give an example of this case? I think there is, but it doesn't click to my memory about your specific case.

im not sure if you misunderstood the proposal.

solution 1: enforce Unicode
Song has name1(english name), and name2(jp name) in unicode meta
result: FN LN, LN FN

solution 2: enforce english name

result: FN LN, FN LN

no change to rc( right now)

possible results depending on mapper choice:
FN LN, FN LN
FN LN, LN FN

the issue with current rc is it gives preference to official sources (which can be inconsistent) but still allows mapper choice

i think purpose of rc is to provide the common sense so every mapper produce consistent meta

the artist field is treated like source field where mapper can choose many options, but source only applies to 1 song, while artist applies to multiple songs, so i dont think it should have this much inconsistency as its very important meta

Again, I think it's going to come largely down to circumstance, which is why we shouldn't have a hard enforce on the metadata. I can name some examples of where the metadata can get tricky:

Case 1: Differing Agencies
- I personally don't think agencies should be used to determine name order. As discussed above, there can be conflicting sources where the name order can be different. For example, Akari Kito's official website has her name order as LN FN, but her agency site has her name order as FN LN.

- However, I do think agency sites can be used to help with preferred romanization of their names. Using the above example, Akari Kito is the preferred romanization whereas Akari Kitou is the hepburn romanization.

Case 2: Inori Minase vs Minase Inori
- Using the example that started this discussion, from what I can find, when she is performing a song that she is credited for, she prefers to go by FN LN since that is her established solo artist name. However, as a prolific seiyuu she is also cast in multiple anime where she might sing character songs which use CV credits. In this instance, she's not performing as her solo artist, so using LN FN is fine.

- In the case of multiple cast members singing a song together, it might look out of place to have the name order all inconsistent, so it may be better to use unicode order for all singers unless they are explicitly performing not as the character voice, but as the solo artist.

- Some established artists, like Konomi Suzuki has sources that show her going by either FN LN or LN FN, so for cases like these I think using either naming order is fine.

Case 3: Collaboration between artists
- In the scenario where there are two artists collabing on a song together, and one has preferred FN LN name order and the other has preferred LN FN name order, then that should be how the naming order should go. Enforcing unicode name order shouldn't be done in this case because they have established artist names.

- For example, mandopop singer JJ Lin (林俊杰) prefers FN LN and has made a song together with k-rock singer Jung Yong-hwa (정용화) who prefers LN FN. It wouldn't make sense to enforce LN FN for JJ Lin or use the mandarin name Lin Junjie in this scenario.


As I said in the beginning, a lot of this stuff will come down to circumstance so it'll be very difficult to have a hard enforce on the name order. While I think it is smarter in certain circumstances to use unicode order, this is not necessarily the case for everything, and if you're going to start making some exceptions to the hard enforce, then there might as well not be a hard enforce at all.

if were to respect artist wish (follow their prefered order), thats where confusion arise, enforcing order in all cases no exception is very simple and clear that produce consistent result

Drum-Hitnormal wrote:

if were to respect artist wish (follow their prefered order), thats where confusion arise, enforcing order in all cases no exception is very simple and clear that produce consistent result

Enforcing order can create just as much confusion, e.g. the example I used with the mandopop singer. Do we use his English name that he attributes the credits to, or do we go with a romanization of his Chinese name? If we enforce the unicode order then people are likely going to have no idea who the artist is unless they look at the tags.

I think the current rule as it is is fine since the only time this issue comes up is when an artist has a history of having conflicting naming order, in which case I think either order is fine if it's a solo artist. Either order, it should still show up under the search unless you're looking for a specific name order.

If said artist does participate in an ensemble not as the artist, but as an actor/voice actor/seiyuu, then the naming order should conform with whatever makes the artist field look more consistent, which usually follows unicode order. This is one of the few scenarios where I think following unicode order actually makes sense for the sake of consistency.

And like I said, while agency pages can be helpful with things like preferred romanization, they shouldn't be used to determine naming order due to how inconsistent they can be. It should be dependent on the artist on how their name is ordered.

TL;DR: I think the current rule is fine as it is but could use some rewording. Enforcing unicode order is something I would prefer not to do because of possible implications to name recognition.