Publisher's Brand Emblem

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Some info from recent discussions that might be useful (or not!)

My suggestion is that we have three fields: > Publisher's brand, Distributor's brand, other brand. > That way all of this information can be captured, but the > distinctions among them are respected. At some point if we > can have a search for "any brand" that looks in > all these three fields, perfect. > > 1. A Publisher's Brand is something used by > comics publishers to identify and name a group of series in > some way not related to a specific storyline or > event. > 2. A Distributor's Brand is something used > by a distributor to identify series it distributes. > > 3. An Other Brand is something used to associate > a series with a non-comics entity such as a TV show or toy > line. > It just seems to me that these are very > different types of things performing very different > functions. To group them all together under one heading > fails to provide adequate resources for research for the end > user. To leave the field in a "know it when I see > it" state fails to provide adequate direction for the > indexer and the approving editor.


Hi folks,

 So this has been one of the more interesting polls.  Only tracking publisher brands was only fully supported by one person, and preferred by another person who as OK with a different option.  So I think it's clear that we need to cover other things.  That leaves the question of cover it all with one field, or do something else?

"Something else" was preferred by a nearly 2-1 margin. Not enough to be called a consensus, but I'd like to point out a few things in its favor:

1. Jim Van Dore put forward a very clear a clean-cut way to capture this in three fields. Those extra two fields are almost trivial to implement, as they're a straightforward copy of what we already have, except non-publisher brands are not attached to publishers.

2. Jim's proposal captures more data, and is consistent with the general goals of precise data capture already discussed for New Fun.

3. Implementing the "all in one" approach means that the folks who would like the extra data of the separate approach are denied that data. Implementing the separate approach has no significant negative effects on the folks in the "all in one" camp (you can still search them all, and have two extra drop-downs is not a significant problem). Counterarguments to this point are welcome.

I am strongly inclined to go with the separate approach based on Jim's proposal. Since there is no official consensus and polls are not binding, if anyone really wants to raise a stink and force an official decision they can do so.

If someone forces an official decision on this, then the current Brand field will be treated as only accepting publisher's brands (which, I'll point out, is exactly what the documentation says on the issue page). If folks accept Jim's proposal, if I have time I'll toss in the two fields tonight. If I don't have time tonight, they'll get done in the next release (I don't want to add anything that big after tonight, and I'm only considering adding this because it's no new logic, just replication of existing well-tested code).


For the purposes of this discussion, a "publisher's brand" is something denoted on the cover with a logo or tagline that is directly associated with the publisher (if published by multiple publishers, with any of the publishers). A brand that is not a publisher's brand is one that is not directly associated with the publisher, such as the logo of a television studio, sponsor, or other external brand with which the publisher has some sort of arrangment.