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Hello Everybody! 👋
About a month ago, we released a new feature called “Location Aliases” for Venues and wanted to make sure we share this information with all of you. Here’s a brief look:
How Regular “Aliases” Work
We work hard to keep the database clean and accurate, so a few years back, we introduced “Aliases.” These are unofficial names/spellings of bands, locations, or venues that users have entered into the system instead of the official name.
For example, “Red Rocks Amphitheatre” is the venue’s official name. However, users often enter the name using unofficial/incorrect variations like “Redrocks”, “Red Rocks Park & Amphitheater”, etc.
When we find these pages, we merge them into the canonical page for “Red Rocks Amphitheatre” and the names of the duplicate pages (like “Redrocks”) become aliases for the official name. Thus, anytime that alias is entered it will automatically correct to “Red Rocks Amphitheatre.”
The Problem with Venue Aliases
This system works great for Bands, Locations, and most Venues, but some venues are often tagged not just with the wrong name but also with the wrong city! 😅
Again, Red Rocks Amphitheatre is a perfect example. It is located in Morrison, Colorado. Because Morrison is close to Denver and a few other cities in Colorado, users will sometimes list it as “Denver, Colorado, United States” instead of “Morrison, Colorado, United States.”
We can merge the pages that have Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Denver with the canonical Morrison page. However, since the aliases are only for venue names, a user can still put “Denver” as the location and a new, incorrect venue will get created with the wrong location.
It’s a pretty annoying game of whack-a-mole 👎😅👎
Enter “Location Aliases for Venues”! 🙌
With this new feature, we can now add location aliases to venues.
For example: “Red Rocks Amphitheatre” now recognizes all of the aliases for both Morrison, Colorado, AND Denver, Colorado. So if someone enters a concert at “Red Rocks” in “Denver, Colorado,” it will automatically assign the correct venue and location: “Red Rocks Amphitheatre” in “Morrison, Colorado, United States.”
Additionally, if somebody searches for “Red Rocks Denver,” Concert Archives will show them the official Red Rocks listing in Morrison.
From a user perspective, it’s a pretty subtle change, but on the backend, it’ll be really powerful in helping keep our data clean and accurate (and reducing a lot of redundant work).
This is another step in what we’ve lovingly dubbed “The Big Clean“, our ongoing effort to make Concert Archives the most accurate and comprehensive concert database.