http://musicbrainz.org/artist/89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377/aliases

The Various Artist (hereby typed as "VA") is a special artist, it has id=1 (much like "deleted artist" has id=2)
and should have some restrictions on it what is possible.

• it should be impossible to rate the VA artist
• it should be impossible to tag the VA artist (since it implies the tag basically applies to EVERYTHING)
• it should be impossible to merge into the VA artist **
• it should be impossible to edit the VA artist (I believe this is the case, but it creates the problem that the now errors due to merge (see above) cannot be corrected (see below)
• it should be impossible to set the VA artist's "type", "gender" and "Country"
• it should be impossible to use the VA artist for any Artist Credit (VA as "some guy's name") outside of Release/RG localisations like "diverse" etc.
• it should be impossible to use the VA artist as a track, recording, work or label? artist. use "[unknown]" or the actual artist(s) name(s)
• it should be impossible to use the VA artist in an Advanced Relationship (http://musicbrainz.org/artist/89ad4ac3-39f7-470e-963a-56509c546377/relationships)

** with the caveat that there is a "special" type of merge (only available to the VA artist) that lets people merge things like "VARIOS" and "diversen"

please debate.