[Feature] Support non-unique Studio names about stash HOT 2 OPEN

@DogmaDragon , thanks for taking the time to highlight more issues.

Many of the surface level challenges are the same that could have been posed when introducing non-unique performer names, not to imply they are insignificant or trivial. Stash is basically an app that was initially intended for very light organization of web scenes inspired by Pornganizer, and has evolved to incorporate features the base paradigm was never planned to do imo. So I can appreciate fundamental constraints it has inherited.

Yesterday WP raised similar concerns to yours's, but I wanted to formally document the FR to ensure advantages and challenges are recorded for future reference. I consider this FR intended for long-term consideration, something that should be kept on the radar.

If concepts similar to Release Groups (MusicBrainz) and Master Release-Sub Releases (Discogs) are ever implemented, I think it will significantly enhance the canonical organization of content, particularly if applied to stash-box. But a natural extension of that approach will be the desire to organize studio hierarchies in a similarly accurate and canonical structure. However, this will inevitably introduce issues with non-unique studio names.

At present it's recommended we manage this through a manual process of suffixing a disambiguating parent studio string in parentheses along with the studio name. While that workaround is feasible, it's more like a stop-gap quality measure. It's inherently inefficient and prone to human error/inconsistencies.

from stash.

Personally, I think it would create more issues than it would solve. Some you already mentioned. But also:

• It would complicate searching as you would need to target parent to find child studio if multiple use the same name.
• It requires additional code, which increases complexity and makes it harder to maintain. Studios touch almost every core system.
• It would also need to change studio aliases code, since they also require unique names at the moment.
• Would also complicate Stash/stash-box integration, since the latter also requires unique studio names. Though that specifically is somewhat mitigated by StashID system.

from stash.