The new Discogs UI shows the latest release (often a reissue) instead of the Original Year of the first release on Artist pages. This newest release then becomes the default 'Year' used when sorting by Year, which makes it difficult to pinpoint the chronological order of original works.
Example:
From what I can gather, the 'original release' information is returned in the API Request Response after clicking the 'more versions' buttons under the releases. Here's an example (note: under releaseGroupDetails[0] there is a 'released' parameter which correctly shows 1997.
data : {artist: {discogsId: 59373,…}} artist : {discogsId: 59373,…} discogsId : 59373 releases : {releaseGroupDetails: [{,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}], __typename: "ArtistCreditsConnection"} releaseGroupDetails : [{,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}, {,…}] 0 : {,…} release : {discogsId: 2663040, title: "Idle Worship", dataQuality: "NEW_SUBMISSION", visibility: "PUBLIC",…} collectionItems : null country : "US" dataQuality : "NEW_SUBMISSION" discogsId : 2663040 formats : [{name: "CD", quantity: "1", description: ["Album"], text: null, __typename: "Format"}] inWantlist : null labelsNew : [{catalogNumber: "JUMP 010", labelRole: "LABEL", displayName: "Jump Up! Records",…}] masterRelease : {discogsId: 303145, __typename: "MasterRelease"} myListings : {totalCount: 0, __typename: "InventoryItemConnection"} released : "1997" siteUrl : "/release/2663040-The-Eclectics-Idle-Worship" title : "Idle Worship" visibility : "PUBLIC" __typename : "Release" __typename : "ArtistCredit" 1 : {,…} 2 : {,…} 3 : {,…} 4 : {,…} __typename : "ArtistCreditsConnection" __typename : "Artist"
I'm probably barking up the wrong tree here, but I would like this functionality back from Discogs, and judging from their forum posts about this issue, they don't appear to be that fussed about returning it. Perhaps you'd be interested in having a go, or you could point me in the right direction towards a solution (perhaps something that would fit into discogs-enhancer once completed).