Ok, we just had a lengthy debate on this in IRC, which has, I think, helped to clarify the issue.
( starts around http://chatlogs.musicbrainz.org/2008/2008-01/2008-01-02.html#T00-42-16-600403 )

Essentially, I think this whole thing falls into one of two views.  Problem is, those two views are 100% incompatible.  I think we REALLY do need to decide that one or the other is the viewpoint we're using, however, as this is causing more and move confusion as to which ARs people should be adding, which ARs are correct or wrong, etc.

Viewpoint 1:
   A release is the sum of its tracks.
   An AR added at the release level is valid if and only if it applies to all tracks.
   ---------------------------------------------------
   Thus: ARs can therefore not be "vague" or "fuzzy" - they either are factually correct for the entire release, or they should be in annotations until someone else can update them.


Viewpoint 2:
   A release and its tracks are two entirely separate considerations.
   An AR added at the release level is valid if is says something about at least one of the tracks on the release.
   ---------------------------------------------------
    Thus: ARs at the release level can be "fuzzy" - if you know someone played alto sax on some track, but you don't know which track(s), then it can be added at the release level for someone later (who has better info) to move to the proper track(s).


Now I personally have always thought akin to #1.  A release is, to me, essentially a collection of specific versions of tracks in some particular order on various forms of media.  Thus having release level ARs be those which applied to all tracks made sense, especially before we had batch AR ability, when actually adding the same AR to every single track took forever.

However, perhaps it is time to use the 2nd viewpoint instead, now that we can do ARs in batch.  It was argued to me in IRC that this at least gets the release to show under the artist, rather than trapping the data in an annotation, when the editor does only have fuzzy info.  This kind of makes sense to me.

HOWEVER!  If we're really going to interpret release level ARs this way, allowing for people to add release level ARs for "I know John played on some tracks on this album, but I don't know which particular tracks", let's say so!

Right now, half of us are voting against such ARs, while the other half of us are adding them.  Right now, many of us are adding release level ARs, rather than adding those same ARs to every single track, when they DO have the info to be able to say that AR does apply to every single track.

So, if one person is adding "fuzzy" release level ARs, and another person is adding non-fuzzy ARs at the release level, but could add them at the track level, we're left with any given release level AR being of rather low DQ - it *could* apply to the entire release...  or it *could* just be that someone didn't know which tracks to apply it to.

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So I've been somewhat convinced, and I suggest, let's use viewpoint 2 as the official guidance for how to handle ARs:

Proposal:

  Release level ARs are not now or ever to be inherited to tracks. 
  Release level ARs are allowed to be, and always ought to be viewed as "fuzzy". 
  However, track level (and for later, track master ARs) are *never* to be fuzzy. 
  Finally, apply ARs to every track you can, if you have the info - ie: from this point on, if an AR applies to all tracks, it ought to be applied to all tracks, and not just to the release.
 
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(Any time I say AR here I mean performance and production ARs, not the ones that inherently have nothing to do with tracks, such as the coverart AR.)

Brian

(By the way, though the ArtistRoleInheritance wikipage may have been left untouched, this has come up several times in style, users, IRC, the forums and there's at least one lengthy bug ticket discussing it, so I don't think this has at all be "largely ignored" as a whole.)