Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 → Archive 5

Archives: March 2006

Initial Discussion

The initial discussion about a Beatles WikiProject, pasted from User talk:Kingboyk:

Hi Kingboyk - if you're thinking of getting a group of editors together to work on a list of unreleased Beatles songs, let me know - I'd be willing to help (if you look at the afd saves on my user page, you'll see "I'll Get You" and "Matchbox (song)" there, so that should give you some indication of my musical interests :). I'd suggest that if the list is done it should be for any songs not officially released, so that it would include songs released in bootleg form. Grutness...wha? 00:25, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the message, and yes, I think that would be a good idea. If we could find all the stubby and badly maintained articles and consolidate them into something encyclopedic and of high quality it would be great. Can you suggest a suitable venue to take the discussion to?
Suzy Parker (Beatles Song) is a bit of an anomoly - apparently it was included in snippet form in the Let It Be film (I've never had the priveledge of seeing it). Therefore, it has arguably been released. --kingboyk 00:31, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Already known: The Beatles bootlegs, Early Lennon/McCartney songs, Suzy Parker (Beatles Song)
Possible venues: List of unreleased songs by The Beatles, The Beatles bootlegs, Beatles unreleased songs, List of minor Beatles songs, Beatles outtakes --kingboyk 00:35, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
This and related issues being discussed at: here, Beatles talk (Suzy Parker and a related boot), WikiProject talk (Lesser_Beatles_songs)
Some other Beatles related issues I've come across (started, really!) lately: Talk:Cynthia_Powell, Talk:The_Beatles#History_.282.29
Needs attention: Apple Records discography added to Tasks list
- Please feel free to add to or strike out from these lists!

I'll have a hunt and see what track names I can come up with from my Beatles-related books. I don't think "The Beatles bootlegs" would be the place for it, because some of the songs mentioned may never have ben released even in that form, or were shelved and only released bby one of the Beatles as solo works. "The Beatles unreleased songs" might be a better title (possibly with an apostrophe after the s). I agree that the items on Let it Be might be a problem (I've never seen it either), but perhaps the intro of the article could define exactly what goes on it, and those have never been officially released on record. Oh, and no problems with the CFD business :). Grutness...wha? 07:27, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

The obvious approach - and it's kinda surprising there isn't one already* - is a Beatles Wikipedia:WikiProject. *I've not located one, anyway. I'm willing to sign up, although I don't want to commit to starting it because I have a large Todo list and more importantly once I've cleared that I ought to attend to some real work! What do you think? Shall we float the idea? --kingboyk 15:44, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Mkay maybe I'm overcommitting here but if a project gets set up I'd join, I love the Beatles and this would be a chance to learn more. I've never set one up though... don't want to commit to that level of effort unless no one else will, my todo list is too long! (I'd crib from how dear Phaedriel set up the NA one, though) ++Lar: t/c 16:37, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, Phaedriel can be a useful source, should make it a lot easier. So that's 2 "partial commits". --kingboyk 16:39, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like an interesting project. I'm pretty over-stretched myself, but if a WP:Beatles gets up and running, I'd certainly add my name to it and do some towards it. Grutness...wha? 00:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

On the closed AfD vote there was some mention of starting an article on unreleased Beatle-recorded compositions. I think that's a good idea. It can include obscure items like "Suzy Parker," and notables like "World Without Love." And along the lines of "Suzy Parker," I would include the song "Madman" from the same sessions. ZincOrbie 18:17, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Initial Skeleton has been Subst:-ed into existence

Since the talk page exists, I went ahead and created the skeleton, and filled out a few things. LOTS more to do just to get the project off the ground. I think before we do the whole creating infoboxes and so forth, a few goals and the like ought to be hammered out so that when people start arriving there are clear tasks to do and so forth. (do we need to rate articles the way the NA project is?) I'd encourage folks to be bold and edit them in!... oh my, did anyone check to see if there was a Beatles (without the the) first? I just did and there isn't. I sort of am surprised that no one has created a project given the number of articles that exist. ++Lar: t/c 02:03, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

It is rather surprising, yes, given the number of articles and that at least 2 of them have been featured (a whole lot more than 2 I suspect). We have a few pending tasks listed above which can be slotted in. When I get a moment I'll have a look at copyediting what you've already written. --kingboyk 02:12, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Um, this project may be redundant or may need some fine tuning, as there is a portal: Portal:The_Beatles which has had lots of work. We may be johhny come latelies here. Or maybe the project should encompass the portal and recruit from the portal editors? ++Lar: t/c 02:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Not the same thing, and they have a redlink for wikiproject. Just replace that link with 'ours'. I've edited the portal a few times and it seemed like a ghost town to me. --kingboyk 02:35, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I did that already, actually! I also did some editing on the templates section of the project page, creating a template to put on your user page (that was easy) and one for article talk pages (and the portal talk page). I placed it in a few articles but not many yet. I also addressed the infobox section, there are 3 that are relevant, band, bio, and album. Do you think we need to illustrate with examples? ++Lar: t/c 06:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Well in theory you did but Portal:The_Beatles/''WikiProjects'' has no incoming links. I think you put it in the wrong place? :-) I headed there around the same time and your change seemed to make no difference to what displayed on the portal. I added the WikiProject and expanded the 'how you can help.
I should be an admin soon so if you want Portal:The_Beatles/''WikiProjects'' speedy deleted as a typo let me know. --kingboyk 16:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe I am confused. I thought they are using it as a template there. It looked OK to me but that could be because you already fixed it. I don't care if the page lives or dies, do what's needful, what's more important is that the info is conveyed. Although I thought convention was that one person tags speedy, and a different admin does the delete... Happy editing! (and pre-congrats... your thank you box/note had better be tres stylish man... hey, put a plug in for this project! LOL.) ++Lar: t/c 17:01, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Don't start asking on the minutae of adminship, I have to reread and rereread the rules before hitting any buttons! Yes, the Portal uses inclusion (a la templates): they include Portal:The Beatles/WikiProjects. You edited Portal:The_Beatles/''WikiProjects''!
Good idea on the 'advertising'! --kingboyk 17:08, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I haven't joined many wikiprojects, and none as specific as this, so I'm not sure what our goals ought to be. I'm thinking of properly maintaining Beatles-related articles, and trying to get as many as possible up to featured status (until recently this was a one-man project of mine :p). We should especially work hard to maintain existing featured articles and our flagship article. For instance, I think The Beatles is rather crufty and top-heavy with detail. (Not to mention that it used to have an unencyclopedic trivia section, and is a common linkspam target.) I doubt it would be featured today. We need to work on maintenance -- that's for sure. Johnleemk | Talk 19:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I think you're right there, it wouldn't be featured today. On the other hand, a lot of eyes watch that page - vandalism gets reverted instantly.
It's certainly heading towards cruftiness, and there's a big problem with the History section vs the History article. The former gets all the attention, the latter sits in obscurity.
I see more problems around the edges though. There is a truckload of low grade, fan cruft, stubby Beatles related articles. They need to shape up or ship out. In fact, Lar was telling me we should delete the lot of em! (joke) --kingboyk 03:14, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Template

Template:TheBeatlesArticle - nice work! You realise that's the American cover? :) I'm not complaining, in fact I rather like it because it's different. I'm used to seeing the Brit cover. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kingboyk (talk • contribs) 11:23, 4 March 2006.

So am I (used to seeing the Brit cover) because, IIRC, that's how the CD's were released, even in the US. I had not seen the original US cover before! I chose it purely because it says "HELP" in biggish letters! That seemed to fit somehow (at 2 AM in the morning, admittedly)... So do we want to do more work on the project, recruit the people that said they were "in" if we got it going, get a few loose ends set up, or should we go straight to marking all the articles we can think of as relevant and announcing in Village Pump? Thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 16:48, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree on the image. It's a good fit, looks great. One caveat: fair use. Might not be! As for the other question - don't know. Whatever you think. Maybe the second, there's no shortage of Beatles fans here, and why do all the work ourselves? --kingboyk 16:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC) I see you mentioned AWB. That's a good idea. Because of my disconnection I don't have the latest version, something else 'to do'! --kingboyk 17:00, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I think the category assignation effected by the template needs a rethink. Category:WikiProject The Beatles should contain articles from the project: and portal: spaces only, I think (see e.g. Category:WikiProject Business and Economics). I have no problem with categorising in a sub cat such as Category:WikiProject The Beatles articles. Also, the template would be better if it had a "put on talk page" warning. IIRC there's a way to do that in code, I'll look into later. --kingboyk 18:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I cribbed it from another project so it may be not working right. I'm not sure how to from one page, put another page into a category, which is what would be watned I guess... (unless they did it by hand?) The put on talk page warning is a good idea, put it in the noinclude section perhaps... maybe work that into the wording of the template itself (right now it has some wording a bout the associated article... could be clearer I guess)... hey, it was 2 AM! Tried some changes... ++Lar: t/c 19:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Eek! Kill the fair use image with fire, please. I know of a picture from Commons which is PD, because it was shot by an American government official when they arrived in America. Let's use that instead of fair use. Fair use images are verboten on templates. Johnleemk | Talk 19:31, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Aye. Sounds good, let's see it! --kingboyk 19:39, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I know which one you mean, I think. I just changed it out for that one... It's not very good though. I left the old one in the comments, because I'd almost like to see if whowever owns the license would license it to us... (I know, dreaming) ++Lar: t/c 19:41, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Yep, that's the one. Johnleemk | Talk 19:49, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
That one may not be "clean" either... it's UPI. See [1] (and see Rauls law of copyright cluenessness...) ++Lar: t/c 20:06, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Argh! What now? (The Library of Congress page does say "Note: No copyright found; checked by staff December 2000." however.) Maybe we could find an artist who could do up a portrait of the Beatles, and then get the portrait licenced under something free? Johnleemk | Talk 20:30, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I dunno (and the copyright cluenessness is meant to point at me). I'm not an artist. Maybe just not worry about it. UPI may have released it. The LoC doesn't give large images if they think it's copyrighted, and they give a large image of this one... note that the source info in the top of the photo is trimmed off the copy on commons. So I dunno. ++Lar: t/c 21:21, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Why not just use Image:Abbey Road sin Beatles.jpg for now? It's Creative Commons, and it's an iconic image. --kingboyk 21:42, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I guess. GO for it. (I should be working on something work related). ++Lar: t/c 21:55, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Suzy Parker

Regarding the naughty lady who started all this, I have withdrawn and closed Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Suzy Parker (Beatles Song). If I did anything wrong, let me know discretely as that's my first AFD closure :). Now we'd better make good and look at where to merge it to. --kingboyk 23:07, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Adopt an Article

(moved from project page)

  • Suggestion: Early Lennon/McCartney songs... this article either needs a lot of work, or to go... -- Might I suggest we first of all do a stock take so to speak? i.e. what's our article inventory? This could well be a merger candidate as part of the Suzy Parker thing, in which case let's not put it up for adoption just yet. Yay or nay? Don't worry, I'm sure I can find some obvious adopt-an-article candidates, I've found quite a few bad ones on my travels. --kingboyk 23:12, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

My thinking is this.... cataloging ALL the articles might take quite a while, no? There are a lot of them. Maybe if we can pick an article or two to work on that will give the newcomers some buy in. Doesn't have to be that one necessarily, as it may well be a merger candidate. But I can go either way, maybe it's premature. ++Lar: t/c 23:34, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. But best pick one that we might not be about to hack to pieces? --kingboyk 23:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
Argh, thought I'd replied. Remembered typing it all in. Perhaps I don't remember closing the window before commiting the save though. Anyway. (from memory)... I agree that an artcle that's not necessarily going to live may not be the best choice. But an article that seems fully done isn't either. Here are a couple of suggestions: George Martin and Brian Epstein. Both need copyediting, reorging, additional headings, and could benefit from more pictures... they are clearly keepers but need work. Some of the songs are the same way. Contrast Yesterday with Strawberry Fields Forever with Please Please Me... not the same level of quality or coverage. To get a comprehensive list of all articles will take time but maybe I need to just bite the bullet and do it. once I have the list of articles itself, editor macros can create the table for me easily enough. Remind me of the primary sources? Beatles category? What else? (duplicate article names don't matter to me) (actually I'm starting to pull this together, stay tuned)++Lar: t/c 01:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Poor Brian. Doesn't get the credit he deserves. I hope you signed the petition regarding the Hall of Fame! A good source beyond Category:The Beatles and subcategories is Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:The_Beatles. I've actually done quite a lot of categorisation work, so hopefully the majority of articles are in the category. --kingboyk 01:20, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Remo Four (The) could perhaps go onto the list. Epstein-managed, worked with George. That said, I'm about to remove the Beatles template as I don't think it's appropriate on that article. --kingboyk 01:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)


I've been a heavy contributor to The Beatles Discography, created the article The Beatles Collection and greatly enhanced The Beatles Box Set. I can easily adopt the three articles. Steelbeard1 01:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure exactly what "adopt an article" means to be fair, but following from User:Steelbeard1, "my" main watchlisted articles are Apple Corps and Apple Records. --kingboyk 01:52, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Welcome Steelbeard1! (the discography is one of the best I've seen by the way...) My take on "adopt an article" was that it was a collaboration of the week (or until fixed up) and move on sort of thing... not an ownership (see WP:OWN). No harm in listing articles we're keen on though. ++Lar: t/c 02:12, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed re the discography. I shamelessly ripped the format for KLF discography --kingboyk 02:27, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/Article Classification

Please take a look at the subject subsection. I've fed all the articles in that were in category:The Beatles. Before I do more, does alpha order matter/help? (Alpha is as it was in the categories, so in some cases it's by last name, some first, etc,... some by "the" unfortunately, near as I can tell) Are these the right things to capture about the articles? Does the page make sense? I cribbed heavily from the IP of NA project. Should we transclude this onto the main page or no? thoughts? ++Lar: t/c 02:12, 5 March 2006 (UTC) (from User talk:Lar)

  • I can see you're going at that like a man on fire, and you have it marked "inuse", so I'll have the new message thing flash up :) -
Don't forget to have colours or gradings for 'merge candidates', 'deletion candidates' and 'merge or delete candidates'. The Beatles aren't excluded from normal Wikipedia rules and conventions, and there's a lot of - frankly - cruft like Day by Day (music) out there. For a start, I can grade that one right now: m/d. --kingboyk 02:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Good point. Please suggest some colors! Go in and add them to the color table. Do you have an article that is already in there you could mark that way, ah I see Day by Day (music) is... I am going to grade an article or two to get the ball rolling, if we edit separate sections we should be able to work without conflict, so while I grade some, revise/extend the table? ++Lar: t/c 02:17, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I was just about to suggest that you grade The Beatles so I can see how this marvellous contraption works! Deletion candidate should be black of course, or an image background of hellish flames :P --kingboyk 02:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • The Beatles is a FA isn't it? I forget. I graded Abbey Road Studios. I think black will be too hard because we have to also give a font color. Merge: brown maybe... it's a mixup of all the other colors ? If we want to change the colors now is the time (although I think the colors are somebody's or another's standard....) ++Lar: t/c 02:36, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, it is an FA. I graded it too. It needs review, the FA was a long time ago, but it's low in priority in my view. ++Lar: t/c 02:45, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Catalogue redirects too? e.g. Apple Films and Zapple Records were standalone, but I merged them. I don't mean dab redirects, typos, etc. --kingboyk 02:34, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • ?? can you elaborate on that one? Thanks! ++Lar: t/c 02:36, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
  • 'Missing' articles served by a redirect. (NEMS Enterprises is another one). Probably a bad idea, as I'm in favour of consolidating stubs into overviews anyway - hence my Films/Zapple mergers. --kingboyk 02:49, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Missing articles definitely need to be listed. The IP of NA project just lists them right there in their chart and grades them as not existing yet. Let me think more about what you are really asking though??? Question, are we going to have so much article grading traffic that I should break the tables up by letter subheadings? There is going to be a heading for each table, at least. I am about to start on Category:The Beatles albums so any feedback you have on that, get it to me ASAP! (what time is where you are??? no life, man???)++Lar: t/c 02:59, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
3am. No*. I'll let you edit in peace, I'm tired and I don't want us to get edit conflicts. May tinker elsewhere but it's pretty much goodnight from me. --kingboyk 03:10, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Well all I'm saying is that Apple Films, Zapple Records and NEMS Enterprises are missing but probably ought to remain so (I created the redirects for all of em). They're already merged. (NEMS Enterprises isn't quite so; I think that might be a genuinely "missing article").
OK, gotcha. I agree... let's put them in, and mark them merge (I added merge color, it's a brown, to the table), and explain why which will forestall people (maybe put a pointer back to the why in the redirect's talk). Apple Electronics I just graded though, you apparently had merged it between when I created the table and graded it maybe? ...

<--- Apple Electronics is in the category because the redirect has a category membership (intentional). Category:Apple Corps is like an "Apple list" without there being a list in sight! I merged it a long time ago. --kingboyk 03:29, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Damn, you were right. I hate that! :P It was in Category:The Beatles, which it shouldn't be. It's in Category:Apple Corps only now. I've left Corps and Records inside Category:The Beatles for now as they're key articles. --kingboyk 03:49, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

headings and sections

Headings are good. Independtly editable sections are even better. There's over 200 Beatles related articles already, and that's just those which are using the template. [2] --kingboyk 03:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Let me see what I can do about that. So you think having each letter section independently editable is goodness? Any other comments? I am about to start the albums now. But it's not too late to go break the tables up at letter boundaries ++Lar: t/c 03:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Editable sections are good, but as always there's a catch: it might mess up the table formatting. If you break it into multiple tables they won't overlap if the cell sizes aren't hardcoded (bad).
Erm, ya. The tables already are going to look different from one category/section to the next. I could put hardcoded sizes in I guess, need to read up on that. For now I did the albums without that. I am hoping that categorization traffic won't be SO high that it's a problem. And if it is, it is only temporary... once most are sorted it should be OK. You know I have a backlog of articles I SHOULD be working on instead of this... Sigh. But it's fun. ++Lar: t/c 04:09, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
It's looking good. I'll dive in tommorow, you're not alone! --kingboyk 04:21, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I gave both tables fixed percent widths. I need to remember this page better! M:Help:Table as the help there is better than the help here. I am not so sure about breaking up at each letter... would need to reproduce the headings or the percentages a LOT... I may try to work on some better automation than what I did the first two with. Maybe some perl code against the categories. Maybe some other projects have automation? maybe I should have checked beforfe I did the first two cats? maybe maybe maybe...++Lar: t/c 04:37, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Time to drop signed up participants a line and ask for some help? --kingboyk 10:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Maybe. Should I split the tables at the alpha boundaries first? The problem is the headings would need to be replicated or we would lose the fixed widths. or just put up with the edit conflicts? ++Lar: t/c 11:36, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Your call mate. You've done a great job with it so far and I trust your judgement. (You sure that section editing negates edit conflicts? I've only studied the parser in detail, but nonetheless I thought that when a revision was made the entire amended article got saved, not a diff... might be wrong and my Linux box is off so I can't check the code/MySQL) --kingboyk 11:43, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Varies from wiki to wiki, I think it's a configurable option in the SW, not sure. BW tried it one way and it was introducing errors there so any edit to any section now causes conflicts. Here, I think sections are independent but am not sure. We could test it maybe? coordinate on IRC or something. (not at the mo, brekkies calls me) ++Lar: t/c 12:02, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

Geoff Emerick

This is a mighty thin article to have made it to the main {{The Beatles}} box, I think. If it's a keeper, it may be our candidate for the first article improvement drive? (I better put it on the table: My knowledge of the minutia of The Beatles is thin... I'm in this project partly to learn about creating projects and stuff, and partly because I just like The Beatles and can't believe there wasn't a project already, but I'm not otaku, just an ordinary fan... so I have no idea if it's a keeper or not...) ++Lar: t/c 05:30, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

I think his presence is due to - and is probably justified by - his role as engineer on many of the Beatles' biggest selling albums. His name will have been pressed up on tens (hundreds?) of millions of LPs and CDs and people will want to read about him. Certainly it needs big improvement. One would imagine that in all these decades some interesting citable things have been said by or about him :) Looks like he has Grammys too. --kingboyk 07:43, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Nod. Sounds like a keeper to me. So maybe an article to focus on. Google turns up lots more stuff than what is there now. ++Lar: t/c 14:44, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Header image

The fair use image Image:Beatles 1969.jpg should not be on this page. See the Fair use policy point nine: "Fair use images should only be used in the article namespace." I'm afraid it needs to be removed, but I'll leave that to a member of the project incase they know of a free replacement image. Raven4x4x 01:45, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Removed. There has to be a freebie out there. We'll find it, some day! --kingboyk 02:09, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Fair use includes illustration of "the person, product, event, or subject in question". So I'm not sure I agree. The person, product, or event in question is "The Beatles". But I'll not start a revert war about it. That image we were using for a bit is in my view just as questionable as it's UPI. There are more important things to work on so... no worries. ++Lar: t/c 02:21, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
So I'm not sure I agree. Hi Lar, if I would be you I would ask Kelly Martin or even better Jimbo Wales (see). LOL. Greetings. A girl from Hungary :-) 10:00, 6 March 2006 (UTC) User:195.93.60.147
Thanks for the pointer but I've recanted, I gave the policy a hard look, and it is what it is. It acknowledges that our usage fits within fair use, but that WP has decided to disallow it anyway for policy/safety reasons. So the image had to go. ++Lar: t/c 12:39, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough (no pun intended). --kingboyk 17:05, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

So far so good!

If the activity on my watchlist is anything to go by, we're off to a good start. --kingboyk 16:56, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

And - hooray! - The Beatles' Christmas Album has been adopted and showing improvements already. Very good news indeed, and welcome aboard User:Danthemankhan. --kingboyk 05:40, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
The 3 main Apple articles (Apple Corps, Apple Records, Apple Records discography) showed substantial improvements overnight thanks to new editor User:Bakewell. I've thanked him/her and invited to join the project. --kingboyk 19:06, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Stub Templates

From a HTML comment area inside Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles (edited a little for formatting/relevance by kingboyk without changing meaning):

This is an area for discussion, do we want to introduces new stubs?
*e.g. {{The Beatles-stub}}
*{{tl|The Beatles-stub}}
**and the associated stub category Category:The Beatles stubs
Personally I am of two minds about fine grained stubs anyway... Probably should comment a few other sections out entirely too. ++Lar: t/c 17:25, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
As one of the most active members of WP:WSS, I'd like to point out that the song-stub is almost certainly the only one that would be needed by this project or would be likely to pass debate at WP:WSS/P. There would be unlikely to be enough articles to justify any other stub template for the project, and a general beatles-stub would be a bit too amorphous and overlap too many things like UK-musician-stub. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Grutness (talk • contribs) .
NOTE: there is one stub already: {{beatles-song-stub}} ... if we bring this section back we need to mention it. ++Lar 7:47 5 Mar 2006 (signed by hand)

I have no desire to get into a landwar with another project, and I suspect Lar doesn't either. Let's leave this thread here and quietly move back to the important work. --kingboyk 23:46, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I commented that section out because I didn't think there were Beatles specific stubsother than the one I found, or a need for more. (I was on a commenting out stuff from the boilerplate project starting subst/template kick!!!) I'm glad Grutness turned up and uncommented it, as I didn't think to check for other specific stubs. I have no issue with using whichever one makes sense, or not, as needs dictate, and want to conform with understood practice. And no, I don't want to start a range war about it either. In an ideal world we wouldn't have any stubs left once we're "done" (as if a project is ever "done")... ++Lar: t/c 01:09, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

well, it wouldn't really be a range war, but WP:WSS do have good reasons for trying to keep a tight handle on stub templates and categories. Basically there are already over 1000 different stub types, and categories that are too tiny or too vague wouldn't help editors. It's also useful to keep the names as uniform as possible. In any case, Beatles-song-stub and UK-musician-stub should cover most articles we'd meet here, and if there are any others people are unsure about, my talk page is always open ;) Grutness...wha? 00:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

RIP two Beatle film actors

Both John Junkin ("Shake", A Hard Day's Night) and Ivor Cutler ("Magical Mystery Tour") died within hours of each other in the last day or so. :( Grutness...wha? 00:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Ah, Buster Bloodvessel :( Thanks for the news. --kingboyk 02:08, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
It's just occurred to me that actors in Beatles films could go into (and beef up) Category:The Beatles films. Any objections? --kingboyk 02:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
All for it, (as long as someone else is doing the work)! ++Lar: t/c 04:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Ya, I'll do it. --kingboyk 04:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Done. --kingboyk 06:36, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List_of_WikiProjects#Music

Listed the project at the subject list ++Lar: t/c 04:32, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:Beatles

...now redirects here. --kingboyk 05:22, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Er, CLOSE to here... one namespace over, third star on the left. I think you meant WT:Beatles ++Lar: t/c 05:26, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

lol, ok. --kingboyk 05:31, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Shortcut boxes added there and here. ++Lar: t/c 05:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Jumping in really late... Oh my! I had no idea such a task was underway when I made a passing suggestion on Kingboyk's talk page. I don't believe I can adopt an article right now because of limited time (I have a major project at work which will conclude in the middle of April). But to offer a quick opinion, subcategories listed on category:The Beatles seem to get into minutia. I mean...Beatles' children? Anyway, my original suggestion was that all rare Beatles recordings and compositions be relegated to a single article. This would include three sections:

  • unrecorded original compositions (i.e. "World Without Love")
  • recorded but unreleased covers (i.e. "Blue Suede Shoes")
  • recorded but unreleased originals (i.e. "Suzy Parker")

This would keep Beatles' music organized into simple common and uncommon categories. ZincOrbie 19:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Good suggestion, one we will have to talk about when we have a list of the all "rare" stuff currently documented, and pretty much my way of thinking too. But I don't want to preempt the "stock take".
I'd defend the category structure - it's nice to keep the main category relatively free. Also as each subcategory can belong to different parent cats the navigation around the site is much easier. Look at the Beatles albums, songs, singles, Apple etc cats and they all have different memberships.
Specifically the Beatles children - again something to talk about. Wives, girlfriends, offspring - we've been talking about this on another page (too tired to find the link)... maybe Category:The Beatles families or similar? --kingboyk 10:05, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, my question about subcategories is a bit broad, so I will ask it below to add clarity. ZincOrbie 17:17, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I've noticed that a disgusting amount of information about the beatles on wikipedia is just wrong, based on common rumors and misknowledge. someone who knows something about the beatles should be managing the beatles pages. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Twisby (talk • contribs) .

Unfortunately, none of us are paid to edit here (although if you happen to a philanthropist billionare, I am available!). This Beatles project is new, and we're well aware that there are shortcomings in the Beatles articles, and it is our plan to address them. In the meantime please make improvements as you see fit and you are of course welcome to join us. --kingboyk 06:12, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Online resources

I've added an "Online resources" section to the page, and listed Alan pollack's Beatles songs series there. It's a densely worded but fascinating site - especially for anyone who's got a bit of music theory - and it's definitely worth reading for anyone interested in individual Beatles songs (as in the "adopt an article" idea). Talking of which, can someone run an eye over what I did to Flying (song), see how it looks now? :) Grutness...wha? 08:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

"Flying" article looks good to me. Can you check my revision of It Don't Come Easy? I may have overstepped my bounds regarding the Harrison rumor. ZincOrbie 18:19, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Cite a source for the rumour. That's the best way to tell whether you've overstepped your bounds. Johnleemk | Talk 18:33, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
The rumor is commonly found among Beatle chat groups and discussion boards, which probably are not a good outside source to cite. I did link to one person's suspicion as expressed in an article. I strongly believe the rumor to be true, based on analyzing the song structure and lyrics (which have George's fingerprints all over them). This is aside from Ringo's rather tenuous composing history, Beatle desires to assist Ringo's publishing income, Ringo's inability to remember the lyrics, and the earlier demo with Harrison's lead vocals. However, I'll dump the rumor speculation from the article if people deem it inappropriate. ZincOrbie 21:15, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Definitely dumpable if you can't find a citable source (as discussed on Talk:It Don't Come Easy). Potentially libellous without a source, really. --kingboyk 01:16, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I'll dump it, since I can't cite any biographical sources for it. But I know - down in my gut - that George had a major hand (if not a complete hand) in composing it. ZincOrbie 01:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Retain the link to the Bangla Desh concert though won't you.
At the danger of wandering off into personal chit chat, I love that performance by Ringo. I don't care that he forgets the words. It was at a time when he'd still play the drums while singing and boy didn't he look cool. I don't like George's beard at all! :) Followup discussions on the merits of the Beatles's beards to my talk page or The Beatles facial hair please! --kingboyk 01:48, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Concern about boundaries

Perhaps this is simply a matter of consensus, but I am puzzled by the amount of detail and subcategory articles connected solely to the Beatles. Coming from a newspaper background, my inclination is to pare stories down to the essentials. Peripheral information on any given subject can be turned into a book, and is often best left to such mediums. Personally, I view the Beatles as an international phenomena, extremely influential on social and musical norms, and deserving of an extensive article and some sub-articles. My question is where the lines should be drawn; Where pertinent information becomes interesting information, and where interesting information becomes trivia (which is best left to fan clubs).

Another concern for me is that if this project is too ambitious it may never be completed. The more categories that can be merged, the better. Otherwise the project may fizzle out due to exhaustion with unrealized red links everywhere. Also, including Beatle trivia on Wikipedia may set a precedent for fans of other artists to do the same. I think it would be a terrible waste of bandwidth to discover the fans of the Rolling Stones have created articles on every single song the Stones ever released. Anyway, these are just some of my thoughts on tightening the reins here a bit. ZincOrbie 17:25, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

WP:NOT paper, so we generally avoid paring down articles to essentials. While I agree peripheral information should be left to non-encyclopedic media, it's possible we disagree on the definition of peripheral information. Anyway, WikiProjects are never complete. Like the encyclopedia itself, there is always another task to complete. Johnleemk | Talk 18:03, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Categories: Merging categories makes absolutely no difference whatsover to our work load! If we have 200 articles in 1 category or 200 articles in 10 categories, we still have 200 articles! I spent a lot of time categorising the Beatles related articles. Mostly an intrinsically valid subcategory can be identified as follows: if the subcategory has at least one membership of another category that is not shared with the parent, it is navigationally valid. Let me find a few examples. (hehe, actually the first sub cat I hit Category:The Beatles films is currently only a member of Category:The Beatles). OK, start again with 2 examples:
Some of the subcats exist for organisational rather than navigational reasons, and there we can certainly consolidate a little. Basically I and those who went before me wanted to reduce the clutter in the main category, and as far as possible restrict it to articles which are highly on topic. Beatles wives and children can certainly go (merge), as we've discussed.
Scope: We will restrict the scope of the project for sure, but Lar hasn't got deep enough into the category tree yet with his listings for such subcategories and articles to have been identified. For example, Category:Apple Records is clear Beatle project territory, Category:Apple Records recording artists I'd say is not (but it's for debate). We probably shouldn't have Badfinger under our umbrella, for example (sorry guys, get yer own umbrella! :P).
"Excessive" detail: This is Wikipedia not Beatles Wiki, and fan minutae (fancruft) is to be avoided. OTOH, The Beatles are a very enyclopedic topic and - as above - wiki is not paper. Sorting the cruft from the worthy is part of our article classification drive.
Size: We'll be looking at 2-300 articles I think. WP:MILHIST has ~5,000–10,000 articles.
I hope that helps, fire away with your comments people. --kingboyk 00:40, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
P.S. (There had to be one!) Notability of songs. Definitely needs discussion, and my attempt to delete an article on a Beatles song led to the formation of this project. The general issue is up for discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Notability and Music Guidelines/Songs; we may or may not choose to agree our own standards. Again, let's finish the article stock take first. --kingboyk 00:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
You make a good case. I suppose my concern (as you noted) really revolved around articles like Beatles' families and certain songs. Where I can see Yoko Ono and Julian Lennon deserving of articles, as they have carved out their own unique niches, I don't see the same applying to McCartney's children. And where songs like "Yesterday" or "Strawberry Fields Forever" have cultural significance, others are basically album tracks and unlikely to become anything more than stubs. Anyway, I shall restrain my austere tendencies and assist where I can. I already goofed by including innuendo in the "It Don't Come Easy" article! ZincOrbie 03:35, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
I may well agree with you. I'm no fan of cruft or fan minutae in a general enyclopedia either (I actually plan to introduce some "cruft welcome" wikis myself at some stage, where everything - even Beatles facial hair - is on topic). The point is though that we can decide these things as we assess the articles, and as a roundup exercise we think. So, it's a case of "watch this space" and make sure you continue to contribute to the discussion :-) We've got 2 AFD nominations going right now, although Lar tells me I my have erred with one of them.
As for the Beatle children, actually most of them have carved out some individual notability. Zak plays for Oasis and The Who, 2 of the biggest bands in the world. Stella is a famous (and rich) fashion designer. Sean and Julian have recording careers. --kingboyk 04:26, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Wow... that comment was... encyclopedic. Without disagreeing with ZincObie, I think you're spot on, Steve. I do agree and see where ZincObie is coming from though. As for article classification, this weekend if I have time I hope to step up the intensity of creating tables of articles to sort through. current leaning is to do it by category and then sort out the dups manually, but am still leaning toward doing some perl code. Haven't decided. (a side note, merging categories would make my table generation job slightly easier, but not as much easier as the work to merge categories would be so don't do it)

On notability of some articles. I expect that since The Beatles are the world's most popular band, with an incredibly massive body of work, that is hugely significant to everyone on the planet (ok, maybe that was a BIT more hyperbole than I needed), that many more songs, proportionally, will end up being notable than the average band's songs. That said I am not opposed to merging where it makes sense. I am not opposed to deletion of articles where it makes sense. We need to be aligned with WP:MUSIC and not keep stuff around just because it's Beatles stuff, although we may be a bit off average.

While our goal here is not to include "trivia" for its own sake, I do think we are the first band specific project (or at least the first I could find). What we do here will either be copied, or ridiculed. So far I'm pretty happy with how it's going but there certainly is some pressure here to try to do it right, stay organised, and not burn people out. Every article we improve is a victory, the final task is big, but not impossible. If there end up being a lot of other projects on bands, and they do things (somewhat) the way we do, we will have contributed significantly to the encyclopedia, beyond just Beatles specific things. MILHIST definitely is an inspiration in terms of scope though. We need to learn from them and other projects on burnout. Taking a break from this project and doing other things (other articles, real life, etc) will be necessary for people over time. ++Lar: t/c 02:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Regarding burnout, I think the way we've been going is just fine. Nobody feels a horrible need to get it done today and we all contribute a little when we can. As long as the project keeps moving that's enough. As an aside, we maybe ought to invite the people who signed up but who haven't beenseen since to adopt an article or adopt another small task?
(Some adopters have made great improvements already. This diff for example? Perhaps we ought to keep a log of what we've achieved? It's quite a lot already - several articles have been improved as a direct result of the project, we've got 2 on AFD, and we've made a decent start with classification.) --kingboyk 02:17, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Transcluding the The Beatles - Articles for Deletion section

I don't think I'd transclude that on the main project page. It could grow without bound. I think better to just reference the page like we do for the Article Classification section. (unless you think we should transclude THAT?) ++Lar: t/c 02:45, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Whatever you think. Go for it. Not sure it's gonna grow much unless you're planning a deletionist rampage Lar? --kingboyk 03:08, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Silly me, could grow if the discussion gets large. Yep. You're right. --kingboyk 03:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

We missed one! --kingboyk 06:23, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Talk to Splash maybe and get it tagged, or do it yourself (even though it is archived I think adding the note at the bottom (which then puts it in the category, right) is probably "ok" since it's not modifying the outcome, just making a note)? ++Lar: t/c 14:00, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Never mind, I just went ahead and did it. Splash or whowever can yell at me later if they want. I also changed the articles from transcluded to listed. That might not be right, maybe they should be transcluded there but we should only list the link to the deletion sorting project page instead of transcluding IT? ++Lar: t/c 14:14, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
(Technical point) I've seen it claimed that double transclusion doesn't work too well, but it seemed to be working fine to me. (Review) As for your manouvre (sp.?), no worries! --kingboyk 22:06, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
Maneuver in the US, I think, but different in the UK, [3] has answers... On review, I think I've stuffed it up as the page is transcluded elsewhere and not having the articles transcluded breaks the other uses. I think I'll have to change it back... then just link to it from our project page, because once you deletionist scum get going it will be the biggest part of the whole page... Smile. ++Lar: t/c 22:25, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Project page looks more like a portal

Some of the items on the WikiProject page look to me more like the sort of things that would be found on a Portal page (Did you know?, Features article/picture, etc). Do we need to bother with them for now, or should they be left until the project's a bit more established? It may be running before we can walk a bit. Grutness...wha? 03:07, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I think they're administrative lists, for example which articles do we have which are Featured? Which do we have that are candidates? I'd leave them myself but again I'm not too bothered either way. --kingboyk 03:10, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
Ya, they're admin lists, I think... Again, the project page came into being (with all that stuff there) because of subst'ing of the master template which has everything anyone has ever thought was useful. Steve and I commented out a lot of stuff we don't yet (or ever?) need. I'm down with commenting that stuff out too, if we're not ready to start tracking stuff like that, or have no interest or whatever... go for it. My view is don't delete it though, as we may want it back again later. You'll know we are really cooking with gas if/when the master template has our article classification stuff in it! ++Lar: t/c 06:18, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Mr Richard Starkey

It was decided by an IP edit some time ago [4] that Mr Richard Starkey MBE is actually one "Richard Parkin" and that this 'fact' should be inserted into the first line of what ought to be one of our flagship articles. Unfortunately, Google doesn't agree [5]. I removed the reference last night but it was restored again while I was in bed. I've also tried to debunk the theory on the Talk:Ringo Starr. I don't want to be heavy handed and then turn out to be wrong, nor do I want to be the only person watching for and reverting this change, so I'd appreciate some response on the talk page and the adding of the article to watchlists (it's been a recent vandal magnet too I might add).

Whilst I own a copy of the Anthology book I don't have it with me, so I can't check what Ringo said. I think my Talk summary is likely a fair picture of what happened though. Even if I'm wrong and he was actually born Richard Parkin, I'd like some confirmation that that doesn't belong as a simple bracketed insertion without comment in the first line of our article. --kingboyk 22:23, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Technically, he's a Parkin, though his family has been Starkeys for a couple of generations - and he was definitely christened as a Starkey. According to RS himself in Anthology: "My real name is Parkin, not Starkey. My granddad was named Johnny Parkin. When my grandfather's mother remarried, which was pretty shocking in those days, she married a Starkey - so my grandfather changed his name to Starkey too.". Grutness...wha? 23:36, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
If he was Christened a Starkey, that's what he is (legally and technically, imho)! :-) Unless we're going to research the family tree of Ringo to check that in, say, 1472, his great grandfather to the power of 10 didn't change his name too? Maybe he's not a Parkin at all, maybe he's a Shakespeare or a Burke? :) Where does it end? Birth name, stage name, that's all we need. The "Parkin" thing should go into a "Trivia" section I think. Let's talk about it there, this was more of a watchlist/incident heads up. --kingboyk 23:55, 11 March 2006 (UTC)
In an article about him, it probably is appropriate to cite that quote about Parkin (his Shakespearean/Burkian ancestry is not the same thing). It probably doesn't belong in the lead sentence though so I'm adding the article to my watchlist. I support your block of a n hour, BTW. ++Lar: t/c 00:49, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Lar, I agree. --kingboyk 00:54, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Template additions?

I know we don't want the template to get bloated and unwieldy, but I was wondering whether we should add Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans to it. Any thoughts? Grutness...wha? 22:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

  • recuse - I'm just the mechanic around here, don't know enough about them to have an opinion (but I do like to hear myself talk!), and trust you guys to do the right thing... ++Lar: t/c 23:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
  • My opinion would be "definitely not" into the "related articles" area, unless they replaced some existing entries. I think that section (and the template) is quite large enough already, and nicely formated. I honestly don't think Mal Evans is significant enough to replace anything already there. Neil Aspinall the same, although he could arguably squeeze into the management section I think he's more an Apple manager than a Beatles manager. That said, "Management" is a strange one anyway. Apple Records? Hmm... --kingboyk 02:14, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Like Lar, I have no comment on that either. However, prompted by your question, I did some tinkering with the Mal Evans article. I still need to remove some POV from the end of it. ZincOrbie 18:39, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Oh, by the way Stephen, if you are interested in how Aspinall and Apple are operating today, you should talk to biographer Matovina (he is easily contacted via his website). He deals with them all the time. Pretty interesting, too. ZincOrbie 19:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Sure am. What's the URL? --kingboyk 02:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
http://www.mindspring.com/~crimson3/ ZincOrbie 03:05, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Maintaining editor interest

It's a bit early yet (still setting the project up, really) but I think at some point we ought to do some or all of the following:

  • Drop brief "newsletters" onto the user talk pages of signed up participants
  • Ensure that every project article is on at least one watchlist (which, if we can expand membership, might mean say 10 articles each)
  • Invite editors to adopt or cleanup a new article periodically, perhaps every month or every 3 months
  • Have occasional collaborative cleanup efforts, where we collectively turn a bad article into a featured candidate.

--kingboyk 02:03, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Good ideas... It may be time for our first collaboration, which might be fun. I would be available to collaborate later this week I think. Another technique to consider is updating the project membership box with news (other projects do this)... It would look similar to the text in the bottom of the {{TheBeatlesArticle}} box. But that may not be as noticable as little newsletter drop offs on talk pages. Note that Esperanza does this. AWB is a good tool for doing this (apply the same change to a number of pages) ++Lar: t/c 03:32, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I think the newsletter idea is great - a short list of things that are in severe need of attention (or currently in need), plus an update as to what has been achieved. --Mal 03:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Schools

I've dropped a line to the schools wikiproject in the hope that they'll either write or colloborate with us on redlinked schools which have Beatle alumni. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools. --kingboyk 05:21, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

And he saves!

I don't mean to gloat ;) but I've just saved a Beatles related article. I discovered that some time last year somebody had blanked The Fireman, somebody else had then tagged it as empty, and a (naughty!) admin speedy deleted it, obviously without checking the page history! Since that's an invalid speedy deletion, I moved the new incumbent (a Charlie Chaplin film) to a new slot, and restored the article. --kingboyk 11:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


Getting involved

A prominent heading like this might help people with no patience like me! ;) So how d'you become a signed up participant? As you know, I've chucked a few bits at the Apple articles, and am generally au fait with Apple and Rutles, er, Beatles stuff from 65-71, after which I lose interest rapidly. (Apropos solo stuff, here's a nice pic I put on Flickr.) I'm also responsible for the Scarlet Party article and related website! Happy to get involved, anyhow, if you can suggest any areas for me to look at. Jerry Bakewell 16:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Hi! Love to have you. Sign your name here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_The_Beatles#Participants and, if you want, put this template {{WikiProject The Beatles}} on your user page to signify membership. There's lots to do... adopt an article, help classify, put some articles on your watch list, participate in discussions on how things ought to be done, whatever strikes your fancy. (As you say... we should put this "how to join" precis in a box at the top I guess...) ++Lar: t/c 18:20, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi Jerry, welcome aboard. If Apple is your speciality, a few of the minor league Apple artists have no articles at all:
...and Apple Records discography is incomplete and in need of some attention.
I hope you have the time and inclination to read through the old chat here, and have your say if you disagree with anything written. If you do read through you'll see this is a new project, we're still in the early stages, so the project "founders" so to speak are mostly working on the project itself rather than on articles at this stage. You will however find that we've already identified a few jobs that need to be done, and articles which need to be "adopted", not to mention the Apple-related jobs I pasted in above. --kingboyk 06:16, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Hello, everyone. I'm actually quite nervous about this. Well, I'm new to Wikipedia but I'd like to think I'm getting a feel for the place. I would love to contribute to this project. I just don't know where to start... --Jude 21:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Hi and welcome... just as I told Jerry above, there are a few ways to get started... also, just reading some of the articles that are already reviewed might be a way to get acclimatised, actually. Then be bold, do some upgrades... if you get stuck, holler here or on any of our talk pages and we'll help you out! ++Lar: t/c 21:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Heh, thanks. I find the best way to learn anything here is to be bold and try. But I've made a small edit or two here and there. Like, I added the bit about "Bungalow Bill" meaning "dimwit" in the Bungalow Bill article. I hope I can come up with something interesting to contribute... --Jude 22:05, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Hey, I had an idea for an article but I was wondering if it was right for Wikipedia. What if I did an article about my favorite Beatles tribute band, American English. If that's not a good idea, I'm still thinking of expanding different stubs of songs and stuff. (My spring break is coming up next week, so I'll have more time to dedicate to Wiki.) I'm just really new to all this (and being in high school doesn't help my self-esteem and boldness, either) and wanted to pitch this to you all first. --Jude 02:10, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Take a look at WP:MUSIC and if the band would pass muster (on Verifiability and on Notability), by all means, do an article, I'd say. Writing an article from scratch is a nice bold move so if they do... (and this Google search suggests maybe they do... (do they have any albums released? I could not find any) ya, go for it. Holler if you need help. ++Lar: t/c 02:58, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I think we ought to help Jude out here by checking for him/her that the band passes WP:MUSIC rather than leaving it to him/her. It's very unpleasant for a newbie to find that someone has nominated their new article for deletion, and the guidelines aren't always to understand. If it seems they don't pass, we could look at putting a section into an article somewhere - perhaps shifting some of the other cruft around at the same time. And, failing that (!), I'm sure we can find some nice and easy edits or photo hunting tasks for a keen newcomer right?(Kingboyk/Steve)

(split Steve's comment in replying) Nod. In fact I did part of that by doing the Google search and looking on Amazon for releases. The Google search result, in my view, is a positive indicator, while the Amazon result (could not find any released material) is a negative one, but for a tribute band, not insurmountable. I'm thinking now it's a borderline case... heck I might even suggest asking for input about it on the talk for WP:MUSIC to see if they've thought about tribute bands (I've been thinking The Musical Box needs an article, they're a Genesis tribute band that very accurately reproduces the The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour, something rather hard to do) So ya, what else do we need to do besides that?(Lar, continued below)

Don't worry about still being in school, Jude. As editors we're all equal here. Some of the admins are still in school too. --kingboyk 11:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Nod again. WP judges you on your contributions and approach, not your age or degrees or wealth or hair color... ++Lar: t/c 12:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the replies, guys! I would've been able to read this sooner if school wasn't a prison. But onto the topic. American English does, in fact, have a CD. Of course, all Beatles songs. It's not sold on Amazon but rather on their website here. However, it's live. So I really don't know if that counts or not...?

And I believe they are notable because, as their website's front page says, they were "featured on the Travel Channel's 'Beatlemania Britain'." If that's not notable, I don't know what is. I mean, there are a few more tribute bands that I can think of that are more popular than American English but I am more familiar with them than any of the others. And I think it would be interesting to have a few Beatles tribute bands be apart of this WikiProject.

Well, I'm off to read...whatever you guys told me to. I appreciate any and all help in this matter. And, yes, making a page will be very bold. Saying I haven't even figured out how to make my own user page. Haha. --Jude 22:27, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

I think they'd struggle for notability myself, but I gather Lar has volunteered to looking into the matter further? :) The Bootleg Beatles have an article, but they're probably the best known of the tribute bands. --kingboyk 22:35, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
I think it would be a struggle too. Borderline, unlike The Bootleg Beatles for which there are lots of hits. A self published CD helps only a little tiny bit. What would help is if you can find OTHER sites besides theirs that have info about their appearances, reviews, tour schedules and the like. I did a little digging but I already posted what I came up with. I don't want to overcommit, we are going on holiday in 10 days so here is what I suggest. Do some edits on other stuff, build your confidence, then write the article in your userspace (with a name like User:ThisJude/American English (band) (you need the (band) in parens once you move it to articlespace because there is already an American English article on a different topic) Work on it there, it will be less likely to get nomed for AfD or PROD. Plus you can practice editing and we can help you and stuff. ++Lar: t/c 23:11, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
Thank you all so much. But yeah, I wasn't planning on making up an article out of nowhere (that would be a really stupid move). My plan at the moment is to read up on the Beatles (I have a lot of books I haven't read yet) and see if I discover anything interesting to pitch into a stub or article. And yes, confidence...I need a lot of that. High school diminished whatever of that I had. --Jude 02:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Boys (song)

Boys (song) is a dab page, but every incoming link is about the Beatles song. Normal convention is that the dab page would be moved and the Beatles song take the slot. However, there's no seperate article for that song, it's a link to Please Please Me. Do we leave it as is, do we want dab all links for Boys to Please Please Me, or do we redirect Boys (song) to Please Please Me and insert a Template:Redirect? --kingboyk 12:45, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Leave as is would be my thinking. ++Lar: t/c 14:15, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Carl Lindstrom Company

I just added an article on the Carl Lindstrom Company which founded Parlophone and where would Parlophone be today without The Beatles? Steelbeard1 17:03, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes indeed, and I didn't know that Parlophone had (oh the shock! :)) Germanic roots! Lar, 'Parlophone's "₤" trademark is not the British pound sign, it's a Germanic "L" for Lindstrom' might be a Did You Know candidate? --kingboyk 17:25, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
Whoops, just noticed this. Can we fatten up the article at all (with valid content I mean). DYKs typically should be a bit bigger, this one is not much bigger than a stub... I'll gladly (or anyone else can) nom it as soon as it's fattened but the clock is ticking, it's no longer eligible 120 hours after the article was created... ++Lar: t/c 22:56, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
I did my bit to fatten up the article a little bit and I encourage anyone else with knowledge of the early history of the Carl Lindstrom Company to add their info. Steelbeard1 02:33, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Nominated... Hopefully it gets picked as that often does fatten up articles nicely. Do you have a logo for the company that could be added? Any external sites or references for the info? Maybe an {{infobox company}}? Any of those would help (the DYK admins look for verifiable facts and references...) ... if this gets picked it will be the first one by me of someone else's article.++Lar: t/c 03:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I found an eBay listing showing a colour German Parlophon 78 label which looks like it has the definitive Lindstrom logo. Just click on the adjacent footnote, [6] Unfortunately, the centre hole obscures the bottom of the logo. How is it? Steelbeard1 13:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Nice, and fair use too I'd guess. --kingboyk 13:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Looking closely at the logo, the bottom has the initials A.G. widely spaced to accomodate the centre hole. If someone familiar with Adobe Photoshop or similar software can fill in the hole, we could use the logo for the article. Steelbeard1 15:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Two things... First I think the label might better illustrate the Parlophone article (is that in our aegis too?) and second, I think the label I found is cooler, as the L symbol stands out better. Some editor took the link to it out of the article for some reason, but I added it back in... Third, not sure that modifying images leaves them still fair-use-able... I understood that you had to leave things as is. But see Raul's laws (#4) as I am no copyright expert ++Lar: t/c 16:43, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I found a print ad in German for Parlophone which I also mention in the discussion page for the Carl Lindstrom Company. You can see the ad in the adjacent link [7]. Does this look like a good ad to utilise? Steelbeard1 17:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

followed up on the article page, let's keep the convo there. It's a great image! ++Lar: t/c 18:06, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/Userbox

I've created a rough draft of a new userbox. I've dropped it onto Mal and Lar's user pages to get a reaction. If it's disliked, it can be quietly dropped. If it's liked, I'll pop it onto the user pages of the other signed up participants. So, comments here please. --kingboyk 11:54, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

It seems nice. I think it better to announce (perhaps in our upcoming newsletter?) or place on user talk pages, than to modify someone's userbox page directly though, some might find that invasive (I didn't mind because you were testing, etc but others might). I don't have one for the other projects I'm in because my userboxes appear on the front page where the project membership boxes are already visible (and much bigger)... ++Lar: t/c 14:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I like it, and you saved me the bother of cutting and pasting etc too! :) Stick it up somewhere so that others can use it. --Mal 14:50, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Well when we're happy I'll plonk it onto signed up member's user pages and add it to the project main page. --kingboyk 14:53, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
OK, I hadn't seen Lar's message. Well, whatever, it can be announced somewhere :) I don't see any problem with placing it on people's pages with an edit summary including "please feel to free to remove it if you don't like it", that's wiki, but I see where Lar's coming from. --kingboyk 14:59, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I added it to my userbox. Thanks. Steelbeard1 15:25, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I've put it into the template section of the project page, grouped with the project membership message box. While I was there I expanded the Album infobox section a bit with things I learned updating Revolución De Amor and Sueños Líquidos... note that MAYBE some of our albums have the wrong colors? Most use orange but I thought I saw a yellow one. Could be misremembering. ++Lar: t/c 21:49, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

tasklist ideas

see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Michigan for a task box. Maybe we should crib the idea? {{michigantasks}} which then leads to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Michigan/to_do by transclusion. I am not sure I'd do it exactly that way (having two levels of template and one being talk and one not) but the idea is sound... If other projects do it in ways you like, please post their info too so we can compare! I just like the way it looks though, so maybe the style is good for the newsletter we're talking about doing?... (as it happens, I live in Michigan so ran into this) ++Lar: t/c 02:02, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Ooh! Look at Talk:Japan. Those clever folks at WikiProject Japan seem to include their todo list as a hidden div in their Project template, with a click-to-show link! I like :) --kingboyk 09:19, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Tis done. I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject_The_Beatles/To_do and put it into a hidden div in our talk page template, which is tres cool if you ask me. I've rounded up the stray tasks I could find, and added an extra step to Wikipedia:WikiProject_The_Beatles/Article_Classification#How_to_grade. Now, if you other folks could add articles which need cleaning or a photo as you find em, tidy the formatting, and add anything that I've missed. With a new userbox and a todo list to talk about, plus reports on what we've been doing, we have plenty of material for our first newsletter. That's a job for one of you guys! :) --kingboyk 14:22, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
PS One other job - putting the articles we've already assessed as stubs or as in need of cleaning onto the todo list. --kingboyk 15:37, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Recent changes page?

Take a look at the Formula One wikiproject, and you'll see the following page: Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Formula_One/Related_Pages

I haven't looked yet to see how its done, but perhaps it could be handy for this project too. --Mal 05:50, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

How it works is just by making a page full of links to "related pages" to the project. Then you can click on "Related changes" in the toolbox on the left to see any recent edits to any of the pages listed. ;-) AlbinoMonkey (Talk) 07:11, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Albinomonkey. Sounds simple, though a tiny bit of work involved. I'll wait for other comments, and maybe do it myself if there is no disagreement. --Mal 08:28, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Maybe could be created at the same time as the category tables are populated in the article classification page? Or, perhaps some sort of tool could build the list? It's a nice idea, certainly, and could be very useful. --kingboyk 09:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Carl Lindstrom Company makes DYK!

We did it, we made DYK! See Talk:Carl Lindstrom Company. Yaay us!!! Nice work everyone, way to collaborate. Here's hoping this is just the start! ++Lar: t/c 04:01, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Someone asked me (indirectly) why I think this is a big deal... Here's why. Every time an article makes DYK, it gets a large number of eyes looking at it. Those eyes often improve and expand it quite nicely. Which is good for the article and good for the project. They also sometimes look at the talk page. When they do that, they may realise they want to get involved in the project. That's even better for the project. So, that's why I think a DYK win is a good thing. ++Lar: t/c 16:42, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
If you mean me (not sure if you do) I questioned the importance of failed requests not successful ones :) But maybe I'm just being paranoid and it was somebody else. --kingboyk 17:03, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
It was somebody else I think. However... Even faileds get a little publicity. Further, if we agree that succeeding in a DYK is good for the project, then it follows that we want to have more successes. Two ways to do that: nominate more at the same success rate, or improve success rates. Tracking fails is a way to improve success rates. Which is why I think it's worth doing when I remmeber. ++Lar: t/c 17:25, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
It's not the right venue, but I think DYK is flawed. Instead of choosing mature articles, they insist on new articles which haven't gone through verification and peer scrutiny yet. And they reject articles because they're too short, but most new articles are just that, and the shortest need the most work! </rant> --kingboyk 17:29, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Nod.... No it's not the right venue but ya, you have a point. OTOH, there already is a featured article and changing the focus to featuring articles thought good might be difficult. On the THIRD hand, I sort of like the idea of featuring stuff selected as being goodness but from WPs NEWEST... it shows we can create good stuff fast. ++Lar: t/c 17:33, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/Log

Pursuant to previous discussion regarding archiving what we have achieved, I've created Wikipedia:WikiProject The Beatles/Log. --kingboyk 19:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Please watchlist Paul McCartney

Please add Paul McCartney to your watchlists. It seems that article has been a bit of a battle ground from pro and anti seal hunt POV warriors. I've seriously trimmed the section and hopefully removed POV. Whilst I accept that the section could be expanded a little, an article on an ex-Beatle is not the place to debate the pros and cons of seal hunting and - given all that McCartney has done in his life - it's only a small chapter and should be treated as such. As far as I'm concerned, the article should say nothing more controversial than McCartney opposes seal hunting, he went to Canada, x y and z happened (without every last detail), and reaction was (whatever the reaction was). I'll be reverting anything crufty, POV or verbose (erm... verbose... I'll wrap this comment up now). --kingboyk 21:12, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Baby You're a Rich Man

There are two articles, Baby You're a Rich Man and Baby, You're a Rich Man (differing in a comma). There should be only one. But which? cddb suggests the one without the comma... anyone have a definite answer? I slapped a mergetag on them both. (I found these trying to debug what was "eating commas sometimes but not always""... well, as it turns out, nothing was, there are two versions!!! see User:Lar/Sandbox2 ++Lar: t/c 03:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know and will have to look into it. In the meantime, Baby, You're a Rich Man seems to be the lesser of the two articles, so when we know which slot we want to use, I'll do a history merge and let that one sit hidden in the page history or speedy delete it as a duplicate. (Gracenote is CDDB is user submitted?) Anyway... hmm... my personal records (where I catalogued my collection, backed by encyclopedias, sleeve notes etc) have no comma; so does Amazon. I'll be bold and go with that, it's easily reversible now I have the magic buttons :) --kingboyk 12:27, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
Whether the as published title has a comma is the way to decide what to keep, in my view, not which one is meatier. Meatier is to decide what text to keep. But I see you did all that, left a redirect and we are cool. I added a note that some versions of the title exist with the comma... thanks for sorting that. It was 1 AM when I ran into it, I was done thinking about it. Aside: I dunno what is up with GraceNote, I wasn't watching when it changed from CDDB to Gracenote... I liked it better before, much easier to search stuff... ++Lar: t/c 13:59, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The category contains [[Category:The Beatles songs|*]]

What is up with using "*" as the lexical (sort order) for a cat that's in a cat? ... see Category:Beatles song stubs... I asked on the category page too. It screws up my tablegen semi-badly. ++Lar: t/c 03:10, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

It puts the most important article (usually the one that a {{catmore}} template would point to) at the top of the list. Unfortunately it wasn't designed with your script in mind :) There is a possible solution, which is changing asteriskes to space e.g. [[Category:The Beatles songs| ]]. I think that might actually be the preferred way to do it. --kingboyk 12:19, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
I think to handle it I need an exception list or something. I can also handle * as a special case (I do that for space already I think) when deciding what sortkey to use, and not take it if I find it, instead take the name itself. I put the remaining loose ends on the talk Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Beatles/Article Classification ++Lar: t/c 13:50, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
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