Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers

Template for Articles on (Classical) Symphonies

DavidRF has recently cleaned up a spate of Haydn symphonies using a very simple standardised format that I developed for the half dozen or so articles on the Haydn symphonies that I have gotten around to writing so far. This excellent effort reminds me that this template could probably be felicitously applied to our other articles on symphonies so we have a standard structure across the body of articles on individual symphonies (easily extendable, of course, to other pieces). My template consists of:

1. Overview of the work
2. Date of Composition & Scoring (includes history & first performance information)
3. Nickname (where applicable)
4. Movements

I think templates have been proposed in the past (as with naming conventions), but I am not sure of their fate. Any thoughts? Eusebeus 13:15, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

That template seems to cover all essential information. I'll use it myself...when ever I find myself first editing the article of an individual work. Chris 04:03, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

My personal opinion is that the movements should be moved up higher on the page. I always have to scroll down on the Beethoven Symphonies for the movements, whereas in his sonatas, the movements are at the top. It would seem that the movements of a piece are the most basic information about it as they are what little objective information about the piece that the composer actually supplies. At any rate, I think that pages of the same type such as symphonies should be uniform across all composers, not just by each composer. Asmeurer (talk ♬ contribs) 05:34, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Gregorian vs. Julian Dates

I'd be interested in hearing project members' perspectives on a matter of style - the use of Gregorian vs. Julian dates. I'll present as a case study the particular item that I'm interested in, but I bring the discussion here to the project page to obtain a wider response as to whether we'd have general guidelines when such things are in question. Here's the specific instance that I'm considering: Italian early Baroque composer Giulio Caccini published a collection of madrigals and songs called Le nuove musiche. The publication date is 1601 or 1602 depending on the reference source. The print sources that I have available at this moment (15th edition Britannica, New Oxford History of Music, and Grout's History of Western Music) all give 1602 as the publication date. The Caccini article, and some web pages which I located by Google search on "Giulio Caccini" and "Le nuove musiche" give 1601 as the publication date. I do not have access to a copy of Grove at the time of this writing. The Here of a Sunday Morning web article on Caccini [1] was helpful in explaining the apparent discrepancy - it gives the date of Le nuove musiche as 1602 (1601 old style) (i.e. Julian). So, given the different usage in reference sources, which do we use in Wikipedia? Apparently there has been some discussion of this topic in WikiProject Years, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Years#Julian, Gregorian and other calendars. If we go by which calendar was in usage in the applicable country, "most of" Italy was using the Gregorian calendar from 1582 on, per Gregorian calendar#Adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which would probably mean we use 1602 for publication of "Le nuove musiche".

Thanks in advance for your consideration on this question. This topic is of particular interest to me because I've been adding musical publications to the Year in music pages, want to add them to the appropriate year, and would like some more guidance other than just my own opinion. Cheers, Lini 12:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The resolution of the above, that I determined on, is: as some sources have 1601 and some have 1602, and as the difference is explained by Julian date vs. Gregorian date, I have listed the publication on both 1601 and 1602 "Year in music" pages, with a footnote on each page mentioning the alternative dating. Sincerely, Lini 03:47, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Composer's interpreters

I believe every composer page should have his/her most important interpreters shown in some standard way. I think this can be NPOV (you don't have to say they're the best, only that they are remarkable).

I don't see why we should mention Bach in Glenn Gould's article and not Glenn Gould in Bach's, as that's what I'd be searching for if I didn't know the composer and wanted to listen to his works.

Please, I want to know your thougts on this idea. Sdistefano 01:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use with permission

I have removed the guidelines on "fair use with permission" from the project page. While it is nice that the copyright holders do not object to their works being used on Wikipedia, and indeed, we would like them not to object to our use, it grants the use of the work no special status on Wikipedia unless it is released under a free content license, and should be treated as any other "fair use" media. This composers project, much as I like its subject matter, may not set special guidelines for this use that differ from the global project guidelines. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 21:44, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Kat's right. Wikipedia is not just about Free as in beer, which these fair use things sort of are, but free as in free content, which can be used in other ways, including commercially, or in a non-educational context. Mak (talk) 21:51, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

And as an aside, there is nothing about our educational use that gives us a free pass on copyright. I wish there were.. I pay a lot of taxes to support the local school district buying books. :) As you can see, our use of such recordings is bound to leave us in ugly legal positions even were it permitted by our policy. --Gmaxwell 22:27, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

List of compositions by (composer)

Greetings,

There has been some discussion of list of compositions formatting, but I would like to address an more fundamental issue: the placement of such lists. Should they be in a separate article, or incorporated within the article itself? See Category:Compositions by composer for a list of all such lists. I would prefer to standardize this across all composers' articles. For example, Jeanne Demessieux suffers from a double list of compositions, and a user has questioned the separation of Leo Sowerby's works list. To contrast these, I like the approach taken by Johann Pachelbel and List of compositions by Johann Pachelbel. I personally am in support of separate articles for works lists, but I am open to the other approach as well; it's just that I think we need to set a standard for this. Thanks, —Sesquialtera II (talk) 00:01, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I just recalled a previous discussion regarding a specific instance of this matter: Talk:George Frideric Handel#List of Pieces by Handel. This may prove helpful in this discussion. —Sesquialtera II (talk) 23:34, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

My opinion is that any list more than a reletively small amount should get its own article -- it's needless whitespace for the main article space otherwise. Importent pieces should get mentioned in the text somewhere, idealy, anyway. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 01:26, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

I see this is not exactly a hot-button issue, so I'm going to edit the project page to make a recommendation to create a separate compositions list article whenever the composer has written more than, say, 12-15 pieces, unless there is a sufficient objection soon. —Sesquialtera II (talk) 06:13, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Sudden deletion of fair-use sound images without discussion: major implications for music-related articles

Dear fellow contributors

User:Gmaxwell, a player at Wikipedia talk:Fair use, conducted a rampage two days ago through Johann Sebastian Bach that has led to the destruction of all of the fair-use audio excerpts. These excerpts were prepared in accordance with the WP policy on the fair use of commercial recordings (< 30 secs, educational value, no impingement on commercial market, etc) and include two whole-track excerpts for which written permission was given by the copyright owner to include in the article.

The action, by Maxwell and someone else who, strangely, doesn't appear in the edit history pages of the files in question, has been sudden, unilateral, and without so much as a mention on the talk page of the article. This has started a controversy at Wikipedia:Fair use#taking things way too far.

Our ability to illustrate music-related articles with the short, justified, fair use of excerpts from commercial recordings is now seriously threatened. I believe that these people are acting on their own particular interpreation of WP's fair-use policy. I urge you to voice your opinion in this debate.

Tony 02:32, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Your characterization of this as a "rampage" is unproductive and unhelpful. The use was not in accordance with policy; please see Talk:Johann_Sebastian_Bach to see what I have said in the specific case that has prompted this discussion. I do support using fair use where the use is truly fair—for example, for modern composers where there can be no free recording—but fair use is more limited under our policies than has often been observed. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 03:13, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Odd, User:Danny says that he's the one who did it. Interesting. Kim Bruning 20:05, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Gmaxwell originally placed tags on the sound files. Danny then deleted them. Then Gmaxwell removed the redlinks from the article. Tony's conclusion does not fit the facts as given in the deletion log. See first, second, third, fourth, fifth, all deleted by Danny. Mak (talk) 04:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I was unable to recover that information at the time from the info pages; I have no idea why. Spillage, I'd rather have no recordings at all than poor ones. Show me a good one and we're flying, but I see none on the Commons. Quite the reverse: they're generally appallingly bad. I don't agree that the usage was not in accordance with policy. The deletion was clearly a breach of policy, and prevented debate on the former issue. Modern composers where there can be no free recordings? Hello? Tony 12:32, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

As stated earlier: Danny is policy, he cannot breach it. (This would be a bad time to explain how this also applies to other people, due the mechanics of how wikipedia policy really works. Just keep in mind that there's more to it, and that it can be fun and useful to know:-)

What you *can* do is try to explain why it's a bad idea to delete these recordings. Maybe people will simply agree. One admin offered you the opportunity to undelete the files, should you have provided a good rationale. It's unfortunate that you didn't take that opportunity at the time, but I think the offer still stands. At worst, he would give you several new ideas as to how to approach the problem.

Alternately, you could try to get the recordings under GFDL or CC(-BY)(-SA).

As yet another means, there are several musicians and technicians on wikipedia who might even be able to help record very specific parts for us (yet another solution). Unfortunately, you've already done your best to alienate at least one such person, but much can still be recovered even there.

Commons has already been mentioned. I hear that they didn't have anything yet? Mores the pity. Maybe we can remedy that situation somehow.

In short, there are many ways to go about getting a decent recording for the article. The trick is not to stand on policy, but rather to just ask for help. You will get it. :-)

Kim Bruning 19:16, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

A Composer's works

Is there a policy or guide line concerning how a composer's works should be listed in an article? For instance on the John Coolidge Adams page the works are listed by form and then by date of composition with the date first. However on the Steve Reich page they are listed only by date but with the date at the end of the entry. If there is no guide line about this could one be made to help standardize things? S.dedalus 02:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Ups, just noticed this was already discussed above, sorry about that. S.dedalus 02:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Dominick Argento on peer review

I have submitted numerous articles for peer review and never get more than a bot's suggestions. I am determined to get an actual peer review for this article, so I figured I would post it here. If anyone wants to contribute, feel free! --Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 07:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

A picture of the guy would be nice. Also a more complete works listing. Asmeurer (talk ♬ contribs) 05:27, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Igor Stravinsky

This article has been selected for Feature Article Review. Please see the talk page and discussion at FAR for improvements you can make to retain its FA status. Jeffpw 10:12, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Tenacious D

Would Tenacious D come under the umbrella of this WikiProject. I know they compose their own stuff but I am not sure if they should be here.

Tenacious D Fans (talk) 16:55, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Conflict of interest: backup requested

I could use some help, potentially, here: User_talk:Antandrus#Unwarranted_deletions. Composer Lera Auerbach's husband has written her article (probably) and is inserting her name into many, many articles, in an aggressively promotional manner. Any help/suggestions appreciated. I think she's notable enough for an article on Wikipedia, but should she be in short lists with Bach and Britten? She's neither in the New Grove nor in the New Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, which is quite exhaustive. If anyone's watching this, feel free to drop me a line. Antandrus (talk) 02:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

External Links to Sheet Music

It has just occured to me that linking to sheetmusicarchive [2] as an external link is inappropriate since only two downloads per day are allowed, when the alternative IMSLP [3] is available giving unlimited public domain files. It is much more comprehensive and the content from SMA seems to be entirely available there. I'm not saying we should replace every link to SMA in every composer's article, but I think we should bear it in mind when working on the pages. Any thoughts? M A Mason 20:44, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, especially as the IMSLP seems to be similar in spirit to WP. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 20:58, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I have already replaced SMA links with IMSLP links on some occasions, when all content of SMA was available on IMSLP, too. For the links, one can use the template {{IMSLP}}. --Leonard Vertighel 22:31, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes for composers

Infobox,Episode 1 (Apr 11-12)

I am seeking a consensus for [classical] composer articles about Infoboxes. I had hoped that the soft consensus of those who edit the articles about classical composers would be respected, but apparently you must have a WikiProject behind you now in order to make suggestions on articles. I would put forward that Infoboxes are a net negative for Classical composers. They are redundant to a good lede paragraph, and they lead to stating things about composers in very black and white terms. In addition, they tend to take up the first editing screen and confuse new editors who might want to edit the beginning of articles, and might be scared off by the template format. In addition, they are difficult for the inexperienced to modify to special circumstances, and are easily broken.

I think infoboxes can be good for things for which taxonomy is important, such as plants and animals. I don't think they're good for things which require more subtlety, like people. Some specific examples of why infoboxes are, in practicality, bad, although I wouldn't be surprised if the technically savvy could fix some of them: In Ludwig van Beethoven the infobox says "born blah blah blah" when dozens of contributors have worked constantly to clarify that his birth date is not known, only his Baptismal date. Apparently, for some reason, the instruments he owned are particularly important. Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Moving on to Frederic Chopin, or whatever his name is, the last infobox included in the article gave his birth name as Frederic Chopin, the least likely of his name to be given as a birth name. Add to that the national flags added to all of them, even when at the time cities may have been parts of different countries, the mistakes which are introduced when people do mass-additions of infoboxes, and their lack of flexibility, I think in the long run it's much better not to have infoboxes on composer articles. Thanks, Mak (talk) 21:58, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

While I think it is possible to do a decent composer infobox, I pretty much agree with this. I've never really liked infoboxes for people because of the reasons Mak points out. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 22:12, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up. I have to agree, and I think that the key point is that we are dealing with human beings. There are far too many subtleties for the infobox, definitely. The national flag has become an issue on the Liszt page, where we currently have the Austro-Hungarian flag, when it really isn't necessary to have a flag at all. I think if anything we should encourage users not to place infoboxes necessarilly, and to include them only if they're deemed necessary for a specific article. Not because of wikiproject beaurocracy, but because it's almost as if there is a certain pressure to conform and thus include an infobox, where in many cases they're neither necessary nor desirable. M A Mason 22:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Gah, it's awful on Beethoven. In general, generic infoboxes are not good on people. People don't fit into nice little boxes. ;) I suppose it would be okay to code a fully custom infobox on each composer, but that would dramatically reduce the small value that infoboxes provide. I'm glad to see people trying to build consistency standards on Wikipedia, but it would be nice if they were working on ones like sourcing ... rather than on one likes this which are sometimes harmful (as demonstrated in your example). --Gmaxwell 22:14, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Respectfully diagree. I think the infoboxes on all people are highly valuable and informative and gives a certain overall respectable appearance to the articles. Cricket02 22:22, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

But to the extent they are informative, they are redundant to the lede. I don't see how they add to the respectability of articles when they are sometimes blatantly wrong, or not nuanced enough to really be called right. Do we really need more pastel boxes? (Plus, sometimes the colors are really ugly). Just because textbooks tend to have lots of ugly reductionist pastel boxes doesn't mean we need them. Mak (talk) 22:49, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

I am in complete agreement with Mak, though I have long suspected I had a minority view. Infoboxes on composers, especially as you get to times before the modern age, are misleading at best. The most basic of facts need a nuanced view which is impossible in a box, but which is already available in the lead paragraph. Frankly I think we risk looking like amateurs when we have a box for a composer that baldly gives a birthdate (ambiguous), nationality (meaningless without an explanation), and genre (the worst of all--I've seen the word "classical" used in the sense it is in record stores, i.e. to differentiate the music of that composer from hip-hop, country, et al.) No, I cannot support adding infoboxes to composer articles. Antandrus (talk) 22:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that infoboxes are often badly implemented, I am in favour of using them when they make navigation between articles easier. We have a number of infoboxes for opera composers that list their works and I think these are useful. Infoboxes also serve the purpose of breaking up text and making articles more accessible. - Kleinzach 23:10, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Hey Kleinzach, I'm not opposed to all "boxes with information" in articles, I think those used for navigation and listing all of a composers operas, etc., can be very useful. I am talking specifically about {{Infobox Biography}} and related infoboxes, which are used to give basic information such as birthday, birthplace, cup size, instrument, etc. For examples see Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt, it's the big box on the right. Mak (talk) 23:16, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

If we are talking about potted biography infoboxes then I agree with you entirely. The Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt boxes (listing their occupations!) are grotesque. - Kleinzach 23:37, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Yup, those are what I'm talking about. Mak (talk) 23:39, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

You know that Beethoven box is awful! Same as the Liszt one, that flag was NOT the Austrian flag in 1827. It's shocking and simplistic. They really should go. M A Mason 23:46, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at the one on Josquin des Prez, which just appeared this morning. It even has a flag of France and one of (!) Austria. At the risk of being repetitive, I really think the composer infoboxes need to go. Thanks, Antandrus (talk) 00:42, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I support removal of infoboxes, using Beethoven as a case study (some points were already covered by Mak):

Please consider the reason why an infobox is presented on a page like this. An infobox puts vital information in a concise, easy table for cursory readers to glean. In this case, an infobox is not ideal because the birth date, first of all, is contested, and it does not provide sufficient information about the peculiarities of his actual birth. Moreover, the rest of the information is misleading and confusing to those who are not musicians — Beethoven uniquely straddles both Classical and Romantic eras in music, and putting both there means nothing to those who don't understand his chronological ambiguity. The "Occupations" row is misleading, apparently stating Beethoven's work was part of some job or career. The "Notable Instruments" section still confuses me; is it a list of instruments he owned? Why is that info pertinent in summarizing his life into a small box?

(above is my comment) ALTON .ıl 05:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Get rid of the damn things. What's the point of having an "infobox" when the box itself is distorting the accuracy of the info it contains? The flags are being used in a hopelessly anachronistic way and complicated matters such as ambiguous birth dates and nationalities are being misleadingly simplified by this Procrustean monstrosity. It makes us look as if we're playing Top Trumps with composers. --Folantin 07:40, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I too oppose the biographical infoboxes, for the same reasons that keep recurring above. logologist|Talk 07:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

<rant, you might want to look away>One thing that perpetually gets my back up is that every time I write an article for flaming DYK, along comes someone from the Biography Project, adding a whole series of annoying templates to the talk: one of these, is invariably, "This article needs an infobox"! Well, no, this article doesn't need an infobox. For starters such articles are pretty short and an infobox would take up as much space as the actual content, and secondly the birth dates of fairly obscure 18th-century singers are invariably never known: usually we don't even know their birthplace, all that's survived is the date of their first musical appearance - and their last, because usually we don't know when they died, viz Anna Maria Strada: no birthdate or death-date. These ones for composers are particularly monstrous. Whack'em.</rant over> Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 08:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox Returns (Apr 12-13)

Ouch! I've been following this discussion and wondering whether and how to respond. I would be one editor who is "guilty" of adding templates to talk pages, including "needs infobox". As a result of a very civil discussion with Antandrus , on Talk:Claudio Monteverdi, I learned the reasons why those who edit the articles about classical composers prefer not to have infoboxes, and have therefore ceased the practice of using the "needs infobox" parameter on Composers articles.

Moreschi, your reference to "Mr. Cretin" above (in my case it would be "Ms. Cretin"), is not very pleasant. Part of the process of Wikipedia is that one does things that one thinks is beneficial, and then one's behavior is refined by interactions with others, where people explain why they have opinions or preferences about doing things different ways. In the case of my adding the "needs infobox parameter" to the Claudio Monteverdi article, the next editor's response was merely to change the parameter to "No", with no attempt to "educate" me as to why - this could have been done via a note on my talk page; a note on the talk page of the article; even a comment in the edit summary. After seeing that change, I tried looking for documentation of a "soft consensus" in a centralized location, and couldn't find one, and therefore needed to solicit an explanation, in order to understand why my edit was changed. So, I'm glad that this discussion has been started here. But, I'd ask you to consider that any discussion on Wikipedia has a "public audience" and to be respectful of those coming from a different angle.

Many of you have been stating very strongly the reasons why you don't like infoboxes on articles about Composers. I would suggest, now, changing the direction of the discussion to focus on positive actions, rather than rants that may offend those who have (however mistakenly) recommended infoboxes in the past. How might you interact positively with WikiProject Biography to accomplish what you'd like to happen? Thanks in advance for your willingness to talk things over in a positive way, Lini 12:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Lini, I suspect that was me, and I apologise that you felt you needed an explanation and didn't get one. I assumed that you were going through tagging scores of articles, and wouldn't notice or care if the parameters on one were changed. Whenever I have tried to explain why a biography box was detrimental for a specific composer article, people have insisted that I should get higher level consensus. Say, on the Composers Wikiproject. I don't think we should need a consensus of all of WikiProject Biography in order to keep infoboxes off of composer articles, although if we get consensus (and it looks like we will as long as those involved in the discussion are those who edit composer biographies) we should probably let them know. Although I think infoboxes for people are generally detrimental, there are probably groups who strongly disagree with me, and whose subject areas work better within the confines of infoboxes. Mak (talk) 14:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

My apologies for being a complete jackass: that wasn't polite or civil, and I apologise. In fact, it was very, very stupid. I wasn't really so annoyed with the composer ones, which are borderline cases as I was in cases where an infobox would take up more room and go on for longer in the viewing window than the actual article does. I'll talk to WP:BIOGRAPHY over this - politely. Again, I apologise for being a dick. Sorry. Cheers, Moreschi ^{Want some help? Ask!} 13:33, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Moreschi, thank you for the apology and the nice note on my talk page; I kinda thought that your remarks were more along the lines of "not thinking the impact all the way through" than deliberately trying to offend anyone. Thanks for taking the time to "make it right". Cheers, Lini 19:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

A couple of side-notes:

• While pottering around adding things like Template:Verdi operas to opera articles, I've occasionally run into infoboxes on composer pages that aren't the ones under discussion here, for example Template:italianmusic, which appears, for example, in the articles on Domenico Cimarosa, Francesco Cilea and Franco Donatoni. And I see that someone has completely unnecessarily added the Verdi operas template to the Giuseppe Verdi article, notwithstanding that this more-or-less duplicates the list of operas in the article, and the image at the top of the infobox duplicates the one already in the article. It looks as if some sort of territorial agreement (or summit conference) among projects might be useful - specifically, I suppose, where the activities of the Biography people overlap other projects. I dunno where the Music of Italy one comes from.
• If anyone wants to look at discussion similar to the above, try the Shakespeare talk page where a discussion about "influences" in the infobox includes discussion of their general utility.

Add my vote to the biography-infoboxes-for-composers-are-a-waste-of-space camp. --GuillaumeTell 13:55, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

(General comment) Please bear in mind that some infoboxes are being used to contain structured meta data, to assist parsing by 'bots, and this kind of use is likely to increase the future, not least with the addition of microformats such as hCard. If the current infobox(es) are not notable, then I think we'd do better to replace or improve, rather then avoid, them. Andy Mabbett 15:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Not notable? Huh? I think if you want editors to use infoboxes as metadata catch-alls, you should make them a lot more flexible. We need to find a much more robust way to gather metadata, this is clearly not working for composers. Mak (talk) 15:27, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

s/notable/suitable - my typo. Where does this "you" come from? I thought this was supposed to be a collaboration? Andy Mabbett 16:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Don't get me started on bots...We're an encylopaedia; our primary aim should be to provide accurate information; anything that hinders that (such as these boxes) should go. --Folantin 15:34, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

You appear to have misread or not read, my comment - if they "hinder" that aim then they should be improved until they do not. Good infoboxes help that aim. Andy Mabbett 16:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Why not use the "persondata" template to collect metadata? That's what it's for. The infoboxes on composers do more harm than good, as discussed above, and you can collect good metadata using something like "persondata" which is invisible. Antandrus (talk) 16:07, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Include Infoboxes – I am actually one of the undesirable people that add infoboxes to articles. However, on pages where there is a dispute over the inclusion of an infobox, I refrain from adding one but might make a comment on the article's talk page. I actually refrained from adding an infobox to the Beethoven page as the well-sized image looked quite nice there before, and saw the discussion from September 2006 on the Talk page. As for the instruments thing, it's supposed to be for well-known specific instruments played by a musical performer. (It was added to accomodate famous guitars for incorporating the guitarist infobox into the musical artist infobox.) It doesn't make sense for Beethoven but perhaps it does for Yo-Yo Ma and his Stradivarious Cello. I recently asked for a vote on the Chopin talk page on whether to include an infobox. I understand that the infobox does not illustrate the nuances of certain facts about a person's life. However, there is nothing in the musical artist infobox that explicitly states a person's nationality. It states their date and place of birth, date and place of death, and optionally their origin if it is different from their place of birth. Their origin is explained as where they started their musical career or the notable part of it. Notes can be added to birthplace or date, just as in the body of an article, where an interested party can look to find additional information. If no date is known, one can simply put the year, decade, or century with circa. If editors have a problem with a listed genre, change it or discuss it on the talk page. Editors that have a great deal of knowledge about a subject may find infoboxes simplistic, redundant, and rude. However, a student with little or no knowledge about a subject can use the infobox to quickly identify the subject by context. This is the greatest use of an infobox for the broad audience of wikipedia. For this reason, I hope that infoboxes can be incorporated into these articles, with every attempt to make the information contained within them as accurate as possible. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 18:50, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, in the case of Beethoven, for instance, they could get the same information (only more accurate) from the first two sentences of the article (if the places of birth and death were put there). The introductory sections to each article are supposed to provide an overview of the subject anyway - and they are able to do this in a far more flexible and intelligent manner than the infoboxes. --Folantin 19:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I think perhaps you are missing some of our objections to infoboxes, or perhaps they are not problems for you. The point on Beethoven is not that I don't understand what the appropriate place for a performer's instruments would be, but that is entirely inappropriate for Beethoven's article to have it as one of the first things. As for giving a range or decade for his birthday, we know a definite fact about his birth - his date of baptism. It seems silly to give a wishy-washy date for his birthday when we can give his exact date of baptism. But this is not really the point - it is that infoboxes have a tendency to be inaccurate, inappropriate, and inflexible. The Beethoven article is just a particularly egregious example. If the regular editors could figure out how to make it good without hours of research into strange codes, they would. These infoboxes are not very wiki. The use of flags for countries which did not exist at the time the person lived, in Josquin for example, is just yet another example of a near-pathological need for consistency to the detriment of accuracy.

Also, this discussion is not about all infoboxes. It is just about Biography infoboxes on composer articles. Mak (talk) 19:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Except that the infobox on the Beethoven page is not a Biography infobox but Template:Infobox musical artist, which has been slapped on a lot of composers' pages when it's really intended for performers (such as Alexis Korner, Britney Spears, Doris Day, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Throbbing Gristle - need I go on?) --GuillaumeTell 21:01, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The basis for it is the Biography infobox. That there are a gazillion versions of almost-identicle infoboxes for biographies is an argument for why they are not very useful, to me. It makes it difficult for bots to parse them anyway, and highlights their inflexibility. My point with the above comment is that we are not trying to abolish them for those who feel strongly that Britney Spears needs an infobox, and we are not trying to get rid of all informative templates, but that we are only trying to get a consensus about the "potted biographies", as Kleinzach calls them. Mak (talk) 21:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. It's not a problem, as far as I am concerned anyway, if people want to have infoboxes on popular performers, or even "classical" performers. Perlman has a verifiable birthdate, lives in countries, owns a significant violin, and plays it regularly. But Josquin?? I wouldn't want someone just reading about this magnificent musician for the first time to think he was born in Austria, died in France, and considered his occupation to be composer. All three are not only misleading, they are demonstrably false. Antandrus (talk) 00:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox, the Revenge (Apr 16-17)

I've just raised this issue with the Arts Project to se how other projects feel about it, see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Arts#Biographical_infoboxes.2C_Biography_Project_banners_and_bots. Any other news? - Kleinzach 00:12, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the thoughts of those that oppose badly thought-out infoboxes (sometimes it is possible for an infobox to be well designed), and also those who oppose flags in infoboxes. I once started and advertised a centralized discussion on use of flag templates, but that ran out of steam. Doing one for infoboxes would take even more effort, but is urgently needed. Two reasons - (1) I read somewhere, but can't find the reference, that Google are trying to parse our infoboxes!! (2) We should really be using Wikipedia:Persondata to gather biographical meta-data for database-type applications. Finally, database concerns should be secondary to the need to produce a well-references and well-written encyclopedia article. Carcharoth 12:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

There are some interesting discussions at Wikipedia talk:Persondata as well. Carcharoth 13:01, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Probably pointless dissent At the risk of spitting into the wind, I have to disagree with much of the above. I think some of the opposition is driven by the aesthetic concerns of experts/initiates, rather than strategic concerns wrt serving the general reader.

Infoboxes in general have a distinctly USA Today feel that naturally grates on us longhairs, inducing feelings akin to a passionate oenophile presented with a white wine spritzer. [I count myself as much a longhair musicgeek as any here--just look at the freakin username I took!] But while even the initiate can learn lots from the best WP articles, I don't think that's the only, or even necessarily the primary, goal of developing these articles. Ideally, while simultaneously affording a respectable scholarly overview, I think a perfect article should also provide a friendly intro to the most ignorant of the uninitiated. (Note: ignorant, not stupid.) It's the same reason we wikilink the most basic concepts (even music itself!). Try to imagine the reader who comes to the article wondering just who, or what, a Goss-kwynn is. He looks at the box, sees that he's the guy in the funny hat in the woodcut, & that he lived in Europe in the 1500's & wrote music. Maybe that's enough for him, or that's all he has time for today. He goes away seconds later (assuming a decent infobox) less ignorant than before. What's wrong with that?

Yes, infoboxes often duplicate the info in a good lead section. But take the common parallel of a good (broadsheet) newspaper article. Compare the infobox with the headline, the lead section with the lede, or front page, text, and the stuff after the TOC (the article proper) with the meat of the news article, "after the jump". News headlines and ledes almost always duplicate information. That doesn't mean they serve the same purpose. And leads aren't always much better. I took a look at Beethoven the other day after reading complaints here. I immediately edited the infobox to cut the occupation "conductor." But (as I said on the talk page) I had to edit the lead too--in fact the lead was worse. IIRC the phrase was "...he was also a celebrated pianist and conductor," which is so wrong my brain hurts. I just looked at Chopin (the top of which is really very anti WP:STYLE). I found myself really wanting an infobox so that I could quickly remind myself what his dates were or just how young he died, without digging through the 25 versions of his name (like it or not his name in common Anglophone usage is precisely Frederic Chopin; one can always just delete the "birthname" parameter).

To my eye the current iterations of the Josquin and Beethoven infoboxes are net pluses. It doesn't seem to have been that impossible to fix the problems, like just deleting the anachronistic flags. (I do think minimalism is good infobox philosophy.) Maybe Josquin didn't "think of himself" as a composer, but we certainly do; if he were just a great Papal chorister I dare say he wouldn't be on WP.

Finally on the technical editing issues Mak brought up way up top, as a pretty new editor (c. 40 days), I really haven't had much problem working with {{Infobox musical artist}}. Once you get a hold of the basic idea of a template (which any serious editor is gonna have to do anyway) it's not all that hard to work with. Actually, with it's named parameters and throrough "doc" page, it's one of the easier templates I've worked with so far. No it's not ideal for composers, but I think decent workarounds are possible and have already been achieved in some places. Terminology is a problem, but I think we have to meet the general public halfway in places--the lay listener may hear stylistic differences between Beethoven's 1st piano sonata and the 32nd, but she is almost certainly going to identify both as the "classical" genre. Has anyone tried bringing up modifications/additional parameters (say "Stylistic period=...") w/ the template's creators or WPMusicians? or just creating a fork? (...he asked, confident that his own technical incompetence would absolve him of actual responsibility...)

Apologies as usual for verbosity. There's alot up there to respond to...—Turangalila ^talk 15:16, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you Turangalila for your support and thorough explanation of the use of infoboxes. You explained the issue much better than I have been able to do. I've also noticed the Chopin page in particular for its stance against the inclusion of an infobox, and the awkward layout at the top of the page. I've made comments on the Chopin talk page in relation to the use of an infobox and to the position of the table of contents. I hope that the users who are against using infoboxes can read Turangalila's comments above and come away with a new appreciation for the value that they provide to uninformed and casual users of Wikipedia. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 22:22, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to add support for the viewpoint that Turangalila expressed, that it is OK that the content of infoboxes is redundant (they are supposed to be redundant), and that, in spite of the difficulty of presenting a nuanced view of the information in the very brief summary required, they are a net plus, when recognized as targeting "the most ignorant of uninitiated" readers (no disparagement intended by that terminology), who is just taking a quick look at the page. Turangalila, you did a good job of expressing eloquently, thoughts on infoboxes that I'd been trying to grapple with the day that I first read this discussion. However, I will also restate, for consistency with previous statements I've made, that although I agree that a decently designed and utilized infobox is a net plus to an article in general, that does not mean that I think a group of articles should be required to have them if the consensus of editors who are most interested in the articles is against having them. Thanks, Lini 02:18, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anybody is against infoboxes per se. We certainly have used them on the Opera Project - but they should be fit for purpose. --Kleinzach 02:34, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Ludwig van Beethoven now has a To do list which states Wikify: On IE the Birth name appear as John Winston Lennon. The article has ben listed as a current candidate for the Article Creation and Improvement Drive. I am going to remove the infobox and ask for a vote, as we have had on the Chopin page. Everyone is welcome to express any opinion but please do us the basic courtesy of actually reading the article and thinking before you decide. - Kleinzach 23:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

BTW I got rid of the John Lennon business on LvB talk, which AFAICT was 4-month old vandalism noone had noticed. Is a possible "article improvement drive" somehow a problem as well? —Turangalila ^talk 02:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

After asking for a vote on the Talk:Ludwig van Beethoven infobox, the article has been automatically relisted on Category:Musicians work group articles needing infoboxes. - Kleinzach 00:24, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I tried this, but doubt it will stick for long. As above, I think we're better without infoboxes on non-current composers, but it's not the end of the world if I'm overruled. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:28, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

FWIW I agree that an automatic re-listing or parameter-changing is pretty bizarre...are you sure that wasn't some overzealous pro-infobox editor? Anyway, I tried some further "trimming" on the LvB talk page wrt birthday etc. Like I said, I'm all in favor of minimizing infobox content where any controversy etc applies, but if their net contribution to the page can be rendered zero or greater, I think inclusionism is the right attitude...—Turangalila ^talk 01:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox vs Mothra (Apr 25-28)

Side note: Since people asked, Mothra was a frequent enemy or sidekick to Godzilla in bad Japanese monster movies, and a frequent afernoon guest on my childhood TV screen. I guess infoboxes had me in a "low culture" frame of mind... and I guess I'm getting old. —Turangalila talk 21:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

i find the attitudes regarding the infoboxes and composer quite odd. keeping in mind that not everyone who visits these pages are as familiar with the classical genre as some of the editors and patrollers of the composer articles. what infoboxes do is impart information quickly to those who may not be inclined or have the time to plunge into the depths of music theory to find something interesting. these composers are not deities and gods...just men with a truck-load of talent. let's not forget that wikipaedia is not for the learned...for those seeking information, and all this stilting and deifying serves only to is exclude the very people we should be woeing. --emerson7 | Talk 02:43, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

the above is copied from my STRONG OBJECTIONS early placed on the Puccini talk page.--emerson7 | Talk 03:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

User:emerson7 has replaced the Puccini infobox despite four editors asking for it to be removed and only one (two counting emerson7) wanting to keep it (see Talk:Giacomo_Puccini#Infobox. (He has also replaced the infobox on Rimsky-Korsakov again against majority opinion). --Kleinzach 05:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi everyone. Has anyone ever considered that this will have to be done with other well known people in history. Surely it would be the same. If we removed infoboxes, then we will have to remove the info boxes for philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and scientists like Paul Dirac or Charles Darwin and novelists like Charles Dickens? Surely then we should collaborate with other groups of people. And to add to that, I would like to say that although the infoboxes do not seem to be useful, they make the profile look professional as if it were part of a database, like with the organisation of the period table. --pizza1512 ^{Talk Autograph} 05:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, as far as encyclopaedias go, "professional" means accurate. I don't care what it looks like, it's the substance that matters. It's obvious these infoboxes have forced editors into giving misleading, oversimplified or irrelevant information: wrong birth dates, anachronistic flags, erroneous genre classifications and so on. It's not important what other biographies do. We know infoboxes are making composers' articles worse (I suspect something similar is happening elsewhere). Accuracy is what is important here, not homogeneity. Therefore the boxes should be removed. --Folantin 06:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Agree with Folantin, Kleinzach and many of the others above. Let's please not impose uniformity for its own sake. The issues will be different in different areas: with composers some of the problems include the anachronistic nationalities, the oversimplified, misleading, or just mistaken "genre" classification (such as tagging someone as "Romantic" strictly as a chronological consideration). Has anyone considered making an infobox that would work for composers? I doubt it would be easy, but it could begin by dispensing with those odious "genre" and "occupation" classifications. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 15:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Antandrus, I also am in agreement about not imposing uniformity, and I also have wondered about the possible value of constructing a Composer infobox template, which also attempts to deal with the "anachronisms" issues common to all biographical infoboxes.

Having such an infobox would give us multiple options - (a) to "lose" the biographical infobox altogether from articles where there is pretty strong consensus from all interested editors not to have one and (b) otherwise, to have a type of infobox that is more tailored to Composers (and hopefully less likely to lead to irrelevant, misleading, anachronistic, etc. info than the Musicians template that is commonly in use on the Composers articles). The Composers infobox could be placed on more highly trafficked articles where infoboxes keep appearing back after they are removed, or where there is a lot of debate over whether to have one or not.

I'd be interested in volunteering to help with this; I haven't created a template before, but I'm sort of a "tech-y" person and would enjoy the challenge of figuring it out, and there are probably places to get help with the technical aspects. If we went ahead with this task, I'd like some discussion of what we should/should not include. Cheers, Lini 18:03, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Can we have a complete moratorium on the use of these infoboxes until we have an agreed Composers Project version? The present type of infoboxes are made by people who haven't read the articles, for the benefit of people who don't want to read them. We need boxes that draw readers into the articles in an intelligent way, but I'm not sure how this can be achieved. (I see the one for Ludwig Wittgenstein is quite sophisticated). Technically it's easy enough to make the boxes, all you need to do is copy a template and re-work it, but putting Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner et al. through the same sausage machine just isn't going to work. --Kleinzach 01:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

That's intriguing: thanks, Kleinzach, for pointing out the Wittgenstein box. I could see a variation on that box actually working for someone like Josquin des Prez, or even Puccini, and it does have useful info that does not have an amateurish feel (every time I see "genre, classical" I want to throw things). Does anyone else reading this thread think it is worthwhile to try to devise an infobox that could be flexible enough to work for composers in all eras? (My doctorate is not in Templatology so I doubt it would be me) Antandrus (talk) 01:34, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

All you have to do is decide on the fields (currently birth name, genre, occupation etc.) and what they are called. There isn't anything technical to worry about (many of us have made boxes in the past).

The real problem is getting people to respect the Composers Project. At the moment we have people reverting pages with infoboxes in contempt of majority opinion (e.g. Puccini article). This is why I suggested a moratorium. --Kleinzach 01:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we can both agree that it has nothing to do with majority opinion. It's rather biased when you think about it because the only people who are participating are the ones who want changes. It's not like the people who are fine with it the way it is now are going to go looking for discussion page debates. It's a very stupid system because the ones posting even here are the ones who want changes and the ones who like it fine just the way it is have no idea it's even going on.
NewYork1956 23:16, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The Wittgenstein infobox is indeed superior. The composer infoboxes should be removed until someone comes up with a satisfactory new version. One thing I'd suggest is that we strongly discourage adding flags to any such revision. --Folantin 08:55, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Please don't go around indiscriminately deleting all infoboxes on spec. If a particular parameter is over-simple, or not applicable, make it more general, or just delete the parmeter! Most of the boxes can be minimalized and rendered at least harmless for now; wholesale deletion, at least on high-profile pages, will likely just lead to other users, not part of this project, filling the void with something worse. It's already happened on Beethoven at least once. —Turangalila talk 02:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

No infoboxes have been deleted indiscriminately that I know of. They have been discussions on the Talk Pages and in every case a majority of editors have asked for them to be removed. IMO we should not be making small, inconsequential textual changes that will merely provoke more minority revertions. --Kleinzach 02:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

That "majority" on Talk:Beethoven is a total of 4 users, out of the 8 who have left comments in the two infobox topics there. Five if you count the last editor to summarily delete the (at that point neutral at worst) box (plus re-add the ungrammatical and pedantic baptized December 17, 1770 – March 26, 1827 -- is that a lifespan or a baptism-span?). That editor participated in the discussion not at all, but he did leave a very snide edit summary, so I guess that counts. Maybe you think 5 of 9 is consensus, but I doubt it's stable consensus... We'll see how long it takes for another user to fill the gap (again) with something much worse. Meanwhile the body of the article is still a sketchy, unsourced, POV-filled mess, while time and energy are spent on this issue as if it's the biggest problem on the page. —Turangalila talk 06:04, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

(reset margin) I'm all for creating a composer infobox -- I might actually give it a shot myself, tech dope that I am, since there seems to be some decent "How To" help around WP. Some preliminary thoughts:

• Whoever undertakes the design should probably do it on a user subpage & link it here for starters, before using up a "Template:..." page.
• For those interested, there's a general how-to here, and a generic starter template here. Possible places to raid code are {{Infobox biography}}, {{Infobox musical artist}}, and definitely {{Infobox_Philosopher}}.
• The cut-and-paste transclusion code provided for the new box should imitate the Philosopher box in using <!-- and --> tags to include hints, and polite suggestions, such as <!-- DO NOT INSERT ANY *%^#!ING FLAG ICONS!! -->.  ;-)
• As much as possible, the parameters of the template should be optional, so one can delete them or leave them blank when not useful, or potentially harmful, to the article. A note in <!-- and --> tags should make that clear, since alot of trouble seems to have arisen here from folks not understanding they can simply blank offending fields w/o breaking the box.

Finally, I'd note that jazz and pop composers and songwriters like Strayhorn or Sondheim aren't much better served by the current "Musical artist" box than Josquin. Ideally the new box should be flexible enough to be useful from Perotin to Glass, and from Bacharach to Xenakis. —Turangalila talk 23:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Turangalila (06:04, 27 April): If there had been some consultation before the infoboxes were forced on us, we could have had a better-structured debate, but I am not going to repeat myself, let's look forward not back! If you want the boxes then the onus is on you to design a viable one (with accurate content, linked to sound articles etc.). How about starting with Beethoven as you are interested in him? --Kleinzach 07:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Apologies for returning late to the debate - I appreciate that those who wish to have infoboxes on composer articles are proposing better infoboxes. The problem is that in my experience a one-size fits all solution to infoboxes does not work for composers. Although these points have already been made many times, I will reiterate them - the simplest of fields do not fit every composer. Infoboxes are simply not flexible enough to fit every composer, and I don't believe creating a new template will make them any more flexible. For some composers a "Birth" field is fine. For others a "Baptism" field is what is needed. For some composers, you need a field for when they "flourished". Unless we create a ridiculously complex and huge template, it simply will not be flexible enough. I think it would be a better use of our time to make lede paragraphs better, clearer, and more readable.

As for the argument that they make us look more "professional", I have to strongly disagree, especially when they misstate information, or include false or anachronistic information. Wikipedia does not in fact have to be completely uniform... that is part of the purpose of having WikiProjects for specific fields. For some things, infoboxes work beautifully. For others, they don't work as well. I wish that those working on tagging WP:BIOs would respect a consensus among those who work on composer articles, even if that is a small group. If your only interest in composer articles is to tag them with templates, I would put forward that perhaps you should work on other groups, since adding an infobox to one biography is much the same as adding it to another, or if you are really interested in composers, that you work on clarifying the ledes, or expanding biographies or filling in the many gaps which still exist (if you're looking for something to do, just look at List of female composers). This may give people a better idea of why these people do not easily or simply fit into boxes - there are simply too many ambiguities, which may be hard to see unless you actually work on the articles. Cheers, Mak (talk) 15:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Makemi (and all), a couple "side notes" in response, for clarification: In re-reading above, please notice that some of us who were proposing a Composers infobox (i.e. "better" infobox), were not doing so because we particularly wished to have infoboxes on composers articles, but as a possible solution to deal with situations where other editors persist in adding an infobox to a particular article. (I suppose a summarization of the philosophy would be - "if you can't beat them, join them, but make it better.) I personally do not feel strongly one way or another about infoboxes on Composers article. I do care about considering creative ways to make the best of whatever the situation happens to be.

Regarding some of the debates that I've seen on articles where infoboxes have recently been removed (Beethoven and Puccini, for example); I'd like to try to exonerate WPBiography. We (meaning WPComposers members) may encounter various "random" editors adding infoboxes to articles, simply because they are interested in adding infoboxes; nothing to do with WPBio; also we may encounter editors with an interest in music, who have contributed text to an article on a specific composer (said editors not necessarily being participants in WPComposers), wanting to have an infobox on that article. Note that I am not saying here which opinion should prevail (individual editor or WPComposers) about whether there should be an infobox or not. My personal preference in this case is to abstain from making a blanket statement either way.

If any of you do happen to see, going forward, on particular articles, a problem with infoboxes being placed, that does seem to be a result of WPBio article assessment, can you please direct my attention to these cases? If it is a continuing problem, I'd like to attempt to deal with it "from the inside" at WPBio. (Not that I have any particular influence there other than being a fairly minor participant, but I'd see what I could do.) Thanks, Lini 20:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

A late voice chiming into this discussion. I am generally against these infoboxes and other tabular data which can be presented in just as easily in the opening paragraph. I even find the Wittgenstein infobox a negative that I'd prefer not to have for composers. For instance, in "Influences" there are two links which are never referenced in the article. How someone influences or is influenced by someone else is much more important to me than simply a list of influences. (Can you imagine the list for "Influenced:" on Beethoven?). I'm not even sure what people are supposed to get from a quick glance at these things. The infobox for Shostakovich still has him writing in the Romantic "genre"; should I infer that he's going to sound like Schubert.--Myke Cuthbert 21:35, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, having thought about it I can't see any way of creating a satisfactory infobox. The genres category is a complete disaster. Shostakovich a Romantic? And Debussy is apparently an "Impressionist" even though he loathed the term, as the arrticle introduction itself states. There is no WP policy saying we must have infoboxes, whereas WP is pretty keen on policies on accuracy. So goodbye boxes. --Folantin 08:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox: No consensus (Apr 28- )

I note that, elsewhere, Mak is claiming that consensus against using infoboxes has been reached, That's certainly not my reading of the on-going debate. Andy Mabbett 08:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Nonsense. There's consensus here to dump the boxen and potentially replace them with one dedicated to composers. That will not be something easy to do and will take a while: in the meantime, the infoboxes should go. Moreschi ^Talk 10:29, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

There is consensus. Plus there's something more important than consensus: these boxes are causing massive violations of fundamental Wikipedia policies, such as factual accuracy and NPOV. I've lost count of the number of distortions of basic info I've seen in these things. There is no policy saying we must have infoboxes on articles. --Folantin 10:41, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

You are again conflating two issues. If there are problems with accuracy or PoV, then of course these should be addressed. That does not mean that there is consensus to cease using infoboxes at all. There is no consensus - QED. Andy Mabbett 18:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

If consensus means anything, we have it here. Policy also trumps consensus. There is no more fundamental policy on WP than accuracy. These infoboxes have clearly violated that policy. Therefore they must go. QED. --Folantin 19:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

You are again conflating two issues. Andy Mabbett 19:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

15-5 seems pretty consentual to me (hell make it 16, because I pretty much agree -- wrong info = bad). There will almost never be 100% agreement for anything. If that was required, AFDs would be a joke, as it'd be so easy to put in a single !vote against everyone else, if that's all it took. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 19:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Please read WP:CONSENSUS. Andy Mabbett 19:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that we have a layout issue (presenting neat database-style factoids and soundbites in a pretty box) versus an information accuracy issue. I think the best way to approach an infobox is NOT to take a generic biography or pop musician infobox and try and apply it to a classical composer's article, but to sit down and first ask the question: which bits of information can be summed up and presented in an infobox? Once that crucial question has been asked, and it should be asked for all articles where an infobox could be added, then the next step is to design an infobox to present that information. It is entirely possible to present the information in a nice box without using a template meant for hundreds of other articles. It will look horrible, and can then be moved to its own template, but it is possible to concentrate on the information presented in an individual article, rather than uniformity of presentation acrosss different articles. Carcharoth 13:04, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Do we need infoboxes at all? It's important to have typographically attractive, well-illustrated pages that people want to read, but does that mean infoboxes are necessary or desirable? If you look at print enclyclopedias you'll find that boxes are used sparingly. I don't believe there is any major reference book that has summary boxes for every biography. --Kleinzach 14:31, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. No infobox, no problem. Factual accuracy is essential, infoboxes aren't. They merely repeat information already on the page in a distorted way. It will take an immense amount of time and effort to create an infobox flexible enough not to garble the facts. I think that time and effort would be better spent elsewhere. --Folantin 15:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox proposal(s)

Okay, I've decided it might be fun to give a go at making a template. It may take me a little while, since I'm just starting to learn the wiki syntax required, but I have been thinking about precisely the question Carcharoth asked two comments up, and last night I sketched a few possibly useful parameters, almost all of which would be optional, with instructions to delete the parameter if not applicable / too narrow / etc. Here's what I have so far:

• Required parameters:
  • Name — obviously, for the top of the box; also optional parameters for [Birth_name =...] and [Also_known_as =...], to go below;
  • Title — to go below name and above image. Default value = "Composer", but one could substitute, say, "Songwriter" or "Composer-conductor" etc.
• Optional parameters:
  • Image and Caption — as in other boxes;
  • Lifespan — i.e. [Born =...] and [Died =...] as in the bio box, but w/ options to substitute [Baptized =...] or [Flourished =...];
  • Idiom — my version of the dreaded "record store" category. My thinking is that this would have:
    • a limited set of options, such as [Classical / Jazz / Folk / Popular / Musical theater / Experimental];
    • maybe coded to background colors, like the "Musical artist" box? Default would be the "Classical" color; maybe skip for simplicity's sake...;
    • options for "Idiom2" and "Idiom3" for composers like Gershwin or Bernstein;
    • instructions to delete the parameter for (most) composers before 1900;
  • Nationality — as narrow as "Viennese" or as broad as "European" (maybe a different parameter name?);
    • possibly to go above the pic as a modifier to [Title], so that the header might read (on two lines): Aaron Copland / American Composer ;
  • Historical era — e.g. "Renaissance", "Baroque", etc.;
  • Stylistic school(s) or Movement(s) — e.g. "Franco-Flemish school", "Verismo", "Les Six", "Futurism", "Bebop", etc.;
  • Principal genre(s) — e.g. "Opera" for Verdi; "Symphony, Song" for Mahler...delete for more wide-ranging composers;
  • Other occupations — e.g. "Pianist" for Liszt, "Conductor" for Boulez, "Insurance agent" for Ives, etc.;
  • Notable works — mainly for "one-(or two-)hit wonders", e.g. "Hansel and Gretel" for Humperdinck.

Thoughts? —Turangalila talk 16:51, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

• Looks good; I think it needs to use optional alternative parameters, so that you have, say, birth date or baptismal date or flourished from. Likewise nationality or some category for non-national terms such as "European". Andy Mabbett 18:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Sigh. It's got some good ideas, but even this is problematic. "Historical era" can be pretty subjective stuff: the divisions between, say, Rococo, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern are by no means clear-cut even on the level of individual composers - many are notoriously hard to pigeonhole - and certainly not over the years: you have Elgar writing alongside Stravinsky, for example. POV, especially misleading POV, must be avoided at all costs. For "stylistic schools", how to you sum up, for example, Puccini? Pastiche verismo? Verismo with some nasty cynicism? How do you boil that down to the one or two words required for an infobox? These things are nuanced and really need fuller explanation to avoid confusion. Moreschi ^Talk 19:58, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

What Moreschi said. I appreciate the effort, but it just isn't going to fly. Nationality, genre, style...all too often these are just too problematic to be reduced to any schema. We have plenty of controversies as it is; infoboxes would merely double the conflict. We could spend months tweaking these boxes then come across a composer who absolutely refused to fit the parameters. There is one obvious solution that is elegant, time-saving and conducive to accuracy: get rid of the boxes. --Folantin 20:13, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd like to add (belatedly) one point. A good infobox (assuming it could be created) would of necessity be linked to articles explaining genres/periods/musical forms etc. If these articles didn't exist or were unsatisfactory then the infobox itself would not be viable. --Kleinzach 00:56, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Some points seem to need repeating:

1. Like it or not, infoboxes seem to be generally in the ascendancy on WP. The guidance here may be fine, but it's swimming upstream. As someone above said, some users here may need to open their minds to the idea of "joining 'em" (and fixing it) rather than "beating 'em".
2. See my marathon post above wrt what infoboxes are for. Briefly:
   1. they supplement a good article, they don't replace it;
   2. ideally articles should serve the musical "laity" as well as the hard-core folks that gravitate to this page; music-appreciation-class style shorthand is not an absolute evil... again, some of this discussion emits just the slightest bouquet of snobbery.
   3. even the initiated might want an instant reminder of Mozart's birthplace, or his age at death, without searching (or doing math).
   4. redundancy is not always a mortal sin (as an alternate metaphor, think of Britannica's "Micropedia" and "Macropedia").
3. When facts are nuanced, (as they often are, and not just in this field) there are many solutions aside from "kill all infoboxes":
   1. If it's between two options, list both...folks are usually bright enough to look at the text if they're confused.
   2. Make the factoid in the box more general... readers expect generality in an infobox anyway.
   3. Do either of the above, then add a footnote with <ref> ... </ref> tags. Works just as well in the box as out.
   4. Or just delete the *&%$! parameter. Is the concept of an optional field really so difficult to grasp?
4. Obviously, if consensus on a particular page is against the box, you don't have to use it. Why discourage the option?

Okay, enough. I tweaked Makemi's guideline on the project page to make it slightly less dogmatic, but I think s/he's done an admirable job summarizing the discussion below. I'm gonna retire from this discussion until I have a "beta" version of an improved template to show folks. If anybody has suggestions for that, or wants to collaborate, pls leave me a talk message. Shalom, —Turangalila talk 23:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Looks like you used to have an infobox for composers, but it was deleted in the process of being superceded by infobox musical artist. One possibility would be to get that undeleted as a starting point. –Unint 00:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox: Attempted summary by Makemi

In hopes of visualising consensus, perhaps useful only to myself, I will try to summarise the positions of people in this debate. (Note that I'm using big-umbrella classical in this summary)

• User:Makemi (active in writing on (early music) classical composers) started it, doesn't want infoboxes for a variety of reasons, mainly having to do with accuracy and flexibility.
• Kat Walsh (sometimes active in writing on classical composers) agrees that infoboxes for people are generally a problem, would be willing to look at an improved infobox.
• User:M A Mason (active in writing on classical composers) agrees that infoboxes for people are problematic. Adds points about anachronism of flags in infoboxes.
• User:Gmaxwell (not particularly active in writing on composers that I can tell) agrees that infoboxes for people are problematic, people don't fit in little boxes, not flexible enough.
• User:Cricket02 (active in mostly contemporary classical composers) briefly disagrees, thinks infoboxes are valuable and informative, add "respectability" to articles.
• User:Antandrus (active in early-music classical composers) agrees that infoboxes are redundant and tend towards being amateurish, particularly because of inflexibility in the fields.
• User:Kleinzach (ringleader of Opera project, writer on various composers) agrees that "potted biographies" are "grotesque".
• User:Alton (active in writing on classical composers, largely Romantics) agrees that while infoboxes can be useful in some areas, they are not good for biographies because they are not sufficiently flexible to deal with all the variations which people present.
• User:Folantin (active in writing on classical composers (baroque?)) agrees that infoboxes are not useful for composers, and look unprofessional (Top Trumps:).
• User:Logologist (active on Chopin, doesn't look like many other composers, although other Polish old bios) doesnt' like infoboxes for people, per others.
• User:Moreschi (active on composer articles, mostly on the early side) thinks infoboxes for biographies are pretty rotten, and lets us know in no uncertain terms.
• User:LiniShu was initially active in adding infoboxes to composer articles, but seems to have changed to understanding why they might not be good on composer articles. Asks that the debate be kept civil, and that interaction with WP:WPBIO be kept active/positive. Thinks improving infoboxes is a better solution than abolishing them(?), but is not particularly "for" infoboxes.
• User:GuillaumeTell (active in composer bios) thinks infoboxes for composers are a waste of space.
• Andy Mabbett (not active with composers, seemingly active in WP:WPBIO) worries that not having infoboxes will cause problems for bots and future meta-data gathering. Would prefer that infoboxes be improved rather than abolished.
  • Counter that Wikipedia:Persondata should be used for metadata instead of infoboxes, and that infoboxes actually encourage entering incorrect/misleading data, which will not be helpful as metadata.
• User:Cgilbert76 (somewhat active on contemporary composers, seems to be mainly active in adding and adjusting infoboxes and WPBIO templates) strongly disagrees that infoboxes are detrimental, gives examples of how they can be adjusted, and mentions their utility in quickly informing the uninitiated.
• User:Carcharoth (not active with composers(?) but with other older bios, and with Persondata) mentions that Google is experimenting with parsing infoboxes, but mentions that really persondata should be used for this. Opposes badly-done infoboxes, but thinks they can be improved.
• User:Turangalila (active in composers) makes an impassioned plea for infoboxes. Mentions that perhaps they grate on the knowledgeable, but are very helpful for the uninitiated. Notes that while they may in some way be redundant to the lede, they serve a different purpose. (Note, User:Danny made a similar good point on IRC (zomg, cabal) that infoboxes can be useful for people who have a different learning style). Also notes (rightly, I think) that some ledes are also pretty bad and confusing. In the end run, this editor seems to believe that they could live without composer infoboxes, but the best solution is to create a new and better composer infobox.
• User:Emerson7 (active in WP:WPBIO template adding, some acitivity with contemporary classical musicians) erm... accuses everyone of elitism? I don't see another argument here, but feel free to correct me.
• User:Pizza1512 (seemingly active AWB'er, don't see real activity on composers except template cleanup) wants infoboxes on seemingly aesthetic grounds, thinks they make articles look more "professional", wants there to be uniformity with other biography articles.
• Myke Cuthbert (active in composer biographies) thinks they should not be used in composer articles.

So, let's be annoying and vote-y. 15 think either there should not be infoboxes, or if there must be it should be a different format. Of those 2 are not active in editing composer bios. 5 think they should probably be used. Of those five, 3 are not active in editing composer bios. (So, 13-2) To me, this is pretty clear consensus not to use infoboxes on classical composer articles. I not that those people who think that infoboxes should be used are more active either on non-composer articles, or articles on contemporary classical musicians. I think this may be part of the disconnect, because it is much more difficult to box people about whom we don't know as much with certianty, and where there may be more than one "right answer". Mak (talk) 17:52, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I suggest you read WP:Consensus; and that you stop raising red herrings. Anyone may comment, regardless of which articles they do or do not edit. Persondata is not available to parsers other than those accessing raw wikicode, from database dumps so you suggestion is unhelpful. Andy Mabbett 18:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I think what articles people edit is very relevant to this discussion. This is trying to find consensus for one specific content area of Wikipedia. I have tried to gain consensus on individual articles, where all the vested contributors seem to agree with not having an infobox, only to have a mass-tagger come through, throw a wrench in the works, and claim that there must be a higher-order consensus on the WikiProject level. Now, when those who are actually involved in editing the articles concerned agree that for this specific content area infoboxes are inappropriate, or at least infoboxes in their current form are inappropriate, I think that should be respected. Otherwise what's the point of having a WikiProject consensus and specific area working groups? I don't pretend to know what the best style is for Science articles, and so I don't try to dictate their style to them, and I don't go off telling them not to use infoboxes where they find them useful. I think the same respect for knowing what is useful in a particular area and what is not should be afforded this WikiProject. Mak (talk) 19:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Your edit summary was "consensus for WikiProject composers should be determined by those with and interest in (shock) composers": if you wish to re-write fundamental WP policies to enshrine that view, then this isn't the place to do it. When you've achieved consensus for that change, do please let us know here. Meanwhile, please also read WP:OWN and don't presume to talk about what interests you imagine that I or any other editor do or do not have. Andy Mabbett 19:33, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Makemi, thank you for taking the time to do this; I think you characterized the positions well. I agree with you that it represents consensus, among project members--people who write articles on composers. The encyclopedia will be better without these infoboxes, boxes which, as currently employed, actually present misinfo. Antandrus (talk) 19:56, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

If somebody reads Wikipedia and reads nothing but the infoboxes, well, then I think it's better that he or she at least has read something about the person. That would still be rather funny, however. And there really is no way a box with the composer's name, portrait, birth date and other information that can be proven to be factual such as nationalities, could be harmful. Rather it serves as a good summary. Factual errors should be removed, of course, but still, there's a limit to which we can edit articles and make them factually accurate. I believe there are many cases in Wikipedia where a less detailed description is preferred instead of a more complex and correct one.--Wormsie 20:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Makemi for taking the time to go through this long discussion and summarizing the debate with such equanimity. I hope that all of us will respect the position we have finally arrived at - and now get back to the job of building WP. Best regards to all. --Kleinzach 01:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

We haven't finally arrived at anything. Discussion is ongoing. Please stop pretending otherwise, Andy Mabbett 05:11, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Inclusion of midi examples

I thought it might be a nice idea to include the occasional midi clip to illustrate musical points, and I uploaded a couple of midi files: and . For an example of their use see Pentatonic_scale. This kind of works, but as you will see it is a bit clunky and unattractive on the page - I think the problems arise because the upload facility is really designed for images. I would really like it if there was a way to do this which would : a) Look nice on the page - a notehead gif link for instance in place of the filename. b) If at all possible, have the file play directly when it's clicked on, rather than having to go to an image page and then click on the file.

Does anyone have any ideas how this might be done in a more elegant way? Many thanks.

--Stephen Burnett 15:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, you probably want {{Listen}} or {{Audio}}, which is better for inline examples. Or you could use {{multi-listen start}} etc. The Listen template gives an in-browser link, which is nice for people who don't want to install new software, etc. Mak (talk) 16:10, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I do indeed - many thanks for that. --Stephen Burnett 16:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused. the {{listen}} page says it's only for .ogg samples; & actually says .mid files can't be uploaded, but Stephen obviously uploaded his just the other day...I can't even play .ogg's due to my old software not being supported (poverty sucks). The {{audio}} .mid samples at Pentatonic scale work fine for me, but they open in a new page. In-browser / same window play would be better, esp. where the sample accompanies a visual musical example. Is that possible w/ .mid's? I think I've seen it done off-wiki somewhere. (so far I've just made external links to sites w/ audio samles, but for future reference...) —Turangalila ^talk 02:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I uploaded a midi file and it worked - but why it worked is a mystery to me. I agree - playing in the same window would be better. What seems to happen is that clicking on the midi file opens up whatever app you have registered to play midi files; in my case it's QuickTime, which seems to require a window to itself. It will need someone with a better understanding of how the Wiki/browser combination handles such things than I have to resolve it.--Stephen Burnett 08:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's something that needs to be worked on by someone with programming experience, like User:Gmaxwell. For a long time we had no in-browser support for .ogg, so I think we're doing pretty well! I think Greg (gmaxwell) is working on same-screen video and audio support, he just had me testing some examples. He's been working on getting the .ogg video working lately, so I think maybe we should cut him a little slack that it's not yet totally optimal :) But I would encourage you to go to his talk page and let him know what would be useful to you (nicely, of course). Cheers, Mak (talk) 16:22, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Romantic music

The article Romantic music says that The era of Romantic music is defined as the period of European classical music that runs roughly from the early 1800s to the first decade of the 20th century, as well as music written according to the norms and styles of that period. The Romantic period was preceded by the classical period, and was followed by the modern period. Meanwhle Category:Romantic composers explains that Romantic composers are those individuals who wrote music in the Romantic era, between about 1815 and 1910.

Is this simplistic, I wonder? Does the article need rewriting? (I thought I should pose the question here rather than on the Opera Project, because you are looking at the composers' whole musical output, not just a section of it.) This has become an issue because of work on opera categories, and because the composers (bio) infoboxes link to the article under the so-called 'genre' (actually period) category. (For example Shostakovich is 'Romantic' because he was born in 1906!).

P.S. Following the Chopin infobox discussion, I've asked for opinions on infoboxes on the following Talk Pages: Beethoven, Gluck, Mussorgsky, Puccini, Richard Strauss. Please comment if you have a spare moment. --Kleinzach 08:03, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that an article on Romantic music would be better served by defining Romanticism in music and only then talking about when or where Romantic principles flourished and defining that as the Romantic era, even though there were always composers who composed according to Romantic principles before and after this era and composers in the era who largely rejected Romanticism. There's also considerable scholarly debate about whether the Romantic era was short lived (and thus the second half of the 19th century is largely Post-Romantic) or encompasses the whole "long nineteenth century. ". The Grove opening to Romanticism is worth comparing: "A movement or, more commonly, period of cultural history. When understood as a period, Romanticism is usually identified with either the first half or the whole of the 19th century. The term is used with reference primarily to the arts, but it can also embrace philosophy, socio-political history and, more widely, the ‘spirit’ of the era." Of course, Jim Samson in Grove is writing for a purely musical audience, so the lack of mention of music in his lede is acceptable, whereas it wouldn't be for WP. Samson also points to Donald Grout (author of the most influential music history textbook in America) as one of the big names in the push towards equating the nineteenth-century with Romanticism. It's an extremely strong article, one of the best for its length in Grove. However, it does try to define Romanticism more than give a history of music 1800-1900, which is currently also what we are asking the WP article to do.

The article might be a candidate for someone taking into a sandbox and attempting a rewrite. I don't think the sorts of substantial changes it needs will happen well in little pieces.

Aside: The template "History of Classical Music" isn't as bad as a typical infobox, I suppose, but it is similar in that it presents as many distortions as facts (what happened in 1401 that made the Middle Ages end?)

--Myke Cuthbert 22:42, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Userbox?

Just for fun I thought I'd mess around with making a userbox for the project. It looks like there were a couple proposed last year (scroll down), but they don't seem to have caught on, so I thought I'd try & make one that looked a bit less like the other music-related boxes...

Basically I just copied the box from the classical music project, & changed the color and clef (being a fan of the old clefs, and of violists, I chose alto). The current version is at this subpage on my userspace, and it looks like this:

This user is a member of WikiProject Composers.

As currently coded it would place the user in Category:WikiProject Composers participants, which doesn't seem much used at the moment, but that's easy enough to remove... If anyone actually wants to adopt this, it should probably be moved to the Template space or maybe a subpage here; if not, not. Suggestions or edits are welcome if anyone cares -- particularly on color, since I'm slightly colorblind. Thx, —Turangalila talk 04:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. It seems that the composers box should have a picture of a composer (although choosing which one would be a fight). It don't like the bust idea from last year, a portrait would be better. Maybe Bach (Beethoven or Mozart would be my first instincts, as they are the easiest to recognize, but I don't want to be clichéd). Asmeurer (talk ♬ contribs) 05:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of the userbox and applaud just going for it. But I was thinking it might be nice to have an icon which says composer more than music in general. It's only because I'm involved in so many music things that it'd be nice to have something specific to this project. On the other hand, it's nice to see alto clef get its due. --Myke Cuthbert 05:23, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I played around a bit more w/ the pic per suggestions (see above). Bach would be best IMO since almost everybody studied him, but it's tough to find a portrait of anybody that looks decent that small... The Mozart was the best I could find so far. Feel free to go to my sandbox & tinker with it yerselves if you care to... —Turangalila talk 14:59, 28 April 2007 (UTC)