Talk:Gilbert and Sullivan

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Jessie Bond

The article as written implies that Jessie Bond was one of those relatively unknown artists engaged for The Sorcerer as well as for Pinafore. Bailey, pp 155-6, has a charming extract from her memoirs telling how she was plucked from the provinces and concert & oratorio singing to join Carte's company for Pinafore. Tim Riley 09:45, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Fixed well enough, now? -- Ssilvers 16:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

O'/and distinction

This discussion has now been moved to the Archive, as the RFC on this point has now had sufficient time to attract new input. The RFC (below) has been closed with no consensus.

I propose to leave the RFC box on this page for another 7 days, so interested parties are informed, and then archive with a note here pointing the prior discussion, this is to let the talk page get back to discussion of the article content. Kbthompson (talk) 11:03, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Should a distinguish TAG be used on the Gilbert and Sullivan article for Gilbert o'Sullivan?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

RfC: Should a {{distinguish}} TAG be used on the Gilbert and Sullivan article for Gilbert o'Sullivan? A circular argument has developed on this talk page with regard to this question. Unfortunately, there appears to be no middle ground between the two groups. The first requesting the tag, as they believe people may be confused. The second group regarding the addition as akin to unrelated link spam. Please review the arguments (above) and comment if you have a new point of view that moves this issue forward. Thank you. Kbthompson (talk) 23:42, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Comments

The reason being that we have the distinguish tag on Wikipedia is to distinguish article names that may be confusing. I'm hearing some arguments that the article names aren't confusing. However, the fact that I and other editors have added it in and have personally been confused by them goes to show that they are. I have also heard that the connection is merely trivial. Yet, the tag is irrelevant to it being trivial. We don't put up distinguish tags because they trivially expose the similarities of two articles' names; we add the tags because the names may be confusing to other editors, which they have been proven to be confusing. Reginmund (talk) 05:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Disambiguation pages are not search indices, and the same para says significant risk of confusion. There's no point in revisiting the same ground, let someone neutral take a dispassionate look at the issue. Kbthompson (talk) 14:09, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

I believe it a very bad idea to patronise our readers in this fashion. For the vast majority of people this tag would simply be an irrelevant and distracting nuisance. Moreoever, the actual editors of this article have made it quite clear they don't want this tag, and they are, well, the people who wrote the flaming thing. Their call. Moreschi ^{If you've written a quality article...} 16:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

There is already a "significant risk of confusion". Nor are we trying to "patronise" our readers. Is this what all distinguish tags do? I would have to agree that all distinguish tags would be irrelevant to most readers, that shouldn't suggest that we cannot use them. I don't understand how it actually distracts the rest of the text. The donation box looks even more distracting, why don't we dump that too? In fact, why don't we just get rid of all disambiguation links since they are so distracting and patronising to every article? The actual editors of this article don't own this article so it is basically anyone's call. Let alone that just because they don't "like" the tag should not serve as a good enough reason to elicit it. We already avoid it in other discussions for the same reason. Reginmund (talk) 19:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Seven days

I think it's probably time to wrap up this discussion, the (valid) RFC's been open for a week now, and it's not moved the discussion forward. Doing a rough tally back through the comments, those for not adding the tag outnumber those for the tag by only a couple. I wouldn't say that represents any consensus, either way. The way that normally goes is for nothing to be changed. The next step is to remove the RFC tag, archive this rather large conversation and get back to doing some editing. Kbthompson (talk) 09:41, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Please go ahead and wrap it up. There's no consensus in favour of putting the tag on. --Folantin (talk) 09:45, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It was suggested that there was a need for a {{distinguish}} tag on this article pointing to Gilbert O'Sullivan. There was no consensus for the tag to be added. This includes points made in the section headed O'/and distinction. Kbthompson (talk) 10:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Music files

The music file in the article for "Three Little Maids" sounds like guys singing falsetto. Does anyone have access to a public domain file that's better? Unfortunately, the MP3 files linked under External Links seem generally too fast, and they're from university productions.... -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:33, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Confusion over length of run

In the section on H.M.S. Pinafore is this sentence: H.M.S. Pinafore ran in London for 571 performances, the second longest run of any musical theatre piece in history up to that time (after the operetta Les cloches de Corneville). In the section on The Mikado is this sentence: The Mikado became the partnership's longest-running hit, enjoying 672 performances at the Savoy Theatre, which was the second longest run for any work of musical theatre and one of the longest runs of any theatre piece up to that time. These can't both be right. The second sentence has a footnote, which points to this reference: http://www.dgillan.screaming.net/stage/th-frames.html, which states that Pinafore ran for 700 performances, not 571. I could make a correction based on that reference, but I'm a little leery of doing so without a little more research and perhaps checking other references. I encourage someone else to sort this out and fix the article. Omc (talk) 10:20, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Checking the performance history at H. M. S. Pinafore shows that the official performance ran for 571 (from 1878), then transferring to NY - with an unofficial run of 91 in London concurrently and then subsequent official productions - probably giving the 700. That might explain the discrepancy, but strictly (I think) it amounts to a run of 571. The Mikado ran from 1885 - essentially breaking their own previous record second place position.

So, all of these can be reconciled - but perhaps lacking clarity. HTH Kbthompson (talk) 10:40, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, I added a brief clarification in the Mikado section. Here's the full history lesson: Les cloches de Corneville ran for 705 performances in London beginning in 1878, enjoying the longest run of any production in musical theatre history. Pinafore opened later in 1878 and eventually became the second longest-running piece of musical theatre with 571 performances (the figure of 700 is the only error that I know of in that otherwise very useful list of long London and NY runs). Actually, Patience (opera) opening in 1881, first surpassed Pinafore's record, taking over second place with 576 performances. Then The Mikado took second place after opening in 1885 and running for 672 performances. The record of Les cloches de Corneville was finally broken by Dorothy (opera), which began its run in 1886. So, you were slightly misled by the unfortunate error in the reference, but I need the reference to show the length of the Les Cloches run. -- Ssilvers (talk) 17:17, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Image sizes

Please do not re-size the images without discussion on this talk page first. The image sizes should not be reduced. Thank you. -- Ssilvers (talk) 19:46, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Why? --John (talk) 21:16, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Because the editors working on the article over the past two years or so have preferred these sizes. Why do you want to change them? The sizes you changed them to were too small and made it hard to see the details in the images, so that they were less effective in illustrating the accompanying text. Note that they are all public domain images. If you feel strongly about it, please give your reasons so that we all can discuss it. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:34, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

The shrunken images were not effective. Much better to revert to the previous sizes, arrived at after much trial and error. Tim riley (talk) 22:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Gosh. Ok then. The larger-sized images look poor on my setup, which can't be that uncommon among users; 1280x1024 on Firefox 3. The images take up most of the page. Thumbnail images are supposed to be just that, thumbnails, which a user can click on to see the details, should they wish. As an encyclopedia, we depend for our primary purpose on words, not images. The manual of style is pretty clear on the subject: "The current image markup for landscape-format and square images is: [[Image:picture.jpg|thumb|right|Insert caption here]] and for portrait-format images: [[Image:picture.jpg|thumb|upright|right|Insert caption here]]" and

"Specifying the size of a thumbnail image is not necessary. The default size is 180px, although logged-in users can override this in their user preferences, up to a maximum of 300px. If an image displays satisfactorily at the default size, it is recommended that no explicit size be specified."

My changes, being in line with MoS recommendations and also common sense, seemed pretty straightforward and uncontroversial, so I was surprised to see them reverted and then to get a warning on my talk page about it. Is this how you guys always treat people editing "your" articles? --John (talk) 22:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

I generally do not involve myself with images, but for what it's worth, John's version looked better to me. Marc Shepherd (talk) 00:45, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Tim Riley, but in the interests of compromise, I reduced the two opening images, as John suggested, and I also reduced the poster showing the three shows, but not as much as John did. It was impossible to see anything in it at that size. By the way, John, I left a message on your talk page as a courtesy to you, not a "warning". It is polite to let someone know if you have reverted their edit. I think the images look better at the larger size. Where we have specified the size, it is because I (or someone else) didn't think that the image, to quote the MOS, "displays satisfactorily at the default size." -- Ssilvers (talk) 01:25, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks a lot better. It looked like a warning, containing as it did the text "Please do not reduce image sizes in the article, as several editors have previously reviewed the images in the article and are satisfied with the image sizes. Thanks!" It might have been better just to state your reason and take the discussion here, rather than framing it as a request not to do what I had done. No harm done anyway, and the article looks a lot better now, which was my intention all along. --John (talk) 07:03, 22 July 2008 (UTC)