Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music
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![]() | This wikiproject overlooks all active music projects: see Music Projects and WikiProject Council for a table and a list. Posts about specific topics (e.g. albums, composers, jazz, rock or whatever) should be made to the relevant project - not here! For notices, please see the Music Noticeboard. |
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Table showing productivity/size of the 48 music projects
The table below indicates the relative activity of the 48 current music projects in terms of (talk page) archives and membership (as of 11 March 2011).
Project | Started | No. of archives | No. of members listed |
---|---|---|---|
Opera | 2004 | 101 | 39 |
Albums | 2002 | 39 | 451 |
Classical | 2004 | 35 | 180 |
Composers | 2005 | 33 | 43 |
Music | 2003 | 28 | 201 |
Metal | 2006 | 12 | 235 |
Musical Theatre | 2005 | 12 | 68 |
Alternative music | 2006 | 7 | 170 |
Songs | 2002 | 7 | 142 |
Richard Wagner | 2007 | 7 | 8 |
The Beatles | 2006 | 6 | 72 |
Musicians | 2006 | 6 | 96 |
Eurovision | 2003 | 5 | 46 |
Guitarists | 2006 | 5 | 45 |
Rock music | 2006 | 5 | 101 |
Country music | 2006 | 4 | 8 |
Jazz | 2006 | 4 | 100 |
Christian music | 2008 | 3 | 78 |
Discographies | 2008 | 3 | 93 |
Hip hop | 2006 | 3 | 34 |
Music genres | 2004 | 3 | 17 |
Michael Jackson | 2007 | 2 | 66 |
Musical instruments | 2007 | 2 | 28 |
Australian music | 2007 | 1 | 38 |
Canadian music | 2007 | 1 | 31 |
Gilbert and Sullivan | 2006 | 1 | 16 |
Irish music | 2006 | 1 | 25 |
Kylie Minogue | 2007 | 1 | 15 |
Music theory | 2008 | 1 | 6 |
Punk music | 2006 | 1 | 17 |
Record Charts | 2008 | 1 | 26 |
U2 | 2007 | 1 | 4 |
Björk | 2010 | 0 | 4 |
The Clash | 2007 | 0 | 18 |
Bob Dylan | 2009 | 0 | 26 |
Miles Davis | 2011 | 0 | 5 |
Britney Spears | 2009 | 0 | 9 |
Elvis Presley | 2007 | 0 | 7 |
Beyoncé Knowles | 2010 | 0 | 14 |
Lady Gaga | 2009 | 0 | 21 |
Madonna | 2009 | 0 | 23 |
Mariah Carey | 2010 | 0 | 9 |
Progressive Rock | 2009 | 0 | 27 |
R&B and Soul music | 2005 | 0 | 25 |
Rolling Stones | 2007 | 0 | 18 |
Roots music | 2007 | 0 | 21 |
Santana | 2010 | 0 | 5 |
The Supremes | 2010 | 0 | 6 |
Notes: The table is sortable (i.e. you can click on the symbol to rearrange the table). Task forces are excluded, also projects tagged as semi-active, inactive etc. Few membership lists are kept up to date. Please let me know if you see any errors and I will correct them.
I suggest the data shows that:
- 1. Activity is concentrated in the top 5 projects.
- 2. Numbers of members and archives do not correlate. Some low membership projects have been very active.
- 3. Popular music projects are less consolidated than classical music. (There are no projects for individual classical music performers.)
- 4. Classical music related projects have generally lower membership and more archives than popular music ones.
- 5. Among single artists/bands, the only projects that have seen any substantial discussions are The Beatles and Michael Jackson.
- 6. 17 single artist/band projects have no archives. However there are also many other similar, but inactive, projects not incuded. (39 music projects are listed as inactive here.)
Thank you. --Kleinzach 04:41, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- This table is interesting, but the productivity of a project should not be measured by volume of talk page activity; it should be measured by the changes over time in the number and quality of articles within the scope of the project. -- Ssilvers (talk) 16:09, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
- But not if the project isn't significantly involved. In some cases, the project and the contributors are one and the same group. Some small projects like your own Gilbert and Sullivan are of this type. In other cases, most of the work is done by contributors who are not project participants (e.g. Musicians which probably edits only a small percentage of the articles within its scope).
- Of course the figures I've given above only show part of the picture. I'd welcome other approaches to quantifying the work of the 48 music projects. --Kleinzach 00:24, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- I think that activity is a good proxy. A WikiProjet is not a content area: it is a group of editors that want to coordinate their activities. Articles within their scope are frequently improved without them lifting a finger. For example, Michael Woodruff, Ryan White, Frank Macfarlane Burnet, Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act, Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany, Race Against Time: Searching for Hope in AIDS-Ravaged Africa, and Samuel Johnson are all 'within the scope of' WikiProject Medicine, but they are not FAs because of the project. It would be unfair to credit WPMED with the work done on these articles.
- Kleinzach, have you considered controlling for the age of the project? A brand-new project will almost always have less cumulative activity than an old one. Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProjects by changes lets you compare by number of changes to project pages during the last 12 months. Also, are all of the archives the same size? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- OK. I'll try to add start dates for the projects. That could be useful info. Obviously the archives do vary in size - getting more accurate data (like total size?) would require some kind of special bot programme or whatever. BTW what you mean by "activity is a good proxy"? --Kleinzach 00:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Done Project start dates added. --Kleinzach 13:56, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
- I've now made a project statistics sub-page (see top tab), where I (and anybody else interested in compiling) will develop the information. --Kleinzach 07:56, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
- OK. I'll try to add start dates for the projects. That could be useful info. Obviously the archives do vary in size - getting more accurate data (like total size?) would require some kind of special bot programme or whatever. BTW what you mean by "activity is a good proxy"? --Kleinzach 00:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
Other comments
More usefull data -->Wikipedia:Lists of popular pages by WikiProject - Wikipedia:Database reports/WikiProject watchers - Wikipedia:Database reports/Most-watched pages by namespace — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moxy (talk • contribs)
- A listing by number of tagged and assessed articles would be nice. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 17:19, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
- That would be a huge listing! In any case some of the main projects (Music, Classical music etc.) don't do assessments, or in the case of Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians only do automatic bot ratings. --Kleinzach 02:05, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Chord function
I changed chord function from a redirect to a disambiguation page, quoted below. I don't know anything about the musical topic, so in the relevant bullet point below I simply paraphrased something said at greater length in the article that is linked to. So maybe experts in that topic will want to edit that bullet point further. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
begin quote
The term chord function may refer to:
- Diatonic function – in music, the role of a chord in relation to a diatonic key
- in mathematics, the length of a chord of a circle as a trigonometric function of the length of the corresponding arc; see in particular Ptolemy's table of chords
{{disambig}}
end quote
The italics issue
Up until now, all article titling has been in roman (upright) type. Last year there was a little-noticed Rfc here, in which some editors successfully (though controversially — see the charges of 'improper closure') argued for using italics for certain article titles, including names of musical works. This particularly affects classical music and opera, but other music projects may also be interested, see the Classical music project discussion. --Kleinzach 01:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
- Ever since that change was made I have maintained that italic article titles are a classic case of a solution in search of a problem. I have never read another encyclopedia or reference work that italicizes the titles of its own articles at the top of said articles. It would be like italicizing book and film titles on the covers of books and the posters of films. I also believe that the discussion was not nearly widely-advertised enough for a decision that affects literally hundreds of thousands of articles. This is simply extra work for editors and likely a puzzlement for readers when they see it in effect. --IllaZilla (talk) 02:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
- I don't believe your comment is correct concerning reference works not using italics in titles: both The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and the The New Penguin Opera Guide italicize opera article titles. However, there appear to be problems with using navbox templates to do this. I have been trying it, and have so far not been able to override the italics for Template:Composer navbox and Template:Infobox operas. However, I suggest we leave the italics in for a while and see what kind of feedback we get. Having them there for so many articles should soon attract the attention of other editors, and we'll may get a lot more feedback. But there is a question, will they know where to lookfor making comments? I think Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera#Opera title italics would still be a good location to link to. --Robert.Allen (talk) 01:26, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- Operas may be a special case, like taxonomic names of species are. We once restricted italicized article titles to "special cases" such as these, but now we apply it to anything that would be italicized in running text. This means all titles of publications, films, video games, albums, etc. etc. etc. Personally I think this is stupid. I don't know of any other encyclopedia that italicizes the title of every article about a creative work. Look up Catcher in the Rye on Britannica...the title of Britannica's encyclopedia article about the novel is not italicized. I don't recall ever seeing italicized article titles in Collier's, Funk & Wagnall's, Encarta, or Grolier either. As for a waiting period, the implementation of {{italic title}} across a huge portion of Wikipedia (all articles about the aforementioned creative works) happened over 6 months ago. I think enough time has passed to revisit the issue on a more widely-publicized basis so that we can judge if consensus is still in its favor...the discussion that led to it took place in a corner of Wikipedia not watched by the community at large, and was (in my opinion) not well-advertised (I remember hearing about it somewhere but thinking "there's not a snowball's chance in hell of this happening", then being very surprised later when it did). When we suddenly go from "special cases" to literally hundreds of thousands of articles, one has to wonder if what we're doing is really necessary or even an improvement. I doubt that any readers' understanding of our article topics is enhanced or degraded by the use of {{italictitle}}. Like I said, a solution in search of a problem. --IllaZilla (talk) 02:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- IMO the main problem is the use of disambiguators in parentheses (see for example Riders to the Sea (opera)). (Italics in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera are unobtrusive because of the use of a 'true' italic (and obviously no disambigs).) BTW I don't think operas — a mixture of English and foreign titles — are a special case, and they also have a lot of disambigs. --Kleinzach 02:31, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- I've now referred this to the Village pump (policy). --Kleinzach 04:13, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- I think that the article titles were better before the mass italicizing. It doesn't flow well when there is the italicized title while its potential disambiguation is not italicized. There is not a necessity for the italicized article titles, because the article itself can establish whether or not it is a piece of artwork, an album, a book, etc. In the main body, it then can be italicized. Without the article title italics, the titles would be in default format. That is what I would promote, because there won't need to be a select few which will be picked and chosen to give italics, and the default text is a more efficient option. Backtable Speak to meconcerning my deeds. 04:35, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- Although there are workarounds that enable us to not italicize disambiguators—eg. In Utero (album)—or even to have a mixture of italic and non-italic text—eg. List of Family Guy cast members—doing so requires somewhat specialist knowledge (such as knowing when/how to use {{DISPLAYTITLE}}—as in the Family Guy example—or encoding {{italic title}}} into a commonly-used infobox—as in the In Utero example—which requires knowledge of template coding) and provides no tangible benefit to readers. And even these solutions sometimes lead to problems...I've seen more than a few titles get screwed up by the forced application of {{italic title}} via {{Infobox album}}.
- I also agree with this editor's point that this whole thing seems to forget the fact that the titles of Wikipedia articles are just that...the titles of Wikipedia articles. They are not the titles of the works the articles describe, though they may include (or even consist solely of) those titles. In other words, In Utero is the title of an album whereas "In Utero (album)" is the title of an encyclopedia article. We are confusing the titles of our articles with the titles of the works they describe. Article titles are not running text and don't follow the same style conventions as running text. Doing so is the equivalent of italicizing book titles on the covers of every book, or film titles on the posters of every film. So basically we've imposed a titling system on hundreds of thousands of articles that requires complicated workarounds and specialist knowledge in order to pull off, and is not only unnecessary but technically incorrect. --IllaZilla (talk) 05:29, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- My general impression is that about three out of every four music (and arts) editors are against this. What should we do? Contribute to building a critical mass at Village pump (policy)? Or make a guideline here? Or something else? --Kleinzach 09:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- Since Wikipedia policy currently says that italics should be used in titles if they are used in running text, this is the policy that needs to be reversed. Whatever is decided, I feel it should be consistent across all projects including books, films, etc, so you were right to move the discussion there. --Robert.Allen (talk) 09:50, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- (edit conflict)I was against the italic titles from the start, the taxonomy and battleship folks were the most in favor of it and ultimately they garnered enough support to get the change. If it was proposed I am fairly confident that we could get consensus to rid the music titles of italics but I'm not sure that is a great idea. Do we want just this one corner of the Wiki to have differently styled titles than the rest of the project? In my opinion, consistency throughout all titles is important. Which means the best course of action is a widely advertised discussion concerning all titles and I'm not sure consensus to change would be reached. J04n(talk page) 10:07, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- Judging by last year's Rfc there really was no real consensus for italics. I can't see that changing. (I agree that basic consistency through WP is important, though taxonomy could be treated in a special way.) --Kleinzach 10:37, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
I think the village pump discussion is the right start. Once we feel we have enough interested editors we can start an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Article titles, which is the relevant policy page. We should then advertise the RfC as widely as possible, certainly to all related Wikiprojects (those that work in the topic areas listed here) and also at the village pump, and probably elsewhere (seeing as this affects somewhere around half a million articles, it might even be worth one of those advertisement banners at the top of watchlists, like the one currently advertising the pending changes discussion & biography sourcing drive). --IllaZilla (talk) 17:08, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
- Right. A new Rfc would be the right way to go, but I'm concerned that having it at Wikipedia talk:Article titles might result in the same, limited number of people turning up again. It might be better to keep it at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy), make a proposal, stick Rfc and Centralized discussion templates on it, and advertise it as you've suggested. What do you think? --Kleinzach 07:45, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
- Sounds good to me. Either way, really, as long as it's advertised in all the right places it doesn't necessarily matter where the discussion is. --IllaZilla (talk) 15:47, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
- By way of a start, I've notified Wikipedia talk:Article titles of the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy). --Kleinzach 07:45, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
WikiProject Music genres
I've suggested this project might be made into a (Music project) taskforce here. It's not really active, but it's a central and it does have some archives. Comments welcome. --Kleinzach 06:26, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Invitation to join the Grammy Awards task force
You are invited to join the Grammy Awards task force, a subproject of WikiProject Awards and prizes dedicated to improving articles and lists related to the Grammy Awards. If you are interested in joining, please visit the project page and add your name to the list of participants. |
Please contribute: Re reporting of Radio dates in infobox....
...in Singles 'Released' field and chronology sections.
The crux of the issue is that we are reporting a NON-release date in a PREFORMATTED field titled "Released:". Radio date is NOT a 'Release' (industry terminology). We are attempting to resolve the reporting of Radio date in infobox HERE. Also feel free to review the considerable material prior to the subsection given in the link. Please contribute to the discussion at the link above so it can all be in one place and thank you.—Iknow23 (talk) 01:12, 16 April 2011 (UTC)
There is a dispute regarding the name of this artist, and I think it would be helpful if some other editors could comment; please see Talk:Jasmine (American_singer)#Article reverted. Many thanks, Chzz ► 21:07, 23 April 2011 (UTC)