Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Indie term confusion

Is it possible for this project to somehow accomidate label type clarification as with Razorlight? -VirianFlux, 10:33, 17 October 2006 (BST)

Project – Take #2

The first attempt at a WikiProject centered around musicians ended awkwardly. I hope that this second attempt–starting now–proves to attract larger participation. I have tried to reorganize this project (and I am currently still doing so) to streamline the process and in the long run, improve the majority of musican-based articles. -- Heaven's Wrath   ^Talk  00:37, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, hello. Just happened to wander by and noticed all the new stuff. Thanks for taking charge; I watched this thing sink the last time, but I was not up to the task of resuscitation. Still, consider me on board as before.

I think I'm going to take off the "inactive" tag on the list, for a start. –Unint 23:50, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good. Thanks for taking off the tag, I forgot about that one. I will move you back onto the Active participants list. I look forward to working with you. -- Heaven's Wrath   ^Talk  02:19, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You might want to take a look at WP:COUNCIL; in particular, the guide to WikiProject organization, while not nearly complete yet, might have some ideas you can apply here. Kirill Lokshin 02:22, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

You might also want to take a look at WP:BIOGRAPHY which has started up an arts & entertainment taskforce. Perhaps the two could be merged. --kingboyk 19:55, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I left a message on this page to offer this project's help and a hope to work together. -- Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  04:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Beyond working together, wouldn't it be better to actually merge? Otherwise there's going to be a lot of dual templating and two Projects working in roughly the same areas. --kingboyk 19:56, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I just added a lot of band pages to the to-do list. Let's try and get some more people involved. Weatherman90 02:08, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

A job for the project

Anyone who was following Template talk:Infobox musical artist will have seen the debacle regarding the meaning of the "current members" field. There's been some conflict regarding what goes there for a band that's no longer active, among other things.

Just today this has come up again at Genesis (band). A revert war has began; this underscores the need for the project to have a guideline of some kind regarding this issue. (Infobox musical artist has changed the field displayed to say "Members" only as a reaction, but a firm word on the subject would go a long way.) –Unint 18:49, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikiproject template

I've been messing around with the {{Musician}} template so that it now properly does the show/hide, and I've added the article rating system to it, so articles are now placed in Category:WikiProject Musicians articles by importance & Category:WikiProject Musicians articles by quality. Thoughts? Ajaxfan 17:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. I was messing around with a similar one in my sandbox. Never got around to finishing it though. One thing that always bothered me was the name of the template. I feel it should be moved to {{WPMusician}} or similar. The major problem with that though would be fixing all the articles with {{Musician}} on them. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  22:41, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

What is the difference between {{Musician}} and {{WPBiography}}? When previewing a talk page with {{Musician}} added to a previously existing {{WPBiography}}, there was no visible difference between the two. BNutzer 21:23, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

{{Musician}} now redirects to {{WPBiography}}. We have joined forces with WikiProject Biography. An explanation of how to use {{WPBiography}} is on the template's page, and the fields applicable to this project are available on the main page. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  21:57, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Lol, wish I'd been a fly on the wall. That must have really got you puzzled :) --kingboyk 22:02, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians#Adding articles better say: "Add {{Musician|musician-work-group=yes}}" or even "{{WPBiography|musician-work-group=yes}}" (to prevent superfluous redirects)? BNutzer 23:55, 4 October 2006 (UTC)

I updated that section. Thank you, (you are correct of course) I had forgotten to update the entire page. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  03:01, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

|attention=yes

I added |attention=yes on Talk:Toni Price so that it says {{WPBiography|attention=yes|musician-work-group=yes}}. Apparently, that added the page to Category:Biography articles needing attention. I expected it to be automatically added to Category:Musicians work group articles needing attention. Did I miss something, or could it be the template isn't fully working? BNutzer 22:05, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Probably a bug. Can you report it on the template talk? I'#ll try to fix it but it might not be today as I have a really bad cold. --kingboyk 07:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Done. Get well soon! BNutzer 15:51, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yikes, I answered you guys on that page but didn't realze a thread was here, so in case you guys didn't see that, I've fixed that bug... --plange 14:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal on categorizing "Taper-friendly bands"

Hi, I've created a proposal for categorizing "taper-friendly bands", aka "bands that allow taping" within Wikipedia, and I wanted to invite people interested in this article to offer comments and feedback, since this falls, at least somewhat within the purview of the Musicians project. The proposal is at User:Xtifr/BTAT, and I'd be very interested to hear what people have to say about my suggestions. Let me know whatcha think. Thanks, Xtifr 11:12, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Organisation of this project, scope, and templates

I have some serious concerns about the organisation of this WikiProject as a seperate entity.

First of all, every article you cover which is about an individual is going to be within the scope of WikiProject Biography's Arts & Entertainments workgroup. That means that probably 50% or more of "your" talk pages are going to be tagged with at least 2 WikiProject templates. This isn't good, because editors don't like talk page clutter and it also can lead to something of a turf war. Let's stop and have a think about this for a moment. I have no idea of the exact numbers in this case, but I can tell you that Category:Politicians contains over 40,000 articles. I wouldn't be surprised if we have a similar number of articles on solo musicians.

Secondly, you've been placing your banners on pages managed by already well-established projects such as WP:KLF and WP:BEATLES. The KLF WikiProject is already a sister project of WP Electronic Music and WP Biography. We don't need yet another WikiProject to come along and claim scope. To reduce talk page clutter, The KLF and Beatles projects already share templates with WPBio.

The solution is eminently clear, and that is that you become a child project of WPBiography. We recently had WikiProject British Royalty join with us, and I propose that you join on the same basis as them. They retained their name and their pages within their own WikiProject area, they remain operationally independent but officially a child project of the Royalty workgroup, and - crucially - they share our template, {{WPBiography}}. As a child project (let's use that wonderful term "quasi-autonomous") you'd be expanding WPBio's scope to musical ensembles, which is fine and great. (WP British Royalty have articles within their scope which aren't even about people). You would take over all musician articles, just as Brit Royalty have taken over all articles within their scope.

We'd implement this as follows:

• A musician=yes parameter on our template, which would indicate that an article is within the scope of your child project
• You can use the existing non-bio= parameter if you tag any articles which aren't biographies
• You can use living=yes and all the other existing parameters of our template
• You'd get your own Wikipedia 1.0 worklist and retain your own organisational categories, all within our template
• Editors would have to look at only a WPMusicians version of the {{WPBiography}} template on each page, rather than 2 templates.
• I would also update {{WPKLF}} and {{WPBeatles}} to place musician biographical articles from our projects into your categories and worklists.

Please seriously consider this or we're going to have the worst scope overlap in WikiProject history. --kingboyk 14:22, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I've been tagging talk pages, and I considered some of the things you mention. I've been tagging articles on bands for the moment, since these don't fall under the scope of the Biography WikiProject as far as I can tell. I've also avoided tagging pages which fall under the KLF & Beatles Wikiprojects (apologies if I did do this in some places). Perhaps we could integrate our templates for individuals, and keep the seperate musicians template for bands. An example of how we could integrate the template (from the computer & video games project):

Anyway, I'll hold of with adding templates for now. jaco♫plane 14:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

You did catch one KLF article, which is how I "caught" you ;) lol. No matter though. (By the way you can tell AWB to skip pages which contains WPBio, KLF or Beatles templates easily enough).

You're correct that WPBio doesn't currently cover musical groups, but that still leaves us with a problem: about half of your articles are covered by WPBio. What are you going to do about them?

Is there any philosophical objection to being a child project of WPBio? In a sense I see it as handing over responsibility to you, rather than taking it away, because you would become the custodians for WikiProject Biography of all matters related to musicians.

What I have in mind is just like that template you used above, but you'd use WPBiography for all of your articles, whether they be on groups or individuals. {{WPBiography}} is a very sophisticated template. Have a look at this for example:

Template removed due to effect on auto-categories and -statistics - D B D^R 12:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

{{WPBiography|british-royalty=yes|living=yes|needs-infobox=yes|class=FA|priority=High}}

That's the WPBIO template! You'd think it was a different template wouldn't you? No, it's the same one that produces this:

{{WPBiography}}

See also my plugin for AWB (User:Kingbotk/Plugin) which tags pages with WPBIO. I could add the musicians group as a parameter to the plugin, and also have it search for and remove your old template, so it wouldn't be too difficult to undo what's been done.

Anyway have a think about it. I'll raise the issue with the WikiProject Council too as I think the overlap of scope here is too lareg to ignore. Cheers. --kingboyk 14:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I didn't know that about WPBiography. Anyway, this sounds like a good idea to me. If you could add that functionality to your plugin then I don't mind converting all the templates I've added. Cheers, jaco♫plane 14:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

That would be great. Are there are other project members who need to be consulted first or can this be proceeded with immediately? (Note that I have a bit of a backlog at the moment, and this would require some substantial work -

• Adding a new param to {{WPBiography}} for your project, and putting all your classification and other categories into our template
• Changing the {{WPKLF}} and {{WPBeatles}} templates
• Adding the new param to the plugin and adding code to replace your old template)

I could probably make a start later today but I doubt it would be finished until tommorow. If you're itching to get tagging again, I could make the plugin work a priority, and fix the templates up later (if you tag with a musicians parameter but that parameter isn't in the template, Mediawiki just ignores it... and when the param gets added later, Mediawiki will redo all the talk pages which use it. Pretty cool). --kingboyk 15:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Well it's probably best to let some other members weigh in (User:Heaven's Wrath, specifically). But I don't think there should be major objections. So don't worry about making this a priority for the moment. jaco♫plane 15:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, after receiving a request to comment, here I am. First off, I think it is a good idea. Having 3 or 4 projects all claiming an article can be a little difficult. I think having a similar set-up to the British Royal project would be fine. If WP:Musicians=yes (or similar) it would read:

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Musicians (a child project of the Arts and Entertainment Work Group of WikiProject Biography), an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to musicians on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you should visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

Other ideas for icons (left):

commons:Category:Music icons, commons:Category:Sound icons

I am not sure what icon we would use (or if we need to make one), but I think the overall idea is good. I did not think we need to fully merge with the Biography project, but a collaboration ( at least of the infobox) would be good. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  22:30, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

← We'll probably just use your choice of icon and wording rather than hugely reformat everything, because our template is getting to the stage where it's hard to understand! Also, your articles are all biographies so it won't confuse anybody. I like that image you've chosen by the way.

I think we'll have to create new categories for Wikipedia assessments as your current ones (Category:Unassessed WikiProject Musicians articles etc) aren't named per convention. (It should be "musician articles by quality" rather than "WikiProject musician"; I guess for uniformity we'd make it "Biography (musicians)".

Anyway, plan of action:

• Hopefully Plange will get you set up with the Bio template and any other infrastructure you need
• I'll program support into my plugin and fix up the {{WPKLF}} and {{WPBeatles}} templates so that they put their articles into the musician workgroup categories instead of arts & entertainment
• We'll redirect {{musician}} to {{WPBiography}} and I'll have my bot clean up
• You guys can get on with tagging musician talk pages (using my plugin if that makes it easier for you), assessing articles, and all the other normal WikiProject stuff —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kingboyk (talk • contribs) 18:17, September 20, 2006.

Sounds good. Feel free to rename the categories (just leave us a note on the new names), they were named before I joined the project. Keep us updated. I will change the Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Infobox page after the Bio template is updated. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  02:11, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Awesome-- I'm going to code this first in my sandbox first and will come back, but meanwhile, you can use the parameter musician-work-group=yes in the WPBiography template and when the code is finally in place, boom, your articles will be in there... --plange 03:53, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

We've done the template and I've done the plugin code. Rest to follow later. --kingboyk 10:57, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

MUSART templates

Another thing I noticed is these MUSART templates {{MUSART}} {{MUSART1}} {{MUSART2}}. I don't really see the point - they seem to be more complicated than typing in the project name/link by hand! Can anyone convince me why they shouldn't be nominated for deletion? :)

Whether they're useful or not they should be subst'd not transcluded. I've done a load myself, but here's an AWB job for you while we're discussing the main project template - go through this list with AWB and subst all MUSART instances :) --kingboyk 15:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Hm, yeah these templates seem totally useless to me. I'll start substing them later today, after which they an be deleted as far as I' m concered. jaco♫plane 15:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Okie dokie mate, let me know when they're no longer needed and I'll use my magic button (assuming you're not an admin, I haven't checked! if you are, well, you know what to do ;)) --kingboyk 15:11, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, you are an admin. My apologies. --kingboyk 17:31, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Heh, anyway, I substed all the templates :) jaco♫plane 18:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Musician "importance"

(Now we use WPBio, it's actually priority=)

I'm migrating the musician templates over to WPBio, and I've found some absolutely ridiculous importance ratings. Examples:

• Celine Dion - I can't stand the woman, but low importance?! At least High.
• Bee Gees - One of the top selling bands and songwriting teams in the world, ever. Top importance, no question. Was rated Low!

So we're all singing off the same sheet: Low should be bands that didn't make it, but have just about enough notability to get a Wikipedia article. We can also put reality TV show contestants who didn't win in this category. The legendary bands and artists get Top. Everyone else should be Mid or High.

If there's any controversy over ratings for "Top" priority we could always introduce an approval process for Top, but let's not add that extra level of bureaucracy unless it's needed :) --kingboyk 13:12, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Kylie Minogue is apparently low too. Sigh. --kingboyk 14:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Tagging

Well... mostly done now. Plange and I fixed up the template, and Plange is working on the categories. I've reprogrammed my plugin, and fixed the pages which were using {{musician}}. I've also done all Beatles and KLF articles and fixed up those templates. (Geez... I can feel myself getting grey).

Now that's all done if you want to carry on tagging talk pages please do! You can grab a copy of the plugin at User:Kingbotk/Plugin or carry on with vanilla AWB if you prefer.

Apologies for the grounding but you are now cleared for takeoff :) --kingboyk 23:23, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

All done making the cats! Okay, so as part of our project, you now have some nifty pages and tools. Didn't just want to start inserting them willy-nilly, but will come back here and list after Mathbot runs tonight (as right now the links are red until that happens)... Stay tuned! --plange 00:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for all the help and work. This project needs a lot of cleaning up, and with AWB and bot help, it makes it a lot easier. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  02:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, here's your goodies, to place where you think best. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Arts and entertainment for ideas --

• {{Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biography (musicians) articles by quality statistics}}
• Your article category: Category:Musicians work group articles
• Articles needing infoboxes: Category:Musicians work group articles needing infoboxes
• Assessments: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biography (musicians) articles by quality
• {{WPBiography Sidebar}}
• {{Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biography (musicians) articles by quality log}}

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by plange (talk • contribs) 11:38, September 22, 2006.

Thanks, I will try to incorporate these into the main page this weekend. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  22:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Bump! :) --kingboyk 16:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I have never seen anyone "bump" a Wikipedia page before. Anyway, I added the information to either the front page or the Assessment page. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  03:20, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

You have now! :) Anyway, excellent, thanks. I've also just had a sweep through, adding some sidebars, fixing up categories, and marking a few old pages as archives. --kingboyk 11:05, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Peer review

Howdy! We just had someone request a peer review for a musical group, which isn't really our purview, but instead of turning them away, I thought I'd see if you guys could help assess? --plange 15:57, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

It is "our" purview because this is a child project of WPBio now :) Thanks for the headsup though and please do post future headsup here too, but there's no need for a disclaimer :) I've seen that article on my travels lately - I think it's a current GA nominee? Not sure it should be undergoing GA and PR at the same time but never mind... --kingboyk 16:03, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Infobox suggestion

Has there ever been discussion of adding a few lines to the info box:

1. Grammys (# won/# nominated)

2. Certifications (# gold albums, # platinum albums, # diamond albums)

3. Certifications (# gold singles, # platinum singles, # diamond singles)

4. Chart Positions Albums (# 1's, # top 10's, # top 100's)

5. Chart Positions Singles (# 1's, # top 10's, # top 100's)

TonyTheTiger 16:48, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I forgot to respond to this earlier, sorry.

1. Having just the Grammys is very limited as there are many different awards, and Wikipedia covers muscians from all different countries. It is better to place in a section labeled "Awards" in prose.
2. RIAA certification is an American organization, so it does not cover sales in other countries.
3. same as above
4. There are so many charts, there is no way to decide which ones to include. It is better put in a chart in the discography section.
5. same as above

– Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  22:04, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

1. Isn't the Grammy still the World's premier music award? Aren't there several international awards?

2. Couldn't people use the applicable certification(s) depending upon the artist?

3. ibid

4. Editor's discretion just like current chart peak position tables.

5. ibid

TonyTheTiger 18:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Discography need

I have identified several prominent artists with no wikipedia discographies. I have created the Category:Musician articles in need of discographies page. I have noted it on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums page, but it may also be relevant here. If possible I would like to get this page into common usage. I am not sure what actions to take to do so. Please advise. TonyTheTiger 16:49, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

That is fine, except it does not follow the correct naming syntax. It should be Category:Musicians work group articles needing discographies. It would be best if you could move the pages to the new one. Afterwhich, I will incorporate it into the main page. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  17:02, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I guess I will have to surrender the right to claim this one. You can see by clicking on my name that I like to claim pages I have started. Is there any way to maintain this claim. It is humbling to have to remove my category page claim. TonyTheTiger 18:24, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Um, assuming that you're keeping in mind WP:OWN, I see no reason why you can't list the category on your user page as something you started. I mean, you did. Anyway, working on Wikipedia should be a humbling experience, IMO. I know I frequently find it so! :) It might have been slightly better if HW had moved the old category rather than simply creating a new one, but oh well. Life's tough some days. Xtifr _tälk 19:06, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I have moved over all the artist links and the discussion. Let me know if there will be any change to the insertion procedures going forward.TonyTheTiger 19:56, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry I created that, but one of the major things things at Wikipedia is that no one owns any specific article. Thanks for moving them. If you find anymore articles, please add them. And I do not know how to move a category (there is not a move button), otherwise I would have done that. I can only see how to move the category's talk page. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  03:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, I thought that the ability to move categories had recently been added; guess I was misremembering, sorry. Xtifr _tälk 19:06, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe only admins can move them. I think I read that somewhere. Or maybe they just create new ones and delete the old ones. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  21:51, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

The old category should be deleted, so unless someone here is an administrator, I will list it for speedy deletion tomorrow. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  03:55, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I have spent some time thinking about this issue. I do not really think that the issue is addressed by the WP:OWN page. That page addresses ownership as it relates to respecting a primary (dominant) editor. That is a concern when their are conflicting opinions on the direction of a page. That is not the case here. We all seem to agree that there is a need for a category like the newly created one. It is an issue I have spent a week on (see: Acts in Need of Discographication) even though I have only gotten you guys involved over the last 3 days. I think the proper procedure would have been Speedy renaming now that I look things over. Because this is a category space page, even if I continue to add artist to the page they will not show up in the category space page history. I think what should have happened is I should have created a page and Heaven's Wrath should have then amended it to follow project guidelines. This would have given me the according credit for the idea in the history by documenting the first entry in the history with (creating page). Then, Heaven's institutional knowledge of the project procedures would have shown in his corrections in the history. TonyTheTiger 17:53, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

You do bring up some good points, and again I apologize for creating the category, but I give you all the credit for coming up with idea and starting it. Also, I am getting started on the points you made on my talk page. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  01:10, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

In response to your thoughs, I created a new template and edited the category.

• {{WPMusicians discography}} – To be added directly below {{WPBiography}}.
• Category:Musicians work group articles needing discographies – Added new directions.

Thoughts? – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  02:43, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Given your superior expertise and capabilities (I.E., your ability to create templates and enact my idea) you have my blessing to take the idea and run with it as you have already done so well. I am pleased to see your progress. In addition to top and high priority what other classifications are there for musician attention needs?TonyTheTiger 16:14, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I made the top/mid requirements based on your comments on my talk page and the idea that not every musician would need a discography page. It is better to start with a number of articles that are managable, so starting this idea with the higher priority articles seemed appropriate. Expansion to the rest of the articles hopefully will follow. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  03:23, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Members

Who is entitled to list their name among the project members? I am a new iPod owner (purchased Aug 2006). As a result, I have been correcting and suggesting corrections in several related pages. I am modestly involved.TonyTheTiger 15:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

If you ever edit musician articles, sign on up. All Wikipedians in good standing are welcome. --kingboyk 15:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Discography template

At the newly created Template:WPMusicians discography, I stumbled upon the terms top or high-priority musician articles. I would like to ask for ratings on the original seven musicians I listed in the discography need category: Louis Armstrong, Celia Cruz, Gap Band, Dizzy Gillespie, Aaron Neville, Teddy Pendergrass, & Tito Puente TonyTheTiger 15:17, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Some copy-editing help with an FAC?

• Hiya, I've been working on Sasha (DJ) for quite some time now but haven't managed to get it up to FA status yet. It pretty much just needs a couple goings-over from someone with copy-editing experience. Basically, it just needs someone to go through and pick out any wording redundancies or any other sort of awkward sentences. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Wickethewok 18:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/Sparks (band)/archive2

Hi. I've just put this article up for its 2nd review, the last one got a fairly poor response so hopefully this one will get some more eyes on it and since you guys are now supporting the article maybe you'd be so good as to take a look. regards --KaptKos 09:39, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

I will head over there now. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  16:57, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

• Responded. Good luck with improvements! Wickethewok 17:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Logos in infoboxes

This discussion started at the infobox talk page, but I'm redirecting this part of it here, because I think it has broader implications. Note that the trick in question (putting a logo instead of a name into the infobox) is apparently done on several articles, most notably Coldplay, but more blatantly, with articles like Arctic Monkeys. The more I think about it, the more I think it's a Bad Idea(TM), for the following reasons:

1. Will encourage people to upload more fair-use images of limited notability.
2. Makes the articles less accessible to people using text browsers or screen readers.
3. Makes the article look confusingly like an official band site, rather than an encyclopedia (some legal danger here).
4. Makes the article look more like a fan site, rather than an encyclopedia, encouraging the addition of more fancruft (a constant and on-going problem with arts and entertainment articles).
5. The vast majority of bands (let alone musical artists) don't have a single, recognized logo. This will encourage people to find inappropriate near-logos that don't belong in the article to add to an infobox for the "coolness" factor.
6. Articles should stand on their own, even if all fair-use images are arbitrarily removed, as they would have to be for most derivative works. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule, i.e. articles about images, but these are articles about bands. Putting the logo in the infobox instead of the name means more work when stripping fair-use images.
7. Looking outside the world of arts-and-entertainment articles, I note that corporate logos, while often added to articles about corporations, are never (that I can see) included in an infobox. They are usually displayed below it.
8. Could spread to album articles, which would be really excessive (we might want to alert the Albums project to be on the lookout for this).

I might be able to think of more reasons, but that should do for a start. If a concensus develops that we should allow or even support this, I'll go along, but I really think it's a bad precedent. Xtifr _tälk 21:00, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you. Although I like the look of some of the names. I think that your points are well-based. If a band happens to have such a standard symbol for their name, I am open to including it as an image in the article. But some of the images do not really seem like they are the official logo of a band. Especially since some logos change from album to album. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  00:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
• User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
• User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
• User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
• User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Celia Cruz

Soon after I added Celia Cruz to the Category:Musicians work group articles needing discographies list, someone added a sketch. I posted my complaints about this sketch here Talk:Celia Cruz#Discography need. A sketch based on recency does not suffice in my eyes. Should I relist her? TonyTheTiger 20:51, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Proposal

I am officially confused on how to add a suggestion to the guidelines section. I would like to post a guideline for a sufficient selected discography (with my Celia Cruz commentary in mind). I believe that wikipedia as the world's encyclopedia and thus an important information source should aspire to have selected discographies that are informative enough that the casual visitor can make better decisions for record choice (buying, borrowing from the library, including in iTunes playlist, etc.). With this in mind I believe a selected discography should attempt to be informative in listing Grammy Winning albums, Platinum Albums, Most important Compilations, and be instructive on most important singles. TonyTheTiger 21:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a buyers guide, but notable albums/singles/etc. should probably be listed in a discography, if the artice is to reach FA status, But we're all relying on volunteer labor here. And the Celia Cruz article does have the beginnings of a discography now. At most, I would probably add a request for expansion template to the section (e.g. {{Expandsection}}), rather than re-listing it as "needs discography". Especially since there are probably thousands of articles that completely lack discographies and haven't been tagged at all. I dunno. As for the basic idea of developing some guidelines for discographies—that's probably a good idea. Xtifr _tälk 21:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

• Agreed that a selected discography should point the most important albums of that artist (certainly the Grammy winning ones). The article shouldn't tell people what to buy, of course, but they should be able to get a general idea from the article and the discography which albums were the best received/most purchased. A set of guidelines for discographies would be great, as that seems like something which should be standardized. Maybe a discography-entry template or something? Wickethewok 22:01, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

There's some overlap here between WikiProject Musicians and WikiProject Albums, and we should probably try to coordinate with them. Discography standardization and discography templates are something that has been discussed and rejected in the past, I believe. There's just too many possible approaches, and too many different things that are appropriate for some artists but not others. Looking at the Album Project page, though, I note that they also monitor Category:Musicians work group articles needing discographies and mention that it should include articles with "deficient" discographies, so re-listing Celia Cruz is probably ok. Bottom line, I don't want to start any turf-wars, as that seems to be part of the reason the original version of this project collapsed. But I think some basic guidelines (or at least suggestions) for discographies is a good idea. Xtifr _tälk 22:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I do not see the reason for a "Selected dicography" section, other than the fact if an artist has a seperate discography page. I think that based on the {{WPMusicians discography}} template, it can be relisted as it does not meet the guidelines (although there are not really any officially adopted ones yet). We can change the wording if it would make it clearer. Also, the discography section should be a level 2 header, not a subheader. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  23:14, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works)

I've overhauled Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) based on a 2nd round of feedback. Possibly it's complete and ready? Feedback (at it's talkpage) or improvements welcome :) --Quiddity 02:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Musician articles and {{cleanup-bio}}

When editing Annie Whitehead, I have found that some wikipedians apparently regard many musician articles "low standard". This might be of interest here and in the "parent" biography project ... see Talk:Annie Whitehead#Missing biographical data?. Cheers, BNutzer 16:02, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem is hardly limited to musician articles. There's lots of stubs for actors, atheletes, writers, politicians, etc. I left a comment at the Annie Whitehead talk page. Basically, the article is already marked as a stub, which makes the other tags somewhat redundant. But perfectly valid. *shrug* Xtifr _tälk 00:28, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I was going to say the same thing -- it's a start/stub article which means it's missing stuff, so a tag like that seems redundant to me too. I could see its usage better on articles assessed at B or above... --plange 00:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

My concern was rather whether an article about a musician should (or even needs to) contain much biographical data aside from the actual musicianship (is that an english word? :) since the {{cleanup-bio}} user asks for such info ... BNutzer 01:05, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Question is better suited for the Bio wikiproject, but in my opinion, yes. If it's ever going to have any hope of reaching Featured Article status, it's going to need to be much more detailed and, well, encyclopedic. Of course, that doesn't mean that having stubs is wrong (although m:Deletionists might disagree). It simply means that stubs are articles which still need a lot of work. Xtifr _tälk 01:27, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and echo the sentiment that there's nothing wrong with stubs or starts, esp. if that's all the info that can be gleaned using verifiable sources, etc. But if you do want to "climb it up the assessment ladder" then you would need that kind of info. It helps establish context for the person-- are they a coal miner's daughter and fought through class barriers, etc? Are they from a musical family? People don't form fully as a musician in isolation and had to have had influences from their surrounding environment (physical, familial and cultural), so it's good to give that context. --plange 15:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

FYI: Template talk:WPBiography#musicians override arts and entertainment?

Cheers, BNutzer 12:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Project Box

I've seen a few other WikiProjects with Project Boxes for their members userpage and I thought it might be nice to have one for ours. I believe it could increase membership and at the very least provide some exposure for the articles listed on it. An example of what I was thinking can be found here at my sandbox. Thoughts? --Thereen 06:45, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Translations

I have noticed that many artists popular with Spanish speaking music fans (Celia Cruz, Marc Anthony, Tito Puente, etc.) have discography and bio deficiencies. Have you ever made a broad task of translating info from Spanish wikipedia? TonyTheTiger 15:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I have not done much translating, although I probably know enough Spanish to do that. If you read the spanish versions, besides Cruz's article, there really is not that much more information. If translation was requested for an article that had a signifigant amount of information in the spanish article, I would be more than happy to do it. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  16:50, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I was mainly talking about augmenting the discography. I think much can be added from the Spanish discography. TonyTheTiger 19:28, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry

Should List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians tag? TonyTheTiger 15:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not think so. That would probably be better suited for WikiProject Music. Although every article does not need to have a tag. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  16:53, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Does WikiProject Music have a tag? TonyTheTiger 19:29, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Userboxes

I just wanted to announce that there are now userboxes for this project. They are on the main page under the userboxes section. Here's a link. Thanks to Thereen for the contribution. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  23:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Genre wars and the distinguishing of genres and styles

As many of you may be aware, many band pages undergo "genre wars". Its the repetitive changing/reverting of the genre of a band mainly in the infobox, but also in the first line of the body of the article. It is mainly, but not limited to, unregistered users, from what I have witnessed. It's ridiculous to say the least. To end these once in for all, this is my proposal.

The boys at the All Music Guide have their categorization of artists split up into genres, and styles. For example, let's look at the Queens of the Stone Age. The All Music Guide categorises them as part of the rock genre, but their styles include hard rock, heavy metal, industrial metal and stoner metal. It would only make sense, as rock is a general category, and as the {{RockBox}} and other templates point out, hard rock is a subgenre, heavy metal is a derivative form, industrial metal is a fusion genre of heavy metal, etc. It only makes sense. If we can make references to the All Music Guide or another equally reliable and professional source, and incorporate this into the first line and the infobox, I believe these numerous edit wars can be quelled. To comply with this, it would be required that {{Infobox musical artist}} be modified so it also has a Style(s) field.

To see an example of how this would look, please view my sandbox (my "Rockbox").

I would appreciate feedback on this proposal. I am going to push hard for this proposal to be put into action, and I appreciate any supporters in helping me do so. Thank you. -- Reaper X 00:47, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't this just move the genre change battles into the "style" field instead? I'm certain for every style categorization in AMG another notable source could be found with a different set of categories for any given artist. I don't think this would improve the situation, and I have no idea what will, apart from deleting the genre field completely which would just move the fight into the lead-in text. --*Spark* 01:02, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Spark. Also, I do not like this idea because "style" is not an accepted term at all in the music industry and the addition of it is based solely on All Music Guide. (See this previous dicussion on this topic for more thoughts.) – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  01:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to add that All Music Guide is not an acceptable source for any article related to underground music. Not an accurate site at all. Ours18 01:35, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Agree with the responses above. Also, AMG uses "rock" to encompass far too much music. –Unint 03:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

As for the problem itself, I don't think the genre wars will ever end as long as music fans keep arriving at the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. (Not to mention the "band membership" war, among other things.) Perhaps we should take a look at what the higher-traffic band articles have been doing about this problem (other than throwing up arms and declaring the band uncategorizable as the final word, as one article that I can't currently recall has done). –Unint 04:02, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Most importantly, though, is that it's a POV issue, and POV issues should not be dealt with in an infobox! The way you resolve POV issues is by including reliable sources citing the various points of view. Since you can't properly show all points of view in the infobox, the way to deal with it is to include the most broad genre in the infobox (something everyone can agree on), and then, as you said, move the fight to the lead-in where it belongs. Adding a style field to the infobox will only ensure fights over the infobox contents. If anything, I think we should add some more documentation about how to be general to the infobox docs. For example, right now it says, "Hip hop instead of East Coast Hip Hop". I might add "Rock instead of NuMetal". I think the infobox should stick to only extremely broad genres, i.e. jazz, rock, hip-hop, pop, blues, R&B, county, folk, soul, funk, electronica, noise, and...not much else! Xtifr _tälk 04:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I have the following comment from Rush:Talk in my copy buffer & I think it fits equally well here:-

Don't really get the obsession with pigeonholing bands. Is it a control thing? By sticking a band in a category are you somehow nullifying their power or nullifying their creativity? More importantly DO WE CARE? Look at some of the other bands around like, say, Primal Scream. What the hell are they? Rolling Clones, 'E'ed up dance rock, Heavy Dub Reggae or the sound of cyberpunk flying away to infinity on a Hawkwind riff? The answer is "all of the above" depending on which album you listen to & Rush are simiilarly genre defying. Call them rock in the about box & divide the career by "genres" - mind you I'd say the real breakpoint between old & new was Hemispheres - Permanent Waves not PW - Moving Pictures. Just my 5c

In summary, who cares what somebody thinks a band is? Very few bands plough the same furrow through a long artistically significant career - even Status Quo had a "flower power" phase! Megamanic 06:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal because often only the main genre (ie. rock, or hip-hop) can be agreed on. I've noticed in genre edit wars it's the subgenres (or "styles") that cause debate. I woud propose that the genre field should mandatorially list the main genre--rock, pop, blues, jazz, country, etc.--an artist belongs to (including more if they apply, such as with someone like Prince, who can be listed under R&B, dance, and rock music). The subgenre/styles field should be optional and should only be used if the subgenres/styles can be agreed upon with sources (as in the case of Nirvana, who most definitely belong to the rock subgenres grunge and alternative rock). In the case of bands with disputed genres like My chemical Romance, HIM, and System of A Down, they would all say "Rock" in the genre field no matter what. WesleyDodds 15:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Also remember, ultimately, Wikipedia is not for what you think. Unless you can cite a reliable source, saying that a band has a particular genre or style violates the rule about no original research. And citing sources is something I think we should discourage people from doing in an infobox! (Although I have—sadly—seen it done as part of a genre-war.) So the genres and/or styles need to be discussed in the body of the article if it's going to be mentioned at all. And if there's a discussion in the body of the article, you don't need to replicate all the details in the infobox. The infobox is supposed to provide a summary, and should have only the most generic details. So...most generic genre in the infobox, styles in the body of the article! We don't need an infobox field for styles! But what we might need is an essay about how to cope with and resolve genre wars. Xtifr _tälk 18:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Problem is in genre debates you often have multiple side just insisting really hard that so-and-so band is so-and-so genre without even providing a magazine article or doing a quick scan of Allmusic or a rock music encyclopedia book. Also, when it scomes down to it I think styles should be mentioned preferably in the infobox rather than the article if they can't both be done, because then you get awkward prose attempts at describing how an artist fits into each and every genre they are classified as when we can probably do without. WesleyDodds 18:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Better to have awkward prose (which can always be copyedited) than blanket statements of fact that aren't really statements of fact. Putting it in the infobox strongly implies that it's a fact, rather than a point of view. Since it is a point of view, it belongs in the body of the article, where it can be presented properly per WP:NPOV. Even if many people are not skillful writers. Note that the NPOV policy says that all points of view should be presented (except no original research), and none, not even the most popular, should be presented as anything but a point of view. I think Wikipedia policy trumps "you get awkward prose". Xtifr _tälk 19:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

There's always the references section, which can consist of Allmusic entries, encyclopedia entries, and plain old bigraphies. We only need to inline cite if there's a potentially contested fact. Stuff like "Black Sabbath is a heavy metal band" doesn't merit a cite. Obviously we rely on sources always, but we also have to use good judgement. A good Wiki article is part reference, and part well-written prose, and I don't want to sacrifice one for the other. Thus list-y descriptions of genres that a band belongs to in the prose just so we can inline cite it is a non-starter for me. They can go in the infobox, unless we can elaborate on how a band fits into or contributes to a major style ("Nirvana brought grunge to the mainstream . . .", "Oasis was part of the Britpop movement . . .", "Metallica was part of the 1980s thrash metal scene . . .", etc.) in the article itself. Some articles we can, some we can't; each article is different.

You also seem to regard all genre descriptions as POV. Well, certainly genres are human constructions created by human perception and open to interpretation, but most of the time they are accepted, well-used classifications that are used with at least some consistency and methodology. You can argue that Miles Davis isn't jazz or that Snoop Dogg isn't gangsta rap, but that would itself be going against mass consensus. WesleyDodds 20:22, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Point taken on the subgenres/styles. I think trying to stay very general on the genre is the best bet, as WesleyDodds has said. I guess I went too far and complicated on the whole subgenre thing. I was just trying to think of something to do with it, just eliminating it didn't seem appealing at the time. Im just fighting for some consistency. Reverting to a proper general genre that editors have come to a consensus on would be better than constant editing and changing through a few different subgenres/styles. Just eliminate this "bickering" action.
In that case though, we should go over the genre articles, and make sure it definitive what is a general genre, and what are sub/fusion/derivative genres and styles of a general genre. I never had the patience to read a slew of them, call me ignorant, but would someone who has read many please provide a sort of general status report? Thanks. -- Reaper X 19:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Thanks for the feedback guys.

(Replying more to WesleyDodds above here, but skipping over Reaper_X's comments to try to keep this discussion in some sort of sane order.) Ok, each article is different, and some cases are more clear-cut than others. The clear-cut cases aren't really a problem, though. If a musician or band is an archetypal exemplar of a genre or style, then it's really not an issue. But genre, insofar as it's a scholarly concept, really applies to music, not to musicians or bands. A musician may play pure genre music, or may cover a wide range of genres. And I don't want huge lists in the infobox! I think that's something we should strongly try to avoid. Which is why I'm advocating using only the most general (and broad, and widely accepted) genres in the infobox. Ok, maybe forbidding all subgenres of rock or jazz is going too far, and I'll retract that. But at the same time, I think we should try to discourage people from listing dozens of obscure (and debatable) subgenres. I think maybe a rule of thumb like, "if you're going to list more than three subgenres, and they're all subgenres of a single genre, just list that single genre instead." And "if (and only if) genre classification is complex or disputed, then put very broad genre(s) in the infobox, and add a couple of short sentences or a small paragraph discussing the difficulty and what some reliable critics or scholars have said." Genre may not always be a matter of POV, but genre disputes and edit wars invariably are! Xtifr _tälk 03:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the best solution is what was done at the My Chemical Romance article. They're probably one of the bands with the greatest genre disputes, so it's a good example of how the problem was resolved there. ~Switch ^t 10:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

A recent CfD

They've recently voted to delete Category:Mysterious musicians, a category for musicians who have concealed their identities at some point. Does anyone think this category would have been salvageable under a different name (and if that had been brought up earlier as an option), or was it trivial overcategorization? –Unint 04:11, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I saw that discussion go by, but I wasn't really sure what I thought, so I stayed out of the debate. I suspect that a more clearly named category might be better, but I (still) don't have strong feelings one way or the other (though I like several of the musicians that were in the category). I think it is a pretty strong defining characteristic of several musicians (e.g. Buckethead or The Residents). But I'm not sure how many others would agree. It's also still a pretty rare and unusual thing for a musician to do, which might count against it. I dunno. Xtifr _tälk 04:49, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I would have liked to see the cat remain; it's an important feature of Buckethead, TISM and The Residents, for example. I really can't think of a better name though. ~Switch ^t 10:57, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Tim Eriksen

Would someone please start at least a stub for Tim Eriksen, so the rest of us can build on it? I tried, but the current structure is just too daunting for us outsiders -- it is obvious that most submissions are declined. I don't see the point in getting into arguments about who is "notable" enough to "qualify". Are 23,000 google matches enough? 69.87.204.146 13:52, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Sudden deletion of fair-use audio excerpts from Bach article. Major implications for music on WP.

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 02:34, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

For those interested, please see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers and Wikipedia talk:Fair use. I believe this characterization is unhelpful and splitting the discussion into several different places will be unproductive. Kat Walsh (spill your mind?) 03:15, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it was me who deleted the sound files. Danny 04:31, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Oversight? Kim Bruning 20:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review would be the first stop if there were actually any reasonable arguments for why these should not be deleted as replaceable fair use—but I'm not hearing any such arguments. The two for which written permission was given have the strongest shot, but the permission would have had to have been for Creative Commons use (or equivalent), not just Wikipedia use. I agree that further discussion here would be unproductive, but I will say that I think the only people "taking things way too far" are those who want to include replaceable, non-free images and sounds in Wikipedia. Xtifr _tälk 22:42, 27 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 17:52, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

"Assessment Week"...?

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography#"Assessment Week" might be interesting for project participants. Cheers and best wishes for the new year, BNutzer 16:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

As of right now, there has been little response to the proposal of an "Assessment Week." If there is no further response soon, the proposal will probably be organized for just this Wikiproject. Thereen came up with the idea, and we thought it might be a good benefit to the entire Biography WikiProject. But it could only be truly successful with a lot of help. – Heav e n's Wrath   ^Talk  03:27, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Matisyahu Peer Review

• Hey, I've nominated Matisyahu for a Peer Review before putting it up for good article status. It's gone through some fairly significant improvement lately, so we'd really appreciate your input! Thanks. -- Chabuk ^{[ T • C ]} 06:08, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

User removing project banner from prominent band pages

After the banner had been removed from Talk:AC/DC, Talk:U2 and Talk:King Crimson, I have restored the tags, and left a comment on the user's talk page. BNutzer 07:48, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

See also Talk:Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra. BNutzer 07:48, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

The reason I removed the WPBiography tag is because this article contains no biographical information and functions as a list. The WPBiography tag should be added to the individual pages of the performers of the orchestra. --Ozgod 12:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

Music related page move for KISS

See Talk:KISS (band). Please add your thoughts, whatever they maybe. 205.157.110.11 03:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Ellis Paul article

Hi. I'm relatively new to Wikipedia and still feeling my way around. Have been editing the Ellis Paul page and wish I had found this group/project sooner. Have requested Peer Review for the article and am looking forward to the first rating! Your help with that would be very appreciated. Have not added my name to the list of active participants here. Could "Folk" be added to the list of genres? That is the one area that I may be interested in participating further. Thanks in advance for your guidance and assistance. Kmzundel 12:51, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Slayer

I will be nominating the article on the band Slayer for FA soon. I would appreciate it, if some of you could take a look and leave some comments on the peer-review if anything would stop it from obtaining FA status. Thanks. M3tal H3ad 09:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Aussie rock drummers cat nominated for deletion

Just wanted to post a heads-up that Category:Australian rock drummers has been nominated for deletion. The category is currently empty, so that's not a big deal, but it is certainly within the scope of this project, and was created following this project's guidelines. The deletion discussion is at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 January 10#Category:Australian rock drummers, and the categorization guidelines are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization. Mostly I want to make sure that the category, if it's deleted, is deleted without prejudice to recreate, since it is guideline-compliant. Xtifr _tälk 12:41, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Needs help

If someone is looking for something to do, feel free to check out Radio Romeo. It has issues. -Freekee 05:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

The Temptations FAR

The Temptations has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Tokio Hotel to be watched

Tokio Hotel has been subject to repeated vandalism, maybe you'd like to put it on your watchlist ... Cheers, BNutzer 12:38, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

The good, the bad and the queen

Can someone pop over to the talkpage to give a 3rd party view about a current discussion about the band's name (or rather lack of it). here --Fredrick day 21:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Mariah Carey FAR

Mariah Carey has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Upside-down lists of works

If you spot a list of works, or a list of awards, that is in reverse-chronological order, please either correct it to chronological order as per WP:LOW, or tag it with the template {{MOSLOW}}. This template looks like this:

Where to add an article that needs help

I've read the project page, but I'm confused as to where I should put a musician bio article that needs a lot of TLC (Gus Dudgeon). It has a lot of content, but it's totally unsourced, written in an awkward style, and contains a lot of minutiae or possibly inaccurate data. How can I add this article to WPM to get help from members? With one of the templates? Add it to the collaboration noms? Thanks for any info. Anchoress 01:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

You might try WP:CU, but I think it would be worth your while to look through WP:PROJDIR/W for a project or two that could help you. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 09:44, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

OK sorry, I should have been more specific. I thought maybe there was a way through or in the WPM to do it. I've already tagged it etc, but I didn't know if there were specific templates or lists within WPM to alert WPM members. Sorry for being vague before. Anchoress 10:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Also try Wikipedia:WikiProject Music (some of its descendant projects might also be helpful) and WP:PSP. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 10:09, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the info. Anchoress 02:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Ellis Paul

I nominated Ellis Paul for FA more than 2 days ago, but so far there has been no response. I understand that may be a good sign...that there are no obvious defects....but would appreciate if some of you could take a look. Kmzundel 01:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

living=yes flag in project banner of musical groups' articles?

I have noticed that the flag living=yes has been added to articles about musical groups which I think is not the proper use of the flag. What do others think about that? Greetings, BNutzer 21:00, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm fairly new to the WPBiography project and have been trying to evaluate and contribute to some of the unassessed articles on musicians. I wasn't sure on whether to use the living flag or not for groups or bands, but I have been adding it for bands with living members. I would think that the same precautions would need to be taken about adding negative unsourced material about a band with living members as any other living person biography. Any clarifications about policy or practice in regards to this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 01:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Maybe this older discussion about the usage of the flag is helpful ... Cheers, BNutzer 22:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Deletion noms notification

For anyone interested: up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2007 February 23 are List of bands with no lineup changes, List of bands with no consistent members, and List of bands with only one consistent member. –Unint 18:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Interested?

If anyone is interested, there is a talk going on at the Biography WikiProject concerning all Bands which could affect our project. Link to said discussion. Thereen 06:43, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about it too much. This Project can decide it's own scope, and that includes musical groups. It was agreed when you joined forces and I don't foresee any change. --kingboyk 14:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Also

A few good Wikipedians are needed to assess articles. An idea for a week of assessment was proposed a while ago by myself and Heaven's Wrath, unfortunately we haven't gotten that off the ground. However, WikiProject Biography now has an Assessment Drive going on this month. A lot of the articles currently being suggested for assessment are those relating to Musicians, so I encourage our members to help out :) Thereen 07:44, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The drive is into it's final few days I believe. Get assessing folks! --kingboyk 00:38, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Dream Theater

Moved from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography

How is this article considered only "Start" class for the Biography and Rock Music projects? Surely a former Featured Article (with very few changes since its promotion to FA, despite the fact that it was demoted) is good enough for at least B Class? plattopus^talk 15:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

FLC notice

Comment on support or opposition of Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 22:52, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

{{Navbox musical artist}}

User:TigerK 69 has made this template to standardize the artist/band navboxes. Not sure there is consensus to do this, and I listed some things to discuss at Template talk:Navbox musical artist. Found an old discussion on navboxes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Archive 4#proposal. –Pomte 05:28, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

"The" in band names

• Question - how is the word "the" in articles about bands treated. For example, in The Beatles, "the" is lowercase (eg. "Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released by the Beatles"). However, articles such as The KLF use "the" as uppercase, ("...released in 1988 and 1989 by The KLF..."). Is either particularly correct? Or is it on a case-by-case basis? Wickethewok 03:05, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure "the Beatles" is incorrect, and it should be "The Beatles" in all cases. But I'm not entirely sure. However, in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite and indefinite articles at beginning of name), it says, "If the definite or indefinite article article would be capitalized in running text, then include it at the beginning of the page name. Otherwise, do not include it at the beginning of the page name." Since the article is The Beatles, then by reverse induction, I conclude that "The" should be capitalized in running text. That's not a 100% conclusion, but I think it's a strong one. Personally, I always try to upper-case "The" where it's part of a band's name—but I'm not perfect, and I occasionally slip up. Xtifr _tälk 23:44, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

We say "The KLF" because, I think, we (WP:KLF) consider the "The" to be part of the name. In the case of the/The Beatles, there's been a huge amount of debate about this. WikiProject The Beatles of course wants to have consistency so that the band is always referred to in the same way, but for where the debate currently stands you'll have to check out WT:TBP! --kingboyk 23:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

• Very much thanks guys! Wickethewok 01:03, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

The Golden Horde (band) directly copied from website?

The text of this wiki appears to be a direct copy of this website [1]. I don't want to delete it as I don't know enough about the band and can't recreate it, but perhaps somebody else should?? --The.Q | Talk to me 13:52, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Duran Duran FAR

Duran Duran has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Remove Bob Dylan from Category:Converts to Christianity

I have made a proposal on the page Talk:Bob Dylan to remove Bob Dylan from Category:Converts to Christianity. Please go there to discuss. --Metzenberg 20:49, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Band-specific templates out of hand?

You know those band-boxes that appear at the bottom of any page that has a connection to the band? I used to think they were kind of cool. Now they're getting out of hand. I'm not sure they're necessary for every band, but the big problem is that they're huge. Often, they take up more space than the text of the article they're in. Do they really need to include every studio album, every live album, every compilation album, every single, every video/DVD/fim, every guest artist and every related band or article? No! Please no! Stop the insanity! Won't somebody think of the... the... err, sorry about that. Got a little emotional there. But I really do think someone needs to put a stop to this. Does anyone disagree? Don't categories pretty much cover this stuff anyway? Are there any guidelines published? Should there be? Where? -Freekee 03:19, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Haven't seen much discussion on this. I agree that template should be made more compact, on a case-by-case basis. Once you start excluding some singles to include only the most well-known ones, that's too subjective and can start an edit war. So you have to either include every single or include none at all. Do this at your discretion and try to reach consensus on the talk page. The advantage of templates over categories is they're a lot more visible and it takes only one click to reach related articles. –Pomte 03:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Not to disagree with your specific assessment at this point, but I must disagree with your general statement that we must include everything or nothing in order to avoid edit wars. People must learn to get along and to come to a consensus. We can do that and we do. But I do see where you said to try to reach consesus, so you seem to have softened on the issue after you wrote the previous sentence? I do like the templates for their visibility, but I think we only need to hit the highlights. The rest can be found by following links, both in articles and in categories. -Freekee 03:35, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You're right, it's not as all-or-nothing as I said it, but more like how selected discography sections are established in a band's article. Other than removing links, there are stylistic ways to reduce vertical space. In {{Peter Gabriel}}, all those grey subheadings are unnecessary and can be replaced by bold: text to the left. –Pomte 03:46, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I like the templates too, but agree that there should be some guidelines to limit their size. I don't know anything about how those templates are coded, but is it possibe to just set some size guidelines and leave the content decisions to the editors of each individual template? Strobilus 04:11, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

There was a proposed guideline last year (see the link in my comment above). I'll try to update an easy-to-use template to allow subheadings, and see if the WikiProject would support it for standardization. –Pomte 04:27, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I highly support standarization, having spent forever categorizing all these for just that purpose. User:Circeus drafted some good guidelines, content-wise, a while ago, although he's not involved anymore. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Archive 4#A written guideline I have some more thoughts.

• Is there a need to eliminate the grey subheadings? I find them considerably tidier than just using bold headings to the left.
• Standarization will have to be done across the board. Manually re-coding everything will be a massive job given the sheer numbers, and somebody is going to have to keep an eye on new creations: there are lone, uncategorized templates out there, as well as template code copied straight into articles. (The Cher editors have just dropped another load of these.) In such cases, do we actually go and create the template for them? Also, no doubt editors will invent even more bells-and-whistles in the future.
• For the guidelines, I would like to accomodate any useful, unusual features that any particular navbox may have. Meanwhile, we want to be firm on any tedious features we want to eliminate. In addition, I would suggest a "notability guideline" for navboxes: if 90% of the items are red or black, for example, or if there are only five items being linked to, that should be grounds for straight deletion. –Unint 06:13, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I would very much like to see standardization guidelines for coding the boxes, but I'm more intested in standardization of purpose and of inclusions. That Peter Gabriel box is a good example of a navbox that isn't very good. It lists every album he's got. Is that necessary? But it also doesn't list anything besides albums. How about Genesis or Tony Levin? The Rolling Stones box doesn't list records at all. Personally, I wouldn't mind if they added a few of their more famous albums. Anyway, I think starting with the coding, and including in the guidelines a mention of acceptable headings, including "Selected discography," or the like would be a good thing. Maybe once that's done, we can give a couple of examples to steer people from going overboard with them. But my main question is what's the purpose of the band navigation box? -Freekee 05:25, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of a band navigation box is to facilitate ease of navigation between articles related to the band. We have the burden of speculating which to link.

I didn't mean eliminate all grey subheadings, just ones that contain too few articles and can fall under a more inclusive heading. The ones to keep include Discography, Filmography, Tours, and Related articles.

Examples for you to consider: {{Smashing Pumpkins}} has a lot of links but is organized in a compact way. {{John Mayer}} is a compromise to a user's idea of visual appeal. Some fans are going to insist on preserving their template in some particular color scheme, for the reasons that it is visually appealing, and their template doesn't get shown alongside all other band templates so it doesn't matter whether they all look the same.

Do you want to start a draft for the inclusion guideline, at say Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Footers or its talk page? Some proposals: Links to genre articles should generally be left off, especially if the genre is disputed, unless the band is known for establishing that genre, and they are discussed heavily in the genre article. Do not link record labels unless it is band created the label, or are associated by name. Limit the number of side-projects, producers, studios, etc, related bands. –Pomte 05:48, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't even notice the footers subpage had been there all along; that will be a good place for centralization. As for specific considerations, one section at a time:

• Members: There is usually one bold row and one small row of member names. But what does the distinction mean? Bands operate very differently.
• Albums: For artists with very extensive release histories, I think this is the prime functionality of the navbox: to clarify a complex discography to unfamiliar readers. {{Johnny Cash}}, I think, is one example where this is particularly useful, as the actual discography page organizes his releases on a much more complicated basis.
• Singles: If there are many singles but few famous ones, is there a unilateral way to include some while excluding others? What if there are few singles?
• Related articles: There are so many ways to "relate" a topic to a band that I'm not quite sure how to begin here. Definitely include all the above guidelines, though.
• Size: I think there's only a purpose for navboxes above a certain size. 2 albums is probably too small. –Unint 06:10, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Band/artist navboxes

It sounds like there's a fair amount of interest in this issue. First question: Do we want to do a template, like Template:Infobox Album, where people fill in the blanks? Or give guideline code that people can copy and adjust as they like? I prefer guidelines, to keep it as flexible as possible, but maybe a hard template can be made flexible? -Freekee 03:35, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the deciding factor here is how much code we want (or trust) the individual editors to handle. The templates are copied so much that they might as well be infoboxes of a different kind, I think. A common template would reduce coding errors or "improvements", which reduces their proliferation, which in turn reduces the need to check and fix code at intervals. –Unint 04:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I've made a fill-in-the-blanks template. Here's a fairly generic example:

{{User:Pomte/Template:navbox musical group
| template name = Porcupine Tree
| title = [[Porcupine Tree]]
| members = [[Richard Barbieri]]{{·}} [[Colin Edwin]]{{·}} [[Gavin Harrison]]{{·}} [[Steven Wilson]]
| other members = [[Chris Maitland]]{{·}} [[John Wesley (guitarist)|John Wesley]]
| discography link = Porcupine Tree discography
| discography =
'''Studio albums:''' ''[[On the Sunday of Life]]...{{·}} . . . [[Fear of a Blank Planet]]''

'''Live albums:''' ''[[Coma Divine - Recorded Live in Rome]]{{·}} . . .

'''Compilations:''' ''[[Voyage 34: The Complete Trip]]{{·}} . . .

'''DVD:''' ''[[Arriving Somewhere]]''
| related = [[No-Man]]{{·}} [[Bass Communion]]{{·}} . . .
}}

Porcupine Tree

Richard Barbieri · Colin Edwin · Gavin Harrison · Steven Wilson

Chris Maitland · John Wesley

Discography

Studio albums: On the Sunday of Life... · Up the Downstair · The Sky Moves Sideways · Signify · Stupid Dream · Lightbulb Sun · In Absentia · Deadwing · Fear of a Blank Planet

Live albums: Coma Divine - Recorded Live in Rome · Warszawa · Rockpalast

Compilations: Voyage 34: The Complete Trip · Recordings · Stars Die: The Delerium Years 1991-1997

DVD: Arriving Somewhere

Related articles

No-Man · Bass Communion · Blackfield · Headphone Dust · I.E.M.

If this is a good format, other parameters and the layout can be worked out. –Pomte 04:08, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

With all respect for your work, I don't like this format. Compliations and lives - most artists that have these will have one or maybe two at best, and it adds a lot of space to the template that isn't all that needed. In addition, you should add a list for singles/songs, which many artist navboxes have. TheHYPO 14:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Right. Notice that the discography parameter takes in any number of lines, including singles and whatnot. I've only formatted the structure of the table, not the specific types of content. –Pomte 01:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

I like it. As long as a band has a couple of items in each category, it's fine. Besides, most of the bands who are big enough to warrant such a navbox will have enough lives and comps to fill it. Actually, the studio, live and comp subheadings are just text, so they can be deleted, and a subheading for singles (which is very important) can easily be added. I would like it to say "Selected Discography" on top, though, so editors won't feel required to fill in every album in existence. Thanks a lot!! -Freekee 03:11, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The "selected" part can be specified, I guess. But who has selected it, and how do we know it's not arbitrary? A lot of bands can have their entire discography listed in a relatively small box. –Pomte 01:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Template question

What's the feeling on the "living=yes/no" for groups? For specific people it's added, should it be set to yes for bands where members are still living, too, or just skipped? -Bbik 04:49, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

This has been briefly debated before, but I don't believe that consensus was ever achieved. Aside from feeling that it's not worth edit-warring over, I have no strong preference myself (although I usually just skip it). Xtifr _tälk 21:22, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I also don't bother with it. Add it if there's an issue/controversy but otherwise leave it blank, is my personal take. --kingboyk 22:06, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

"Affiliation(s)" in info boxes

I've got a question, in affiliation(s) in the infobox, should you only list the bands which the musician has been in as a member, or also made guest appearances in? I've noticed there's some confusion about this. Grinder0-0 18:16, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

When the field was created, it was intended for groups which spin off of other groups, groups which a solo artist is a member of, solo artists another solo artist directly mentored, and acts who perform regularly with each other. For example, Missy Elliott and Timbaland should be included in each other's "associated acts", since they were a songwriting/production team, and Timbaland produced most of Missy's hit records. On the other hand, Missy made one song with Eminem, but they shouldn't be listed as "associated acts" of each other. Also, as a general personal guideline, I try to keep the list as short as humanly possible (four or less). --FuriousFreddy 01:22, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

That "alias" field in the infobox....

...is becoming an issue. It was created explicitly for official alternate titles an artist/group has performed under, but I've seen far too many of them stuffed with every made-up nickname an artist has ever bestowed herself with. Not even something otherwise notable, such as "The Godfather of Soul", should be listed there.

And no, a "nicknames" field is not a good idea (at all). Wikipedia is only three steps removed from becoming Tripod as it is right now. --FuriousFreddy 01:44, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed on all points. Perhaps we can add that to the docs for the box. It might also be a good idea to add a link to the template page from the infobox, as many info/navboxes are sporting these days. This would greatly increase the chance that people might actually read the docs, I suspect. Just a little, unobtrusive ^{v} in the corner might be sufficient. Anyway, probably best discussed in the infobox's talk page. Xtifr _tälk 07:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I amended the doc the other day (I figured the italicized emphasis I'd put in it when I originally wrote them was good enough, but eh...) --FuriousFreddy 02:20, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Inter-WikiProject conflict

I ran into an inter-WikiProject dispute involving the Infoboxes Template:Infobox musical artist and Template:Guitarist infobox. As a multi-instrumentalist, I see a potential need for better data integration involving Musical Artist equipment and, when necessary, audio samples. Can the Infobox requirements of WikiProject Musicians and WikiProject Guitarists be deconflicted in such a way as to permit a common Infobox template across multiple WikiProjects in the music field (excepting Theatre)? Please advise. - B.C.Schmerker 04:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Every time the Template:Infobox musical artist is changed to incorporate field from Template:Guitarist infobox, to try to enable all guitarists to be converted to the new musical artist infobox, WikiProject Guitarists still objects to the broader template being used on their articles, particularly because ot the color scheme, and so their project edits their template to include new information as a reason to not convert their articles to the new musical artist infobox. See Template talk:Guitarist infobox#Template merge. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 15:47, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's not quite that simple, and the discussion you linked to is rather stale: the "magenta" color I referred to there is long gone, and the editing of the guitarist infobox to try to "keep ahead" also stopped long ago. Really, at this point, both projects more-or-less accept both templates. Which makes the choice a simple editorial dispute, not an inter-project conflict. Xtifr _tälk 20:35, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

YAll notes read. Sounds time for me to start a new alpha Infobox for deconfliction purposes. I'll request feedback at a later date as to a background color scheme. - B.C.Schmerker 04:58, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I really don't see any reason to create yet another infobox. The differences between the two are already quite minimal, and can be resolved with a few simple tweaks. I could probably do it in less than an hour. Let's not spend too much energy on what is really a pretty minor matter to begin with. If you want to help with template code, you might look into some of the navbox efforts, where people are just beginning to consider creating standards and consistency. (See the thread earlier on this page and Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Footers.) Xtifr _tälk 07:49, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a user who once created a new infobox that changed a single line of text from an existing one. I'm still not quite sure how to deal with that one. –Unint 14:37, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Hm, I would think that WP:TFD might be a good way to deal with something like that. Or possibly WP:USERFY, and explain how to experiment in userspace. Xtifr _tälk 19:21, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

This was, in fact, one of his user-space "alpha" templates, which, after changing one line, he then deemed sufficiently complete to implement in template-space. I'm not keen on sending it to TfD yet because I can't understand what he meant to accomplish by it, or how his stated intentions match what he actually produced. –Unint 20:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

{{Infobox band}} to {{Infobox musical artist}}

There are currently over 4,000 articles using the long-defunct {{Infobox band}} template which need to be converted to {{Infobox musical artist}} templates. For anyone who is finding themselves without much editting to do, might I suggest lending a hand in this conversion? Anyone looking over these articles (which could be in various states of disrepair) would definitely benifit Wikipedia or at the very least, this Project. Thanks, Thereen 06:16, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new infobox for Composer bios

Note: I'm cross-posting this here to solicit more opinion/help. Please don't respond here; rather post any comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers#Proposed new infobox. Thanks

There's been extensive discussion at WikiProject Composers (check the archives) about the use of infoboxes in Composer's bios. The consensus has been that, as currently designed, {{Infobox musical artist}} and {{Infobox Biography}} rarely add much to these articles and are often actively harmful (conducive to anachronisms, overgeneralizations and other inaccuracies). However there's been some passionate discussion and even a little edit-warring.

Since infoboxes seem to be in the ascendancy on most of WP, and since I think the general concept is a useful one, I've "boldly" taken a shot at designing a "New, Improved" infobox specifically for composer bios, trying to maximize the potential benefit to articles while minimizing the potential harm. The "beta" version is here:

User:Turangalila/sandbox/Infobox composer

The page includes a draft "template-documentation" page with cut-and-paste markup & instructions, plus a few hypothetical examples of the template "in action." I've tried to leave almost all the paramters optional, and to emphasize in both the markup and the instructions that they should be deleted if not applicable, oversimple, etc. Obviously if folks actually want to use it in articles it should be moved to the Template namespace.

Please have a look and comment/criticize/suggest improvements — please leave comments at the WPComposers talkpage, unless they're purely technical, in which case a comment on my sandbox page might be better.

Thanks, —Turangalila talk 17:08, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Discussion on eliminating Category:(Nationality) (instrument) by genre from the categorization guidelines

For those interested in how musicians are classified, but who do not have the WikiProject Musicians/Categorization talk page on your watch list, I have started a discussion here about whether we need the category level of Category:American pianists by genre, etc, and I would appreciate views being expressed (at that location, of course). My (possibly incomplete) list of categories that would be upmerged if the guidelines change as I suggest is here. Bencherlite 22:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Time to replace Infobox Guitarist?

There have been a growing number of Wikipedians questioning the need for a separate infobox for guitarists. The {{Guitarist infobox}} was created by Wikipedia:WikiProject Guitarists, and it easily survived a deletion nomination back in September of last year, but that was before {{Infobox musical artist}} (which is supported by Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians) became a widely accepted standard. Both infoboxes are currently endorsed by Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography, but recent discussions between some members of the Guitarist and Musician Wikiprojects have concluded that it may be time to deprecate the guitarist infobox, and start replacing it. (Unfortunately, this is not a task for bots, and will have to be done manually.)

Before making any final decision on the matter, we would like to get feedback from the broader community, so I am posting this notice to several Wikiprojects which may be affected. Comments should be posted to Template talk:Guitarist infobox. If you have strong feelings about this infobox, one way or the other, please feel free to let us know. Thanks, Xtifr _tälk 12:16, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Phil Ondich bio

An ongoing debate can be found here [2]. Best regards, Hamster Sandwich 00:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Alpinestars (band)

I've created an article for this little-known electronic band, but I'd appreciate any help (and a rating). I could use some pictures and more information (especially about where they are now, if anyone can find something on that). --Temporarily Insane (talk) 15:58, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The Jimmy Swift Band

This article is listed as being under the purview of WikiProject Musicians, but there are no independent sources for anything in the article. Could someone please come up with some reliable sources? Corvus cornix 22:44, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Origin in infobox?

What exactly is the "Origin" part supposed to be? What if a musician moved a number of times? --AW 14:19, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

From Template:Infobox musical artist:

Origin - The city from which the singer or group originated (that is, the city where the group was founded; or the city where individual performers started their career, should it not match the location of their birth).

Usually, the origin field is used for bands since birth places are inappropriate, but I've used the origin field for musicians that may have been born in one place, but then moved (possibly multiple times) and started their musical career in earnest in another location. An example is Dave Matthews, who although born in South Africa, is notable for starting his musical career in Virginia. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 15:46, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. --AW 16:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Infoboxes for opera singers

There is currently a discussion taking place here regarding whether infoboxes should be used for opera singers. Please weigh in if you'd like. (Notes left at WP:VP, WT:WPBIO, WT:CM, and WT:MUSICIANS.) -- Cielomobile ^{talk / contribs} 06:58, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Marching Bands

I am wondering if marching bands belong in this wikiproject. The Fightin' Texas Aggie Band just earned FA status. It is a quality article. They do play music, and they are technically a "band". that do you think? Oldag07 12:18, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Well...unlike some of the more pesky over-specialized Wikiprojects, this project doesn't really claim to own articles. So I wouldn't say that it "belongs" to the project. But yes, any musical group would be within the scope of this project, and I'm sure we'd be more than willing to offer advice or help if necessary. But since it's a FA, it doesn't seem like the authors really need our help. It looks like it uses a specialized (and quite appropriate) infobox, and we might want to document the use of that infobox for university marching band articles. And, per our standards, we might want to subdivide Category:University marching bands by nationality—although it's still pretty small. Aside from that, I don't see much to concern us. Xtifr _tälk 11:43, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Mary Jane Girls / JoJo lead singer Bio and Information corrections

The Bio and information regarding the Mary Jane Girls and JoJo the Original Lead Singer needs some corrections. Please review the following information which can be easily verified by many sources.

JoJo is the only "Mary Jane Girl " that sung backgrounds for Rick james originally. The other members

of the group were not present Candi, Maxi etc... .. Rick James had JoJo record the first set of songs as a solo project with background singers but, Motown thought the project was the "girl" group he had promised them

Rick James had no group but, proceeded to acquire who he could to create a "group". The group was formed

around JoJo and her vocal talents. These facts can be verified by reviewing the liner notes of the last compilation issued by Universal Records "The Best of The Mary Jane Girls" The Millennium Collection which came out in 2001.

JoJo has not only been recording and songwriting but, has been performing live shows domestically

and internationally under the name "JoJo" Original Lead Singer of the Mary Jane Girls since 1998. From 1994-1997 she reunited the group with Candi and Maxi as "MJG". However, Candi and Maxi quit for personal and reasons unknown in 1996 and 1997.During 1997-1998 "JoJo" recorded on several projects with Rick James including the "Urban Rhapsody" CD and tour. JoJo and Rick parted ways in 1999 for various reasons. In 2002 , Rick wanted JoJo to re-unite with the Mary Jane Girls. JoJo refused which led him to bring litigation against her and her to countersue him. This litigation is still pending.

JoJo continues to tour and entertain millions of fans worldwide with the hits she made famous.,

"Candy Man" "All Night Long" and "In My House" to name a few.She is currently putting the finishing touches on a solo project titled "Slightly Dangerous" scheduled for release late(2007).When not peforming JoJo has composed music for television and film.Robert funderburg 21:42, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like something you copied from another site. If so, please do not paste it directly into any article. That would be a copyright violation and might put Wikipedia at legal risk. However, if you think you can explain any of that in your own words, please feel free to edit the articles yourself. (Please also add a link to the place were you got the information.) You don't need our permission! Anyone can edit Wikipedia. Be bold! Xtifr _tälk 08:27, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Musical artist info box; genre field.

Is there a preference for whether genres should be listed in one line separated by commas or one genre per line separated by "br" tags? For example, Kiss (band) vs Keane (band). LaraLove ^T/_C 03:33, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:ALBUM has recently decided on using commas for genres in Infobox Album. Among other considerations... prevents unnecessary capitalization, reduces use of HTML tags, and removes unnecessary height. –Unint 03:45, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Just a note that a discussion about standardizing the genre field is underway at Template talk:Infobox musical artist#Standardizing genre delimiters. --PEJL 22:43, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Singers by style, not genre?

User:Mind meal has raised the very interesting question: why do our guidelines endorse Category:Singers by style and subcategories like Category:American singers by style, when every other type of musician uses "by genre" instead? We are discussing the possibility of changing this here. If you support or oppose such a change, please let us know. Xtifr _tälk 07:27, 27 June 2007 (UTC)