Talk:Cut the Cake (album)

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R&B and Soul Music Stub‑class

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track listing formatting[edit]

On Jan 20, 2011 a contributor changed the track listing formatting of the article

from
Side one

"song1"
"song2"
...

Side two

"song6"
"song7"
...

to

/A1 - "song1"
/A2 - "song2"
/A3 - "song3"
/A4 - "song4"
/A5 - "song5"
/B1 - "song6"
/B2 - "song7"
/B3...

I have never seen this type of formatting before and it doesn't seem appropriate to me (at first glance) for a couple of reasons:

It doesn't seem to be necessary (no new information is added)
It may even add confusion (why the double numbering scheme? What's it "mean"?)
It doesn't seem to conform to any "track listing" guidelines at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Article body

If the contributor was trying to provide CD track numbers together with the original LP track numbers, my reaction would be that this is probably (a) unnecessary and (b) not clear / unambiguous. The current wikipedia consensus on this topic, according to WP:Albums / Article Body,

"Albums originally released primarily on vinyl or cassette should similarly list the tracks of each side separately under sub-headings named "Side one" and "Side two"."

If there is a wish to change these guidelines, it should probably first be discussed/debated at the Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums page.

My reading of the Wikiproject:Albums guidelines implies that track listings should reflect the original released format of the album. This means in general, for most albums released before CDs became dominant (sometime between 1983 and 1990?) should probably list tracks in the dominant format of the original release - e.g. LP (side one / side two) format for pre-1983 albums like Cut the Cake.

In cases where the CD release track order is very different from the original LP release track order, then a separate listing of CD tracks is probably a reasonable way to go - and this is fairly commonly done in many Wikipedia album articles. Pugetbill (talk) 18:10, 22 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]