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A fact from Dirk Kaftan appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 20 February 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
This edit successfully removed all music from a conductor's life and reduced it to places. What can we do? I don't want to revert completely, because I respect the work put in, but how about the other way round? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:34, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
ps: there's no reason to change ref format, - it's an editorial choice of the editor who creates an article. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:36, 8 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
DJRafe, I didn't revert you lightly--but this article has been on the front page, reviewed by 78.26 (who is no slouch), with copy edits by Cwmhiraeth and Xanthomelanoussprog, who are also not slouches. If you have concerns, no doubt Gerda and others would love to hear about it. Thank you, Drmies (talk) 00:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Gerda's point that a musicians life should not be reduced to places, it needs to include music that is important to their career. However, I also see where DJRafe is coming from, long lists like can kill the prose's momentum, it is difficult to slog through when reading. (I nearly killed an entire section in my Josie Sadler article for that exact reason, but eventually convinced myself that all those sequences of Broadway appearances were too important to her notability.) I certainly want to include the information that DJRafe added. Anyway, I'll bet between the group of us (and other interested parties, of course!) we can figure this out. What if we created a "notable works" section after (before?) recordings, that placed these words in table format, listing work, composer, date, and location of performance? I am not at all married to this idea, but wanted to throw the spaghetti on the wall, to see what sticks. Other ideas? 78.26(spin me / revolutions) 01:24, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Kaftan, laundry list. I think a table would perhaps be best- there's no criteria (yet) to select which works in Kaftan's repertoire are significant in his performing career, but it would be useful to list the works he's performed so far. Xanthomelanoussprog (talk) 07:21, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have criteria, same for recordings, but I believe to mention some gives a better picture of his interests than none. We have soooo many biographies of conductors not yet written, see yesterday's Michael Boder, needs sources, - I'd be more interested in doing that than being picky about details of others, like this one or Thomas Hengelbrock. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:29, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
My rationale for editing out the laundry list of operas that Maestro Kaftan has conducted, and the various other housecleaning edits, is that opera conductors generally conduct the core opera repertoire and composers throughout their careers. I have never seen Maestro Kaftan conduct, but I presume that he is a fine interpreter of the operas listed previously. However, that is not unique to him, or to any other conductor who has also conducted those core works in opera. My own bias tends to be towards works where the conductor has a unique connection to that particular work, e.g. if the conductor was the first to conduct a production of an opera in a new critical edition, or a newly rescued opera in a new performing edition, or the world premiere of a particular opera. I tried to keep in some particular selections, per Gerda Arendt's comment, with respect to his recordings of Der ferne Klang and Jenufa. However, I removed the PR-like quote, because Wikipedia is not the place for such hagiographic text. (That is what his own website is for.)
I realise that I am somewhat stepping on Gerda Arendt's prior work, as I am an admirer of and have great respect for GA's work on Wikipedia. In general, my own preference is to highlight major and unique facets of a given conductor's or musician's career, and to steer away from laundry list achievements. (I started more on the latter when I began on Wikipedia, but have evolved away from that since then.) Cheers, DJRafe (talk) 17:18, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
When I read "In Graz, he conducted Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Puccini's La Rondine, Zemlinsky's Der Zwerg, Dallapiccola's Der Gefangene and Bernstein's West Side Story, among others. In concert, he conducted the oratorio Columbus by Heinrich von Herzogenberg." - it's a rather unusual set, which tell me something about the person. Admittedly, some of the other was added to make it to the DYK requirement of a minimum size ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:42, 9 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully in the spirit of some compromise, I have restored the primary new content that I had earlier placed in, but this time, leaving much of the earlier version's material reasonably intact. I did edit out the PR-like quote on the Jenufa recording, however. Hopefully this overall new edit is an acceptable compromise. DJRafe (talk) 23:19, 10 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Works for me. Off to expanding a stub that's linked from the Main page. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:24, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
