Talk:List of folk percussion instruments

List or category
I was about to create a Category:Folk percussion instruments to add to Category:Percussion instruments by tradition and to contain Monkey stick. And of course came upon the deletion discussion at Categories for discussion/Log/2009 March 22.

The arguments for deletion are unimpressive:

Arbitrary definition (as almost all percussion instruments can be considered "folk") - no more than any other classification of instrument.

and current category has zero entries, but instead has a list of items - yes, it was created by people who didn't know how categorisation works here, obviously. So, why not fix it?

So irregularly formatted category with no entries - So? The members of the list were obviously intended to be entries.

and unclear criteria. Rubbish, see below.

List transferred to new List of folk percussion instruments. That is, this list was created. Lazy. This simple cut-and-paste is even a borderline violation of copyleft... lists can be copyrighted, and the edit history of the text has been destroyed. The proper fix was to edit each article on the list, and add them to the category, as the creators of the category obviously intended to do in the first place. Ah, but that's work.

If the criteria were unclear, why was the list created at all? And the very same members added to it?

The criteria are fine. The claim that almost all percussion instruments can be considered "folk" is ludicrous. My drum kit is no more "folk" than my electric guitar. Timpani are less "folk" than the violin.

Watch this space, while I have a cuppa and cool down a bit. Andrewa (talk) 05:00, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

AHA... see also Categories for discussion/Log/2009 May 24 and it starts to make some sort of sense. Same proposer, two months later, and similar arguments: ''We've already merged all subcats of this cat into Category:Musical instruments by nationality, and only the parent cat remains. I still submit that MIbN fulfills basically the entire role of this cat, and that the current Category:Folk musical instruments is an impediment to proper categorisation. As it stands, a lot of new articles are chucked into this cat when they are clearly applicable to Category:Nepalese musical instruments, etc. The actual term "folk" is pretty vague, and though I personally enjoy many genres deemed "folk music" I feel the term inhibits proper categorisation and smacks of Western bias. That is, classical Chinese and Indian instruments get lumped as "folk" because they aren't generally played by elderly white Bostonians in tuxedos. I submit that Category:Musical instruments by nationality can take this cat's place in both the Category:Folk music tree and the Category:Musical instruments tree with a major net benefit to the trees and lessened chances of specifically Peruvian/Albanian/Kuwaiti/Malaysian instruments being chucked into "Folk" categories.''

No other comments, decision was delete on proposer's voice alone. MIbN is presumably the aforementioned Category:Musical instruments by nationality.

The problem is, I don't want to create a category for every national background of percussion instruments, as has presumably been done at the higher level of all "folk" and world music instruments prior to the deletion of Category:Folk musical instruments. Hmmm.... wrong, I see that there are only six nationalities currently at Category:Musical instruments by nationality: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania. So perhaps that is the way forward.

I wonder whether Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, India, China, Korea, and the various other peoples of Asia have been told that they are one nationality so far as organology is concerned? (-> Andrewa (talk) 21:13, 23 June 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm again... it seems there is a hierarchy. So for example Category:African musical instruments has seven subcategories, six of them for regions and the seventh Category:African drums, and for example one of the six regions Category:West African musical instruments has fourteen subcategories, for example Category:Beninese musical instruments, which contains two pages and no further subcategories.

I am at this stage considering setting up just six categories for regional associations, reflecting the subcategories of Category:Musical instruments by nationality, but avoiding the term nationality and its varients. Andrewa (talk) 12:28, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

Created those six and one more, see Category talk:Central American and Caribbean percussion instruments. Andrewa (talk) 14:06, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

And have now been down the list and added them all to appropriate subcategories of Category:Percussion instruments by tradition, Category:Percussion instruments by playing technique, Category:Percussion instruments by means of sound production and Category:Percussion instruments by usage.

The list needs a lot of work to be useful... will it ever get it? I am doubtful. However if it's ever deleted, I'd hope these comments would be preserved somewhere. Andrewa (talk) 14:57, 24 June 2012 (UTC)


 * That parent category was deleted, see Categories_for_discussion/Log/2022_December_19.– Fayenatic  L ondon 15:43, 31 December 2022 (UTC)