Talk:The Madrigal Society

Release
Dear Wikipedia, I am writing to confirm that I am the author and copyright holder of the PhD dissertation, 'Musical Antiquarianism and the Madrigal Revival in England, 1726–1851', which I submitted to the University of Bristol in 2015, and now permit its re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License and GNU Free Documentation License, I would also point out that some of the text I have used in the Wiki is taken from earlier drafts of my dissertation, and is therefore different from the final submission (to which I retain copyright). I have also made my PhD dissertation available for free download here: https://www.academia.edu/24525258/Hobson_PhD_Thesis_MUSICAL_ANTIQUARIANISM_AND_THE_MADRIGAL_REVIVAL_IN_ENGLAND_1726_1851_University_of_Bristol_2015 Wiki ID: georgefox Georgefox (talk) 17:58, 11 May 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Georgefox (talk • contribs) 17:53, 11 May 2017 (UTC)
 * As mentioned overleaf, the procedure to release your text (under a suitable licence – CC, GNU) is specified at WP:Declaration of consent for all enquiries. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 03:15, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Copyright problem resolved
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: http://www.academia.edu/24525258/Hobson_PhD_Thesis_MUSICAL_ANTIQUARIANISM_AND_THE_MADRIGAL_REVIVAL_IN_ENGLAND_1726_1851_University_of_Bristol_2015. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

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 * , we seem to have valid permission for this content now. Could I ask you to unhide the hidden revisions? Thanks, Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 11:45, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Done.  Hut 8.5  17:26, 9 July 2018 (UTC)

This page
So, what's to be done about this page? Unfortunately, seems to have fairly thoroughly misunderstood the purpose of an encyclopaedia, which is not a place where people can indiscriminately publish their doctoral research. The page is unencyclopaedic for any number of reasons, the most glaring of which is that it is absurdly long. Perhaps we can revert to an earlier and less wordy version as a very first step? you've edited here; any thoughts? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 12:01, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I made a drive-by edit to fix a link, and didn't look at the article in any detail. I agree with all the maintenance tags. Drastic pruning is needed. Reversion doesn't look easy: there's nothing between the versions of 31 January 2018 (3,300 bytes) and 20 March (163,743 bytes). To give some context, 163Kb is more than the article on Lebanon, half as large again as Shakespeare, and more than Mozart and Beethoven combined. Narky Blert (talk) 12:27, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm in the same position as 'Narky'. I made one 'disamb' which would have been via the DAB solver so only a snapshot of the page would have been seen. Agree though, that substantial pruning would be a good idea. Eagleash (talk) 12:51, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Somebody should take the article to WP:AfD under WP:DEL8 and WP:DEL14. Even its article in Grove's A Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1900) does nothing to illustrate significance, but the wall of text overleaf fails several criteria at WP:What Wikipedia is not. Alternatively, and to satisfy encyclopedic completeness, it could be shortened to a brief description. It seems that the academic literature about the society is endlessly concerned with its internal machinations and not much emerges about its impact on musical life. Even its much mentioned archives are of rather obscure material. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 13:39, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you, everyone, and please forgive me for pinging even those who I could see had made only minor technical edits – I wanted to get as much input as possible. Based on what you say, and unless there's any objection here, I propose reverting the page to this version, which I think was mostly written by me. It's obviously very far from ideal, but I think much preferable to what's there at the moment. Any better ideas? Justlettersandnumbers (talk) 14:28, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Fine with me. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 14:52, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I've fixed a dablink but have no interest in the topic itself. Pruning sounds like a reasonable idea.  Schwede 66  16:55, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Fine by me. (The advantage of pinging editors who make minor technical edits is that they're likely to have a fair grasp of WP:POLICY, and to put forward arguments based on it.) Narky Blert (talk) 17:03, 9 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Could be persuaded to condense his contribution to something more manageable and readable? I wouldn't like to see it deleted.  And there is no necessity to show that it was important or influential, only notable, which is not the same at all. Rathfelder (talk) 17:38, 9 July 2018 (UTC)