User:Bmearns/musical artists wikiproject

''The project has officially been started in the Wikipedia namespace as WikiProject Musicians. This page remains for posterity; it may contain useful information.''

This is a temporary holding space for the proposed wikiproject, "Wikiproject Musical Artists". If you support the creation of this project, please add your name to the list here. If you would like to discuss this project, please use this articles talk page. If you would like to discuss the prospect of creating this wikiproject, please discuss it on my talk page.

At present, since this project is brand new and techincally doesn't even exist, this page is more questions than answers. Please help fix that by discussing the questions on the talk page.

Contributing
The main contributions this project needs now is to support for it's creation as a full fledged wikiproject. If you support the creation of this project, please let it be known on the list.

In addition, this project needs to have some concrete recommendations for style/content of project articles. That's what the bulk of this page is for, to listand explain these recommendations. You can help by reviewing these recommendations and discussing them on the talk page. In particular, the following items need to be addressed:
 * We need a model page that we can offer as an example for other project articles.
 * We need to establish a basic outline for articles.
 * We need to establish a means of tracking articles in the project.

Adding articles
To add an article to this project, please add the article to  [[:Category:WikiProject Musical Artists article ]]  and also include the template    at the top of the talk page for that article. Also note that this is subject to change once this project is better defined.

Tracking articles
The WikiProject Musical Artists category has been created in order to track all the articles that are maintained (at least partially) by this project. This does not apply to this page or it's subpages, but does apply to all the non-article pages maintained by the project, such as templates and other categories. For subject articles (i.e., musical-artist articles) that are considered to be part of this project, use the WikiProject Musical Artists article subcategory only

Articles in need of attention
In addition, a subcategory, WikiProject Musical Artists needs attention, has been created.

Infobox
Subject articles should use a standard infobox template to display summary information about the artist/group. The standard template for this project is Template:Infobox musical artist. The infobox to the right is a sample use of this for a made up group. You can use this template by placing   on your page, and filling in the fields. Explanation of the fields is shown on the template page. You can edit this section to view the code that made info box on the right.

Colors
The infobox is color-coded to provide a quick indication of the type of group/perfromer this page is about, e.g, solo artist, orchestra, etc. This is similar to the color scheme used by the Albums project which is based on the type of Album. Please discuss additional types that need to be accounted for on the talk page.

In addition to the background color of the infobox, a 2px border around the entire infobox will use a color scheme based on very broad genre categories. Note that there are countless musical genres out there, and only so many colors we can represent on the web, and even fewer that users will actually be able to differentiate in a 2px border. The info box already contains a field for the genre; the border is only meant to provide a very general categorization of the musical style. If you honestly believe that a general genera category has been left out of this scheme, please discuss it.

This infobox border color scheme is as follows:

Other projects in the infobox
The purpose of the Projects field in the infobox is to list (and perhaps link to) some other musical endeavors that band-members are involved in. Remember, though, that the infobox is supposed to be an overview of the band, not a complete band-ography, that's what the article is for. If there are more than a few other projects to list here, really consider making a section of the article to list these, and only include a few of them in the infobox. When deciding which projects to include in the infobox, consider the following things:
 * Well known groups will be more relevant to more people and may peak their interest in the article/band.
 * If several members of the band are in the same "other project", it's probably important to the band and should likely be listed.
 * Name changes can be tricky. If the band formerly went by a different name which they may be better known by, this can also be helpful to capture readers' attentions. However, if they haven't used that name since they stopped playing local birthday parties, then it probably doesn't need to be in the infobox. Also consider using redirects to link from old band names to the current site.

Model page
The article for Monkey Gone Mad is currently being offered as a partial example for articles in this project. It is currently marked as being in need of attention, but only because the entire project is in need of attention, in other words, there is no good standard for it to comply too. However, it is the page that the project founder is currently editing and using to try out style guidelines for the project, and so it should be as up to date with the project as any other.

Please make suggestions on the talk page for other model pages. In addition to articles that match the current spec, please also feel free to list pages that have a well defined style of their own, which you feel should be adopted&ndsh;in part of in full–by the project.

Listing people's names
This project closely follows the WikiProject Albums standard for using people's names. The first time a name appears in the article, it should appear in full and–if appropriate–link to an article for that person. Note that some band's use false names, nicknames, or stage names for some or all of their members. If the band consistently uses a particular name for one of it's members, you should use it as well. Any other time the name appears in the article, it is only necessary to give the last name (and first initial if needed to disambiguate with another member of the band). Nick names can be shortened similarly if and only if an obvious link exists between the shortened version and the full name, (e.g., "Malaclypse the Younger" could be shortend to "Malaclypse" if it doesn't create ambiguity, but "the Younger" is less appropriate). Also note that it is appropriate to restart this convention in some key sections. For example, in the "Other projects" table you should repeat a person's full name the first time it is used in the table, even if it is already used elsewhere in the article.

Article contents
The contents of any article in this project are likely to differ greatly form other articles, and that's fine: this project covers a broad category and lots of sections that make sense for some articles won't make sense for others. However, there are some general guidelines to keep in mind when writing an article for the project, and a few sections that most articles are likely to want.

Guidelines

 * The article is about a musical group or solo musician. It is not about their albums or their songs, their record labels, or their biographies (with the exception of solo artists, see below). If more than a few sentences is needed about any of these things, it's generally best to create a separate article for it and link to it.
 * Solo artists are people so in this case it might make sense to combine their biographical page with their musical page. In this case, you should also consult WikiProject Biography for guidelines on setting up a bio page.
 * A lot of people have very strong feelings about music and it's especially easy to allow your subjective point of view to enter into the content. However, even if you're writing about "the best band ever imagined" try to remember that a statement like that almost certainly isn't a fact, and probably doesn't belong in an encyclopedic article like the ones we strive for on wikipedia.

Outline
This section provides a very general outline you may want to use for articles in this project, as well as some specific sections that will likely be relevant. Most of the section titles here don't need to match the section titles you use, in fact each section here may involve several sections in your article, and their titles should be descriptive of the content. However, section titles shown here in quotes should be used in your article for consistency and ease of finding common information.

The general outline is as follows:

Intro
Like most wikipedia articles, the first paragraph should not have a title and should be a brief introduction to the band/musician. Common items to include in the introduction are the name of the band/musician, the time period during which they were active (e.g., "A punk rock band from the 1980's"), the type of music they play, and perhaps something that distinguishes them from other bands (objectively), or that they are well known for. The first time the name of the band/musician appears in this section, it should be in bold.

"Biography"
For solo performers where the musical article and biographical article are combined, The biographical content should come next. Remember to refer to WikiProject Biography for guidelines on completing this section.

"Biographies"
For bands, groups or other ensembles, you can include a brief section which provides brief biographical information about the members of the band, or, even better, information about what each person does in the band (e.g., lead-guitar, producer, manager, &c.), their tenure in the band, and a brief description of their participation in the band (e.g., "...known as the 'punkest' member of the band..."). For those who wish to use it, there is a template available. To use it, please subst in {{subst:Musical_group_individual_bio}} for each entry. However, it is not necessary to use this template if you prefer doing it by hand. In this case, please follow the format established in that template, which is as follows:
 * An optional small (e.g., 40px wide) thumbnail picture of the person may appear to the left of the entry. If any of the entries use a picture, they don't all need a picture, but they should all have their text left aligned with the other entries.
 * Use a definition list for the entry
 * The "term" of the definition list item (i.e., the text after the ';' but before the ':') should be the persons name with an optional link to their wikipedia article, followed by a    section which gives the persons tenure in the band in parenthesis.
 * The "definition" of the def-list entry (following the ':') should start with a line listing the roles of this person in the band, in parenthesis. Following the list of roles there should be an HTML linebreak (a  tag). This will allow a linebreak without escaping the definition list item.
 * After the linebreak should be italicized text briefly describing something about this person as related to the band

Example:

(linebreaks shown in the following sample code were introduced only to make it easier to read and should not appear in the code as they will terminate the definition list entry.)
 * Malaclypse the Younger (joined 1776, left 2005)
 * (Synthephone, guitar) ''Malaclypse co-founded the band with Celine in 1776.

He played lead synthephone until his illumination in 2005.''
 * Malaclypse the Younger (joined 1776, left 2005) :(Synthephone, guitar) Malaclypse co-founded the band with Celine in 1776. He played lead synthephone until his illumination in 2005.

Always use full names or full nicknames if appropriate (see "Listing people's names". The first time a "role" or instrument appears, link it if appropriate, but not after that. The first character in a list of roles should be capitalized, but none others unless proper nouns. Commas are used to separate roles in the roles list, no period at the end.

If this section starts to grow large, consider creating separate biographical articles for those with a lot of information, and include a link to that article.

History
Following the biographical section(s) (if present) should be sections detailing the musical history of the article's subject. Try not to repeat too much information from the bio section. Focus on items like when/where/why the group formed or the artist took up music, how they got their start, their migration through record labels, milestone performances/albums/other events, popularity rise and fall, etc.

Style and culture
This should include information like musical influences on the band or it's various members and social, political, or cutltural influences on the band, or that the band has had. It may be difficult separating this information from the history sections, especially for activist groups/musicians. If this is the case, or if you find there's a lot of redundancy between the two sections, feel free to merge them.

"Other projects"
If members of the band are also involved in a number of other musical endeavors (e.g., solo careers or other bands, etc.), consider creating a subsection titled "Other projects" to list these. This is an extension of the Projects field in the infobox. If only a few such projects exist and they're all listed in the infobox, there's no need to repeat the list in the article body. However, if a project requires elaboration, or if all the projects can't (or shouldn't) fit in the infobox, consider creating a section in the article. Also note that if you do create this section, then you should repeat the projects listed in the infobox. The current recommended style for this is as follows:


 * Use a table to list the other projects.
 * The first column should be the name of the other project (e.g., the band name, or if a solo career, simply the performer's stage name). If there is or should be an article for this project, link to it in the name in this column. Otherwise, use this name to link to the project's external website if available. No other formatting is needed on the names in this column. The entire table should be sorted alphabetically (0-9,A-Z) by this column.
 * The second column should be a list of all the members common to both projects, in italicts. Follow the project standard for listing band members. Even if they are listed else where on the page, use their full name and include a link the first time they appear in this table.
 * The third column is an optional brief description of the project in regards to this project (e.g., how it is related to this project, why members of this band decided to start that project, &c.). Please remember to keep it rather brief, one paragraph should probably be enough. If you need much more than that, then the other project may warrant it's own article. If the other project already has it's own article, you may be repeating information from that article, which is generally unnecessary.

Example code
The following is part of the code used to create the example table that follows, from the Monkey Gone Mad article:

Musical information
You can also include technical information about the music. For instance, the Ani DiFranco article contains a section about guitar tunings she uses for different songs.

Lists
The remainder of the article is primarily composed of lists and tables providing more statistical information, as opposed to prose-style information.

"Discography"
This is a standard discography. It should contain an entry for all releases, categorized by type (i.e., EP, Album, etc.), and sorted within the categories in ascending order of release date. The first time a year appears in the entire discography, you can optionally link to the "year in music" page (e.g., 1999 in music), but it's probably not necessary, and if you do, use only the year as the link text (e.g., 1999 ). The name of the release should be a link to the album's article (see WikiProject Music). The first time a record label appears in the discography, it should also be linked, but not again in the discograpy. Label names should be written out in full each time.

Note that Compilation albums indicates releases that are compilations of the band's/musician's own work, for instance a "best of" compilation. Featured on should list more general compilation albums of assorted artists, for instance Punk-o-rama or NOW!.

Also note that there should be no need for album images in the discography, that's what the album's article is for.

Use the below format for discographies (partial discography for the Dropkick Murphys):

"Collaborations"
This section should list performances/recordings that this group/artist has done with other bands or artists. For example, if this artist was "featured" on a particular track on another person's album, or if they were a guest performer for someone else's concert, or vice versa. This list should be grouped into the following sections:
 * "Featured" : People who have been featured on recordings or as live guest performers by the subject of this page.
 * "Guest for" : People for whom the subject of this page has been featured on a recording or as a live guest performer.
 * "Opened for" : People for whom the subject of this page have opened
 * "Opened by: : People who have opened for the subject of this page. Note that ideally this only includes people who this group/artist has picked as their opener, not something a concert organizer has chosen for them.

Please discuss a standard style on the talk page.

"Clips"
This section should link to audio/video clips of the group/artist, perferrably clips on wikimedia. Follow th standard multi-listen format as shown here(from Ani DiFranco's article):

"Quotes"
A few important quotes from or about the band, properly cited, can be listed here. If you include this section and there are also quotes on Wikiquote, include the wikiquote template at the top of this section. Also, try to avoid just using that template with no parameters. Instead, go to WikiQuotes and find the appropriate page, and pass the page name as the parameter to the template (see Sister_projects).

"References"
Standard section for references and citations used in the article.

"See also"
Standard section for internal links to related pages. Make sure the "a" is not capitalized, according to standard style.

"External links"
Standard section for external links to related sites. "l" is lowercase