User:Dcljr/Sandbox

Summary of arguments in portal RFC
through DexDor's comment at 16:25
 * 8 April 2018
 * Arguments in support of deprecating and deleting portals
 * Lack of maintenance
 * Portals are not well maintained.
 * Portals contain out-of-date information for readers (including getting out of sync with the portal's topic article).
 * Portals contain out-of-date information for editors (e.g., things to do).
 * Many portal pages are badly formatted (e.g. on small screens).
 * Many portal pages have redlinks / broken links (e.g. to Wikispecies).
 * Editor-related stuff in portals often gets out of date.
 * Vandalism may last longer in portal space (since bots may not be checking the portal space for vandalism).
 * Lack of usefulness
 * Portals are "not useful" / "useless".
 * Most portals show randomly selected content.
 * Showing randomly-selected information in portals is useless to readers.
 * Although some portals have some "useful stuff worth salvaging", "99%" of them should be deleted.
 * "I" have never looked at / noticed / edited / ... portals.
 * Portals do not have a "net benefit" to the encyclopedia.
 * Lack of relevance
 * Portals have low readership / page views.
 * Readers "don't care" about portals.
 * Some portals have high readership only because they are linked to from the Main Page.
 * Page views of portals linked to from the Main Page are largely due to "random clicks".
 * Page views of portals linked to from the Main Page are not reflective of reader interest.
 * The Portal template should be removed from articles.
 * The "idea" of portals is "obsolete".
 * Lack of effectiveness
 * Portals try to be of use to both readers and editors, and "are terrible at both".
 * Portals do not encourage people to improve articles, unlike the Main Page.
 * Poor fit in the encyclopedia
 * Portals do not aid in navigation.
 * Portals "aren't really part of the encyclopedia".
 * Portals have inconsistent formats.
 * Portals often break the convention of separating reader-side stuff from editor-side stuff (e.g. when portals have things like a to-do list).
 * Redundancy / lack of purpose
 * Outlines can serve the navigational roles of portals.
 * Curation of featured content can be done by WikiProjects.
 * The function of portals is "duplicated (and done better) elsewhere".
 * Portals are sometimes confused with WikiProjects (e.g. editors asking for help at a portal talk page instead of at the corresponding WikiProject talk page).
 * Editor-related stuff (e.g. to-do lists) in portals often duplicate WikiProject stuff.
 * Waste of resources
 * Portals waste editor resources that could be better spent doing other things (time spent creating/editing/maintaining portals, watchlist and edit history noise on other pages as links to portals are added/removed, deletion discussions, etc.)
 * Links to portals cause clutter on other pages (including category pages).
 * Portals can lead to the creation of many templates and other supporting pages (infrastructure), requiring more maintenance activity.
 * Bots may not be checking the portal space for vandalism, so users have to do that manually.
 * Lack of coverage
 * The system of portals is incomplete and "strange and random" in its coverage of topics.
 * Target of bad behaviors
 * Portals attract POV edits.
 * Portals seem to attract bad edits.
 * Portals can be content forks.
 * Portals are prone to vandalism.
 * Other statements of (purported) fact cited in "Support" comments
 * Approximately "99%" of links to portals occur in WikiProject banners.
 * Some portals were created as a result of "the hype" surrounding them in the past.


 * 9 April 2018

Proposal
What I am proposing is the following: Many of our cleanup templates (and some other types of templates) tag articles for the kinds of attention that only editors familiar with the subject matter will be able to effectively provide (e.g., lead rewrite, context, expand section, missing information, confusing, disputed, undue weight, clarify, dubious, original research, more citations needed, citation needed, clarify, and several others). While the dating of templates (using ) has become almost universal, indicating the subject matter in a similar way has not (although expert needed does have a mechanism for associating the tag with a WikiProject). As far as I know, only stub templates are routinely marked with the subject area, allowing "sorting" into an appropriate stub category, but this is done by creating a separate template for each subject area. ...
 * 1) Certain cleanup templates that require subject-area knowledge to effectively respond to should accept a parameter marking the subject area of the article being tagged.
 * 2) This information should be used to categorize tagged articles into subcategories by subject area (as is currently done by month).
 * Background
 * The proposal

Record labels
(Information for eventual use on Template talk:Timeline of Major Record Labels, discussing Template:Timeline of Major Record Labels.)

"Majors"
North American Majors (according to User:78.26) in:
 * 1890: North American Phonograph Company
 * 1898: National Phonograph (Edison), Columbia, Berliner
 * 1905: Victor, Columbia, Edison
 * 1925: Victor, Columbia, Brunswick/Vocalion, possibly Pathe
 * 1930: Victor, American Record Corporation
 * 1935: Victor, Decca, American Record Corporation
 * 1940: Victor, Decca, Columbia
 * 1948: Victor, Decca, Columbia, Capitol, possibly Mercury

According to Record label, there were six major record labels in 1988.


 * Big Six (1988–1999)
 * Warner Music Group
 * EMI
 * Columbia Records / CBS Records (in 1988 it wasn't Sony Music yet)
 * BMG
 * Universal Music Group
 * PolyGram

PolyGram was merged into UMG in 1999.


 * Big Five (1999–2004)
 * Warner Music Group
 * EMI
 * Sony Music
 * BMG
 * Universal Music Group

In 2004, Sony and BMG agreed to a joint venture to create the Sony BMG label (which would be renamed Sony Music Entertainment after a 2008 merger).


 * Big Four (2004–2012)
 * Warner Music Group
 * EMI
 * Sony BMG / Sony Music
 * Universal Music Group

In 2012, the major divisions of EMI were sold off separately by owner Citigroup: most of EMI's recorded music division was absorbed into UMG; EMI Music Publishing was absorbed into Sony/ATV Music Publishing; finally, EMI's Parlophone and Virgin Classics labels were absorbed into Warner Music Group in July 2013.


 * Big Three (2012–present)
 * Universal Music Group
 * Sony Music Entertainment
 * Warner Music Group

Table
Large chunks of text from the relevant articles (sometimes verbatim, sometimes heavily edited) have been inserted when the history was too complicated to easily add to the table — although I am in the process of trying to do that.

To be added:
 * North American Phonograph Company
 * National Phonograph Company (Edison)
 * Berliner Gramophone
 * Decca Records
 * Capitol Records
 * Mercury Records
 * Epic Records