User:Vmavanti


 * The Wikipedia Jazz Handbook (fragments from the lost ms.)

What I Do
I spend my time in an obscure subject: jazz. It hasn't been a popular genre since World War II. I found an article from 2015 placing jazz sales figures at 1.4% of music consumption, making it the least popular genre in America, selling less than classical. It's difficult to find reliable sources for popular subjects, let alone unpopular ones. No sources, no article.

I've been chipping away at the Wikiproject Jazz Cleanup Listing, which consists of the backlog of 4000 articles out of about 29,000 articles in Wikiproject Jazz. My first step was to remove from the project articles which didn't fall under the category of jazz, which I thought would be easy. It wasn't. Simply removing the Wikiproject Jazz template from articles resulted in a variety of reactions from contributors—a variety of negative reactions.

Proposals to have an article deleted (AfDs in Wikipedia slang) are difficult to say the least. There's lots of addition on Wikipedia and very little subtraction. Very little resolution.

Stubs and orphans are common on the backlog list. These articles aren't going to be improved, but they can't be deleted if people are going to protect them for arbitrary reasons.

One reason collective projects fail is because of the natural tendency to feel ownership for something one has worked on. The more work you do, the more you feel it is yours. The more you feel it is yours, the less you want someone to meddle with your efforts.

I seek a moderate approach that balances individual interests with the interests of a useful encyclopedia. Fundamental to this is an attempt to achieve some degree of impartiality. When one edits, one tries not merely to correct mistakes but to prevent them from happening again, to avoid playing whack-a-mole. Such an attempt can mean the difference between progress and going in circles.

From the MOS
"Do not create red links to articles that are unlikely ever to be written, or are likely to be removed as insufficiently notable topics."

Easy footnotes

 * 1) Please use the pop up templates for citations. Please use "cite web" for information found on the internet (not cite journal, cite magazine, or cite newspaper).
 * 2) If you are using Google Books, use this template. Make necessary changes before submitting. Remember to enter the date you accessed it.
 * 3) On any Wikipedia page, click "Edit Source" at the top of the screen.
 * 4) Click "Go to editing area"
 * 5) Click "Cite". Options are revealed.
 * 6) Click "Templates"
 * 7) Scroll down and choose: "cite web" for an internet source, "cite book" for a physical book in your hands
 * 8) In the cite web window, enter the URL (starts with http...) and click the magnifying glass. Time passes...Some or all of the data you need will appear automatically.
 * 9) In the cite book window, enter the ISBN and click the magnifying glass. Time passes...Some or all of the data you need will appear automatically.
 * 10) Make necessary adjustments. If you make a mistake, try again. No one will laugh at you. For very long.
 * 11) Click "Insert".
 * 12) In most cases, you will have to make adjustments. If nothing else, when using cite web, click the calendar icon to enter today's date. That's the access date, the day you read (accessed) the web page and borrowed the information.
 * 13) The most important items are authors' first names, last names, title of article, web site. For a book, first name, last name, page number, publisher, and year of publication. Please try to find this information.
 * 14) The jazz project has been following the trend of the rest of Wikipedia by adding citations to every sentence. It's the best way to ensure that material is properly sourced, and it's the best way to try to prevent your work from being reverted. With sources, you have an argument. Without sources, you can't even begin one.

Lede

 * Avoid words like "currently", "recent", "now", which are time sensitive. Time will render those words false. Encyclopedias exist in a kind of eternal present.
 * Don't count albums, as in "Miles Davis's fourth album". Counting is time sensitive.
 * Pipe labels on first occurrence in the article and discography.
 * Try to avoid having two linked items next to each other. Link one or the other.

Personnel and instrument order
List personnel by instrument. Orchestral scores list them from high notes to low. So the jazz version is something like this:
 * 1) leader first, regardless of instrument.
 * 2) brass (high notes to low: trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, French horn, tuba)
 * 3) woodwinds (high notes to low: soprano saxophone, alto, tenor, baritone)
 * 4) strings (high notes to low: violin, viola, cello)
 * 5) keyboards or piano (Keyboards plug in. Pianos don't.)
 * 6) bass guitar or double bass (Bass guitars plug in. Double basses don't.)
 * 7) drums
 * 8) other percussion
 * 9) vocals, background vocals
 * instruments are usually lowercased.

Writing discographies

 * My goal is to a create a discography that is sufficient to give the reader an overview of the musician's albums. Not one that is perfect, comprehensive, containing every detail (every catalog number, matrix number, etc)
 * Forget how you've seen discographies in other publications. We have our own rules at WP.
 * As in other encyclopedias, reference works, and web sites, Wikipedia editors try to maintain consistency. That's why there are templates and standards for organizing information. This makes it easier for everyone. Keep it simple
 * Don't write "Selected discography"
 * Write headers for "As leader" and "As sideman" if needed.
 * Put album titles in italics
 * If necessary, add co-leaders (not sidemen) and the word "with" next to album title.
 * Add label, comma, year of release. (Columbia, 1962)
 * Link and pipe the label on its first occurrence in the list
 * List the albums in ascending order (oldest album comes first)
 * Use release dates, not recording dates
 * Make a table only if you feel the discography is nearly complete. Tables are harder to edit than lists.
 * Omit details like "live", "reissued by Columbia in 2001", or "dedicated to his mother"
 * Omit catalog numbers and matrix numbers
 * Don't add chart positions and awards next to the album title; these have their own sections
 * If there is information that seems important, find a way to enter it in the body text of the article instead of the discography.
 * Songs belong on album pages, not in discographies or discography articles.
 * If there are more than two albums with the same leader, group them together
 * Don't put brackets in headers. It will make the table of contents too long.
 * Concentrate on getting the facts right first.
 * When in doubt, defer to the millions of articles on Wikipedia. Use them as guides.

What to exclude

 * DVDs, singles, 78s, 10", bootlegs, compilations, samplers, remasters, SACDs unless it is a unique release, re-releases, unofficial releases, cassette-only releases
 * Albums not released in the U.S. or U.K. unless the musician is foreign, in which case of course most of the albums will be released by foreign labels. This can get complicated. But try to concentrate on official mainstream releases rather than obscurities.
 * Exclude albums that are planning to be released. Wait for something to happen before you write about it.
 * Please avoid entering musicians who don't have articles. Let's concentrate on musicians that have articles and get that work done before creating stubs that no one will ever improve.

Why it gets complicated

 * Jazz albums are released at different times all over the world, sometimes with different songs, titles, and album covers, by different labels and distributed by different companies.
 * Albums are re-released, remastered, and regretted.
 * LPs didn't become the dominant format until well into the 1950s. This means some of the jazz of 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s 1) wasn't recorded; 2) existed only on cylinders, singles, 78s, 10" etc. 3) can be found only on compilations or remasters.
 * The transition to CDs began in the early 1980s. Most jazz that was intended to be released has been released. But there are labels, like Resonance, dedicated to re-releases. Sometimes these albums are worth mentioning. But only sometimes.
 * It's sometimes difficult to tell who is a co-leader and who is a sideman or guest. The album cover doesn't always help. Pat Metheny said that on one album the musicians agreed to have their names listed alphabetically. How the checks were divided is anyone's guess.

List of reliable sources

 * Many discographies list recording dates but not release dates. Look for release dates first because this is how most people are used to seeing albums listed.
 * The album itself is the best source, if you own a copy. Album covers and liner notes sometimes have mistakes, but this is uncommon.
 * A published discography by a serious, reliable researcher and publisher (these are rare, and the books are expensive)
 * The musician's site
 * The label's site
 * AllMusic.com: For some reason, there are many mistakes in the jazz entries. Do your best. Four editions of the AllMusic Guide to Jazz were published in print. The last was in 2002.
 * Books
 * Magazines or web sites such as Billboard, DownBeat, JazzTimes
 * Newspapers
 * Google books
 * Try search engines other than Google, such as DuckDuckGo
 * AllMusic
 * DownBeat
 * JazzTimes
 * Jazz Research by Michael Fitzgerald
 * Discography of American Historical Recordings
 * Both Sides Now
 * Marc Myers at Jazzwax
 * Smithsonian Jazz Oral History
 * Syncopated Times
 * Vintage Guitar

List of unreliable sources
Wikipedia discourages the use of the following as sources:


 * 45cat.com
 * About.com
 * Amazon
 * Ancestry.com
 * Answers.com
 * Blogspot
 * Blogs in general
 * CDBaby
 * CelebrityNetWorth
 * Chat rooms
 * College newspapers
 * Daily Caller
 * Daily Mail (UK)
 * Daily Star (UK)
 * Discogs.com
 * Encyclopaedia Metallum
 * Epinions
 * Facebook
 * Family Search
 * Famous Birthdays
 * Fan sites
 * Find a Grave
 * Flickr
 * Forums
 * Gawker
 * Geni.com
 * Goodreads
 * IMDb
 * Instagram
 * iTunes
 * Last.FM
 * LinkedIn
 * MetroLyrics
 * Musicbrainz
 * NNDB
 * Pandora
 * Perez Hilton
 * Pinterest
 * PopCrush
 * Press releases
 * PressTV
 * Prog Archives
 * Rate Your Music
 * Reddit
 * Reverbnation
 * Revolvy
 * Soundcloud
 * Spotify
 * Sputnik
 * Stack Exchange
 * The Sun (UK)
 * Twitter
 * Who's Who
 * WhoSampled
 * Wikia
 * Wikidata
 * Wikileaks
 * WikiNews
 * Wordpress
 * YouTube
 * Zoom.info

See: WikiProject Albums/Sources and Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources

Other sites
 * Blogs – Rarely. They can be used only when the blog is a web site run by an established, reputable critic, assuming there is such a thing.
 * Forums and chat rooms – Never.
 * Official site – Sometimes reliable. The official site can be used for certain simple facts but cannot be used when the information is intended as praise or promotion.
 * Record labels – Sometimes. Many labels engage in advertising and promotion to encourage people to buy music. They concentrate on what sells now, often ignoring the past. Labels re-release albums, making dates confusing.
 * Retail sites – You can't use a site where the main interest is selling, marketing, or promoting a product, service, person, cause, movement, or idea.
 * Venues – Rarely. Venues want you to come to the show. This leads to the use of promotional language. Good for them, bad for an encyclopedia, which must stick to the facts. There is usually not enough information in such articles to be of value, though sometimes there is a brief interview.

Policy

 * Autobiography
 * Biographies of living persons
 * Conflict of interest
 * Core content policies
 * Editing policy
 * Five pillars
 * Neutral point of view
 * Notability (music)
 * Ownership of content
 * Reliable sources
 * Verifiability
 * What Wikipedia is not

What you don't want to hear
One doesn't "post" to Wikipedia the way one posts to Facebook, Twitter, a forum, or a chat room. Anyone can write or edit Wikipedia, provided one knows the rules. Wikipedia isn't a newspaper. It isn't television. It isn't the place to go for the latest thing. It isn't the place to read about gossip or scandal. It's an encyclopedia, which means a boring reliance on facts. No site that has user-generated content can be a reliable source for Wikipedia, and this includes Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Instagram, iTunes, Discogs.com, Musicbrainz, RateYourMusic, Soundcloud, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogs, forums, retail sites, and any site whose purpose is to sell or promote rather than to record facts. Even if the sources are appropriate, Wikipedia isn't the place to post "A new album is coming next month" or "the band said they plan to record a new album" or "the band might go on tour next year". It isn't a diary, a tour book, or a place to mourn dead loved ones. It's isn't the place for tributes or free advertising. It isn't the place for drawing attention to people, places, or ideas that you think deserve more attention. We have rules for notability.

Talk talk

 * 1) Think before reverting. Don't assume that you are always right and the other person is wrong.
 * 2) Talk pages are for talking. Try to allow a minimal amount of decency and consideration for the opinions of others.
 * 3) Everyone on the internet is a stranger. It's not the best means of communication. It's Internetworld, not the real world. Misunderstanding and conflict occur. Therefore contributors should be given more freedom, not less, to speak, to discuss, and to understand each other. If people are afraid to talk, no work gets done and Wikipedia suffers.
 * 4) Before debating another person, state (if only in your mind) what that person's argument is before stating your own. Try to understand the other person's reasons or point of view.
 * 5) Aim for literal rather than figurative speech. Irony, sarcasm, and rhetorical questions don't work well on the internet. Don't read between the lines. Read the lines.
 * 6) It's impossible to avoid human judgment. As long as humans (not bots) are doing the editing, Talk pages and every other page will contain opinion to some degree.
 * 7) Distinguish between fact and opinion. This sounds obvious, but it isn't when you are fan of a person, movement, or idea, and when you have strong feelings and opinions about a subject.
 * 8) On Wikipedia, I don't write about the subjects I care about most. I hope this is an example of critical disinterest, impartiality, neutrality.
 * 9) Ask for help. Ask for clarification. Read the documentation. It's not always clear. Discuss it.
 * 10) It's OK to make mistakes and it's OK to be wrong. But try to learn from your mistakes. Otherwise, you end up in a loop.
 * 11) Use the serial comma.
 * 12) All work on Wikipedia is collaborative. There is no private property here. The article doesn't belong to you, even if you have done most of the work. This is difficult. Every article is the result of the efforts of many people. Given time, someone will come along and change your efforts, sometimes for the worse. That's a normal day.

Deletion discussions
There's a kind of religious sentiment among some members of Wikipedia who object to articles being deleted. Articles are inert data, not living beings, so it is false to say one is "saving" or "rescuing" articles.

If not enough has been written or published on a subject, it's impossible to write an article about it. Articles come from sources. No sources, no articles.

When an article is up for deletion, you're not supposed to think "But I like this" or "But this is important". If you think it's that important, then you write the article. Otherwise stay out of the way. If you have good reasons to keep rather than delete, you will have a chance to give those reasons. Don't assume deletion is always wrong. As editors we are supposed to be impartial. That means leaving at the door our preferences, desires, feelings, causes, movements, politics, religion. Don't leave for others work that you are capable of doing.

Omit these words
My opinion about words use excessively or incorrectly in WP jazz articles:


 * actively
 * advocated for
 * along with – with
 * alongside – with
 * also – watch for repetition
 * among others, amongst others – what others?
 * and others – what others?
 * and/or – ugh
 * based in – not necessary
 * beginnings – you can have only one beginning
 * book length – books are of differing length
 * countless – exaggeration
 * critically acclaimed – pov
 * cult following – slang
 * currently – time sensitive
 * decided to – it was a decision?
 * died suddenly – who doesn't?
 * fan base – slang
 * featured – overused
 * featuring – ditto
 * first ever – redundant
 * formally – not needed
 * former – rarely needed
 * formerly – arrrrggh
 * forthcoming – time sensitive prediction
 * fronted – slang
 * iconic – overused, POV
 * in his/her own right – not needed
 * in his own name - omit
 * initially – rarely needed
 * lost out – redundant
 * major – slang
 * majorly – not a word
 * new – time sensitive
 * now – when?
 * now-x (where x is any word) – trust verb tenses
 * officially – meaning what?
 * original – overused, extraneous
 * originally – overused, extraneous
 * origins – there can be only one origin
 * others – what others?
 * prestigious – pov
 * previously – previous to what?
 * prior to – before
 * quickly – pov
 * reaching out – slang
 * recruited – only the military recruits
 * renowned – pov
 * reportedly – it either happened or it didn't
 * soon – time sensitive
 * stint – overused
 * subsequently – rarely needed
 * tenure – only for college professors
 * then-x (where x is any word) – see "now-x"
 * together with – with
 * various – rarely needed

Jazz books

 * Barth, Joe. Voices in Jazz Guitar
 * Berendt, Joachim. The Jazz Book
 * Carlton, Jim. Conversations with Great Jazz and Studio Guitarists
 * Cooke, Mervyn. Pat Metheny: The ECM Years
 * Erlewine, Michael. All Music Guide to Jazz (four editions were printed, last in 2002)
 * Feather, Leonard and Gitler, Ira. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz
 * Gioia, Ted. The History of Jazz
 * Gioia, Ted. The Jazz Standards
 * Kennedy, Rick. Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy: Gennett Records and the Rise of America's Musical Grassroots
 * Kennedy, Rick. Little Labels, Big Sound
 * Kernfeld, Barry Dean, ed. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (3 vols.)
 * Kernfeld, Barry Dean. The Blackwell Guide to Recorded Jazz
 * Kirchner, Bill, ed. The Oxford Companion to Jazz
 * Milkowski, Bill. Jaco
 * Milner, Greg. Perfecting Sound Forever
 * Niles, Richard. The Pat Metheny Interviews
 * Sallis, James. The Guitar in Jazz
 * Yanow, Scott. Bebop
 * Yanow, Scott. Classic Jazz
 * Yanow, Scott. The Great Jazz Guitarists
 * Yanow, Scott. The Jazz Singers
 * Yanow, Scott. Swing
 * Yanow, Scott. Trumpet Kings

Other

 * Garner, Bryan. Garner's Modern English Usage
 * Garner, Bryan. The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation
 * Garner, Bryan and Wallace, David Foster. Quack This Way
 * Fiske, Robert Hartwell. Dictionary of Unendurable English
 * Fiske, Robert Hartwell. To the Point
 * Lucas, F. L., Style
 * Murphy, Lynne. The Prodigal Tongue
 * Orwell, George. 1984, "Politics and the English Language"
 * The American Heritage Dictionary
 * The New Oxford American Dictionary
 * Pocket World Figures
 * World Almanac