User talk:EddieHugh/Archive 2019

Jazz band
I don't understand this article. None of it. The point, the purpose, the goal. Is there anything here that isn't covered somewhere else in more detail? There is already an article about big bands. There are articles about instruments. And..."notable jazz bands". Really? Every band in Wikipedia is supposed to be a notable jazz band. How many is that? The "history of jazz bands" is...five sentences? The repertoire of jazz bands is...three sentences? I guess if you pick a broad enough topic, anything you will enter will be correct. Former living human beings... Louis Armstrong. That's setting the bar a bit low. Is any of this article worth keeping? Vmavanti (talk) 02:23, 1 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Propose merge with Jazz, then get rid of almost all of it? EddieHugh (talk) 19:22, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe. Is there something else it could be merged with? The Jazz article is such a mess already. Vmavanti (talk) 19:39, 2 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I know; I thought that might help... mess up what's already a mess. There is Musical ensemble, but that would probably be resisted, as it has a 'main article' wikilink to Jazz band. EddieHugh (talk) 19:44, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Art Tatum
Speaking of mess, I tried to work on the Art Tatum discog. Ugh. I tried to coordinate available sources, but there were many discrepancies. I didn't realize he died fairly young, that he didn't record much, and that there was only one biography about him. Have you read the Lester bio? Is there a discog in it? Do you have the discog by Laubich? I was all prepared to say "Let's use recording dates for this one" except that the CD box set releases were a big enough deal to get press attention. Those release dates will interest readers. I added a "posthumous release" header and deleted some of the unnecessary compilations. I am prepared to say this is an unusual discography, but you're the expert on such matters. Let me know what you think about getting a handle on this and what sources you have. Vmavanti (talk) 22:48, 6 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 03:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 18:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * On your Qs: yes, no, unfortunately not. The releases that are probably most famous now (Complete Pablo Group Masterpieces and Complete Pablo Solo Masterpieces) are themselves reissues/compilations. The sources I've seen even vary on how many albums were released in the original versions of them. I have both, so could probably pull the dates from the notes, but that would leave all the things I don't have. Without the book-length discography, I think we're all stuck. I hope to get the enthusiasm together to sort out the article's text (& probably then a GA nomination), but that's not until next week at the earliest. EddieHugh (talk) 22:57, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I can see why Laubich wanted to straighten it out years ago. I might consider buying the Laubich book discography if you think that's the best way. I don't know if my library would get something like that on interlibrary loan.
 * The question is: what would you do with it? A lot of his recordings were released as singles, and there'll be over a hundred of them (wild guess without checking). It was only the last things with Granz that were first on albums. So, unless you want to create two discographies – singles; albums (including albums that amounted to compilations of singles) – after spending your own money, then targeting something else might be more worthwhile. And the book predates the CD age... EddieHugh (talk) 12:17, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * There's also a discography in "The Improvisational Techniques Of Art Tatum" thesis, but that would probably be more difficult to get, and is of unknown quality. EddieHugh (talk) 12:34, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Singles? Jazz singles? I didn't know that. I was thinking of the albums, the Granz years I guess. Tatum is an odd case.

George H. Buck Foundation
This article puzzled me. The foundation isn't a label. It's the company that owns the labels. Should we merge it with George Buck? Or maybe Jazzology? It makes sense to consolidate information about Buck and his labels. Vmavanti (talk) 23:36, 6 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The one on him perhaps has a better overview. The foundation page was created by the foundation. Unless there's a lot of coverage of it separately from him, then merge & redirect to him is logical. EddieHugh (talk) 11:57, 7 January 2019 (UTC)

Numbering albums in ledes
Often I encounter someone attempting to count albums on album pages, such as "Wes Montgomery's seventh album..." I'm sure you know this, but for my own sense of thoroughness I thought I would mention it. It's pointless. The bigger the body of work, the harder it is to know the fifth album from the seventh album given the reality of the jazz world: different labels, different recording and release dates, different countries, different personnel. It strikes me as a waste of time to try to make something definitive when there are that many variables. It's difficult enough to get the chronology correct for the infobox. Numbering the albums in the lede is doomed to fail. There are too many discrepancies to be able to say with certainty an exact number of album for every musician. In pop music, it's not much of a problem. But in jazz? There's also the matter of: when you say seventh album, do you mean seventh recorded album or seventh released album? Seventh solo album? Group album? As leader, co-leader, guest? A person who tries to count albums probably deserves a pat on the back for effort, but in the end it simply isn't worth it. This is another example of an enthusiastic amateur overlooking the interests of the audience. Every writer is told: Remember your audience. Vmavanti (talk) 03:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 02:20, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but it's recommended or at least suggested in the Album wikiproject. I'm trying to get them to stop recommending AllMusic as a source for dates, but it hasn't happened yet. EddieHugh (talk) 12:08, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, AllMusic isn't the problem. AllMusic is hit or miss like any other sources. You can often look at the picture of the album on AllMusic. Release dates for genres outside of jazz are probably not a problem on AllMusic. It's partially the nature of the beast, the way jazz is performed and recorded and released. Or was. It's not as much of a problem for albums in recent years than in decades further back.
 * Old ones more than new, yes. But examples others gave at the Album wikiproject weren't from jazz, so it's not just genre. EddieHugh (talk) 12:18, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

 * Thanks for that! There's so much to do, and I haven't seen the film (yet). EddieHugh (talk) 23:23, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
 * You are very welcome, Eddie. A great film, not least for the songs. But only intended here as a pun, of course. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:30, 17 January 2019 (UTC) ... and most people will always think of Chicago:, anyway

Afro-Cuban jazz
There are a lot of problems with the Afro-Cuban jazz article. I'm having troubling editing it because the syntax for notation and audio samples is messing up the colored syntax. Much of the page (while editing) is in pink or italics or both. The format of the citations is not great, and some of the content is speculative and debatable to say the least. I was trying to consolidate some of the citations, but the article is difficult to read when the syntax coloring is messed up. Do you know of any way to fix this? I suspect there is no way because the notation syntax uses italics as a command, thus turning the words grey. I'm not sure why the text is pink if the commands are probably enclosed with "score" and " ". I'm out of my element here. This might help: Help:Score. Do you know of any way to make this article more readable in edit mode? Vmavanti (talk) 02:11, 17 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 18:20, 17 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 20:45, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I can't reproduce that with 'show preview'... do you use VisualEditor? It might be from that. EddieHugh (talk) 12:16, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Really? That's interesting. I don't use Visual editor. I have syntax highlighting checked in Preferences with the default Vector skin. This is on Firefox 64.02 for the Mac. I asked someone else, a computer guy, and he said he would take a look. Puzzling.
 * I tried turning syntax highlighting on. I get multiple colours but don't see extra italics text. The pink spills over from the "score" syntax: is that the problem? In fact, pink becomes the default. I haven't used it before, but I'll play around to see if I can find what's causing it. EddieHugh (talk) 18:44, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * ok... the problem is with "relative c  ". The highlighter reads that as the start of an italics command (  ) that doesn't end (doesn't get another '' ). EddieHugh (talk) 18:51, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * cntd... I don't know if there's a way around it. It comes from MediaWiki Extension:Score. Simplest thing is to turn off syntax highlighting. That's what I'm going back to anyway. EddieHugh (talk) 18:56, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I noticed a long time ago, my first day I think, that pink will spill all over the text if a "br" is used instead of "br /" (br with a slash). The documentation uses a slash. For me it's a habit.
 * I'm look for information about Afro-Cuban jazz. Do you know anything? DonaldGump (talk) 01:45, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
 * DonaldGump – not much, but I can create a list of possible sources, based on what I have access to, if you'd like. Let me know if that would be useful. EddieHugh (talk) 10:47, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

Mátyás Seiber
Are you familiar with this name? I'm not. See the Talk page. I removed him from the project but someone thinks I've been too hasty. So I would like your opinion. Thanks. Vmavanti (talk) 23:26, 25 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 20:43, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I wasn't, but in my resources there's a whole chapter – "East Meets West: Contributions of Matyas Seiber to Jazz in Germany" – in the book Jazz & the Germans. There are mentions / brief discussions of his jazz course in other books too. And more on him in relation to jazz in another book, The Jazz Republic. So, it looks like there's enough to warrant including him in the in crowd. EddieHugh (talk) 17:48, 26 January 2019 (UTC)
 * OK. The person mentioned sources in German, so it's good you found something in English.

Incompetence
Can anything be done about incompetent admins and editors? Or are they something we merely avoid, like holes in the road? Vmavanti (talk) 16:48, 28 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 12:25, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * More frustrations? If it's incompetence, then pointing them in the right direction is all that can be done for an editor. It can be different for an admin, but whether it's worth stopping, buying the repair materials, and then persuading others to help fill in the hole is open to question. EddieHugh (talk) 12:09, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * An admin who I thought knew better threatened to block me. It was an arbitrary, unjustified threat with all kinds of false accusations of creating drama and disruptive editing (isn't all editing disruptive?). I was shocked and disappointed. My guess is that person was having a bad day, but that doesn't justify unprovoked personal attacks and threats from someone I thought was an intelligent adult. It takes a thicker skin to be an admin. It's certainly not a job I want. For most of my life, one of the central assumptions of my world view has come from John Adams: Power is poison.
 * That's unfortunate. Hope that it was the 'bad day' possibility. Something similar will happen from time to time – it's a matter of being here for long enough. EddieHugh (talk) 12:44, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

Page numbers needed
Going through all these "page number needed" templates. These can be difficult to solve. Or impossible. There's one on the Stephane Grappelli page which is in French, which I addressed on the Talk page. I can't fix that one. There's one on the Eric Dolphy page from the book The Importance of Being Eric Dolphy, which my library doesn't have. Possibly I can get it from interlibrary loan, but it takes six weeks. Eclipse Jazz has a lists of refs that seem to be nothing but "page needed" templates and "subscription required". The article appears to have been created by someone with a special interest. All the refs are from the local newspaper. What is Eclipse Jazz that makes it so vital to be included in Wikipedia? "A student-run committee within the University Activities Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan." I'm open to suggestions. Vmavanti (talk) 20:48, 29 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 16:48, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Abandon hope, I think. Finding the editor who added the source is a route, but even finding out who it was could be very slow. EddieHugh (talk) 21:26, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * As is often the case, the creator is a red link who hasn't edited in years. Did one thing and disappeared. Did what interests them and disappeared. I get that. People are motivated by self-interest. There's no way around it. But an impartial editor has to ask: Is this something everyone should be interested in? More precisely, is this subject notable? That's what separates the men from the boys. I know you know. Not everyone does. Or they ignore it.

Discography citations
I've been working under the assumption that discographies have to be sourced. I have sourced many of them, but many of the citations appear to have vanished. Vmavanti (talk) 20:45, 31 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 23:59, 31 January 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 16:41, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * In theory, everything should be sourced, but discographies often have none. I've only recently started adding sources to the ones that I work on. Which ones have vanished? EddieHugh (talk) 21:10, 31 January 2019 (UTC)
 * What does it mean when the edit history says something like "29 intermediate revisions by 20 users not shown"? Who are the users and why are the edits invisible?
 * It sounds like you're looking at pending changes, which is a type of protection on some pages that makes changes by new or IP editors invisible (to most readers) until they are approved (or rejected) by someone with pending changes rights. It's possible to see all of the edits: just click on "view history" as usual and they'll all be listed, with "pending review" at the end of each one. Does that explain what you're seeing? EddieHugh (talk) 10:49, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No, it doesn't. Go to Laurindo Almeida. Click "View History". Select two articles to compare. Choose something far down like my name and something closer to the top. Click "compare selected revisions". Compare the diffs. In the middle of the two columns: "28 intermediate revisions by 19 users not shown". To make it clearer, use diffs that are closer together, one revision right after another, so you are dealing with the work of two people. Except after you compare the diffs it will say something like "5 intermediate revisions by 5 users", thus suggesting 5 people have made changes, not two. Where are the invisible users and revisions? I thought maybe there was something I had to check in my prefs to see them, but I couldn't find anything. I know it's odd.
 * ...I didn't know that was possible! I never tried "compare selected revisions" beyond the first one. I can't replicate the last bit of what you said: at Laurindo Almeida, if I compare your latest with 2 back I get "One intermediate revision by one other user not shown"; yours and 3 back gives "2 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown"; yours and 4 back, "3 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown". Isn't that what it's supposed to do? i.e. if there are changes a (newest) b c d e (oldest), then the standard 'compare latest' shows the difference between a and b; whereas 'compare a and e' shows all the changes from a to e combined, as if they were 1 edit. EddieHugh (talk) 17:00, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Bonfa and bossa nova
Do you think Luiz Bonfa qualifies as a jazz guitarist? I've been thinking about what to do with these Brazilian acts. Boss nova and jazz are not identical, though they influenced each other. Some musicians play both, such as Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. But Bonfa? In guitar we also have Bola Sete, Laurindo Almeida, Badi Assad, Oscar Castro Neves. I wonder if the term "Brazilian jazz" is a misnomer. I'm going to reconsider some of this. It seems like the terms get jumbled: jazz, Brazilian jazz, bossa nova, samba, tango. An encyclopedia ought to be precise about this usage, and I haven't been precise as I could be. I need to read more about this. Vmavanti (talk) 19:36, 2 February 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 18:11, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I noticed that there are several Brazilian articles with old clean up tags... and left them. Unless they had exposure internationally, most sources won't be in English. The "Brazilian jazz" article isn't helpful. So, I don't know: it's not something I listen to much, or have read much on. EddieHugh (talk) 19:55, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
 * There's an article about it in the Oxford Companion to Jazz, a useful book you might like if you haven't read it. I'm reading it now. I found a used copy through Amazon in great shape, white pages, no markings. The group of Latin genres is a subject that, like much else in jazz, can lead to confusion. It gets back to my point about jazz versus "jazzy". I'm not sure what is meant by the umbrella term Brazilian jazz, perhaps even Latin jazz. It's easier to comment on individual genres like bossa nova, samba, tango, and these are not synonymous with jazz. Some of these musicians have played with jazz musicians. If you see a name removed from the project, know that I try to consider each one individually. I look at the career and how they have spent their time. I look at the sources. Bossa nova and jazz seem to have had a symbiotic relationship. But I'm not going to call music jazz simply because there is a Latin influence. A tinge is still just a tinge, not a dominant characteristic. I think much the same about African jazz. There's a chapter on that, too, in the Oxford Companion. Critics can conclude whatever they want. For us on Wikipedia, we have to be more practical. We can't be as expansive, because there's work to do. All critics do is talk.

Penguin Guide
Does the Penguin Guide give release dates?Vmavanti (talk) 19:19, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
 * No; it gives recording months and years. Very occasionally it mentions a release/re-release date in the text of a review. EddieHugh (talk) 20:45, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Steve Holt Canadian Musician
A bit of a chainsaw edit... I'm his manager. Some of the original source links are no longer in existence, like the Greenwich Associates ranking of him as analyst. But other text was deleted even when a source wasn't required, like his associations with James Moody, Archie Shepp, etc. What exactly do we need to do to maintain this page? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Simplicity1008 (talk • contribs) 02:05, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
 * First, please read Conflict of interest: as his manager, it's best not to edit his page directly. Second, everything on Wikipedia must be verifiable (see Verifiability on this), so there should be a source provided for everything, even if there isn't a "citation needed" tag or similar. I suggest trying Wayback Machine or another internet archive site to see if you can find the specific analyst information that's mentioned (the current link to Greenwich Associates doesn't contain that information, so is useless). If you find sources, I recommend listing them at Talk:Steve Holt (Canadian musician), not editing the article itself directly. I'll try to find more sources and info and add them... this has a plus and a minus: plus is that the article will probably improve; minus is that I'll remove anything that I can't find a source for. So, if you have sources, please list them on that talk page... does that sound fair? EddieHugh (talk) 11:58, 6 February 2019 (UTC)

ok sounds good. --Simplicity1008 (talk) 20:46, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Question marks
Re: Breakstone again. I would discourage you from entering any information with question marks into an encyclopedia. You've probably seen British discographers do it that way, but that doesn't mean it works for encyclopedias, which try to inspire a higher level of confidence. Question marks do not inspire confidence. I would rather see no information than a piece of information with a question mark next to it. It reminds me of information entered by editors, usually IP editors, that includes "reportedly", "allegedly", "probably", "maybe". It's either true or false. I tell IP editors: Say it or don't say it. If you say it, source it. That's what I put in my edit summaries. Encyclopedias are reference works. There are plenty of places to go for ambiguity. Television, newspapers, web sites. There are plenty of places to go for nonsense. Television, newspapers, web sites. Reliable sources give reliable information. Fewer are reliable.

My second point is a familiar one. I'm glad you labeled a column "recording date" but I prefer having either both release dates and recording dates or just release dates, but as you said, we won't agree on that. You might add another column for release dates to Breakstone. I spent a lot of time corroborating the release dates that I added for Breakstone and for all the guitarists I have worked on in the As and Bs. I mean this literally. One album at a time, label, title, year, and the rest, usually corroborating with several sources for one album to guarantee I got it right. Although I don't use Discogs.com as a source, I do use it for corroboration. The album covers are useful, as are the album covers at AllMusic. In fact, as I mentioned to you, some of my discography citations keep getting deleted, so there are discographies which I have done probably three times (no way to be certain). I use books, Amazon, ebay, anything I can find (but not as citations). One discography, even a relatively short one like Breakstone, can take a few hours at one sitting. And I have done Breakstone at least twice. I'm puzzled by why you deleted all the work I did there. I thought it was fine. Unless you did it to ameliorate conflict, which I can understand but which I would still disagree with.

I realize none of this is the end of the world, but there has be to consistency if I'm going to be able to edit with some degree of confidence. There have to be agreed upon methods, formats, and techniques among people who edit jazz articles. If we ever arrive at these guidelines, I would like to see them added to Wikiproject Jazz. If it seems constricting, consider all the time wasted with silly debates on Talk pages. It's easier and faster to have a rule that people can follow. Notice I said "can" follow rather than "will" follow. There a lot of people who have problems with authority and rules. So what? They make poor editors and administrators. And much else. They should be doing something else with their time.

MOS says to write Label, Year. But does everyone do it? No. I keep seeing Year, Label, probably because they saw it that way somewhere else and they assumed it was OK and they haven't bothered to read the documentation. Conformity isn't always wrong. But it isn't always right either. You have to remember that people who read these articles are not as familiar with jazz as you are. That's why they read the articles. You have to approach every article with a blank slate, without assumptions and presuppositions. If you use methods, habits, and styles familiar only to a cadre of jazz discographers, you're shutting out everyone else.

I purposely avoid the purple prose, hipster slang, and verbal tics of jazz journalists among whom everything happens "soon", "immediately", and "quickly"—all of them subjective terms. Decades of valuable experience are skipped by the use of "later". Obvious points are belabored by "before he died". He performed until he died. No shit. Every period of time is a "stint" or "tenure" and when you leave a band it's like graduating from school, because you are called "alumni". Because someone plays the same instrument or is in the same band or from the same city, they are grouped as "fellows", thus creating a camaraderie that is largely imaginary. I can tell you from growing up with musicians that they don't always consider each other buddies. To call someone a "fellow New Yorker" is comical. If there's a city on Earth without unity it's New York City, a city so hostile and impersonal you are discouraged from looking people in the eye lest it indicate wolfish aggression. Every city has a music "scene". Musicians are "recruited" (like the military) rather than hired. I could write a book about this subject. I fear British critics have imitated the bad habits of American music critics who are trying so hard to be cool. Accept my apology for that. In America, music critics are not the most thoughtful, articulate people in the world. After we leave our teens, we should leave "cool" behind. We can do better. Vmavanti (talk) 16:16, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Vmavanti (talk) 02:44, 8 February 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 02:58, 8 February 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't know you were going through the guitarists. The reason Breakstone looks as it does is because (in addition to dealing with the immediate dispute) I've been going through the discographies of pianists and presenting them in that way: I've reached K.... I've no objection to having the release years also included, but they're usually harder to find, unless it's for very recent stuff. And, recalling the Breakstone talk page discussion, having a stated source for everything is preferred. Question marks: I use them to indicate approximation and to enable the table sorting functions to work optimally. "c." could be used, but ones marked in that way would get sorted together, not by year. The same would happen with blanks, which look horrible in tables. But yes, the information preceding the ? might not be reliably sourced, so we hit the same problem as finding sources for & including release dates. (And a practical reason: usually I'm dealing with unsourced discogs, so I assume good faith, but add ? until I can find a source.)
 * Maybe we should start with this Q: what would we include in a discography if we had access to all possible information about every album? I'd have what's in the Breakstone one now, plus a second column for release year, and add anything else worth mentioning in the notes column. I strongly endorse including personnel. So, for me, in doing the Breakstone and pianist ones as I have, I'm close to, but not quite at, my ideal. EddieHugh (talk) 20:06, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
 * But that was sourced material. I had every release date sourced and you deleted all of it. That was very unlike you.
 * Sorry again. I saw a single AllMusic reference and don't regard AM as reliable for dates, unless one's given in the review (and even then the reviewers often get it wrong). I didn't see a reliably sourced release date for most of the albums. EddieHugh (talk) 13:26, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't approach it with the question of getting as much information as possible. I treat a discography as a list of albums. Readers want to know what albums a musician has recorded. So I look for that list. That means research, which means one citation or more. Most readers probably don't want more than the name of the album and when it was released. I understand a discographer wants more than that, such as sidemen, and if you include sidemen you almost have to have a table to prevent clutter. One thing I dislike about tables is they are hard to edit. I see them as a final draft, last step, icing on the cake. I hate adding albums to pre-existing tables. It's easy to make a tiny mistake and screw up the whole thing. They require a degree of programming knowledge that most people don't have (most people have little to none). Editors sometimes indulge in games with colors, column widths, and javascript. Looking pretty is nice. But no one looks pretty forever. I'm more impressed by substance. It's always been interesting to me to see people add "use my dates", "use Australian English", turn refs or data into columns, or insert a cute little flag icon in the infobox for their home country—while refraining from doing any real writing, research, or editing. But according to some, I'm not allowed to make comments on the edits of others.
 * To add one to a table, just copy and paste an existing entry, including all of its formatting, then replace the content but not the formatting. Some are more difficult than others, but no actual programming knowledge is required. EddieHugh (talk) 13:30, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * My tables are easy. I use the drop down menu. I keep it as simple as possible. No decoration. It's other people's I worry about screwing up. Not every discography needs a table. A short discography with ten albums or so doesn't. Most jazz guitarists haven't recorded many albums as leaders. They spend a lot of time as sidemen. I know you think that's important, but I suspect readers are more interested in leader albums (solo albums) and are unlikey to seek or buy an album simply because a guitarist plays in the background on one song. Sure, I've done it. Most people don't.


 * I mentioned my technique for citing discographies on the Breakstone Talk page. I understand that some people might find it unfamiliar. You can use one citation for one paragraph. A paragraph might have five sentences, and if all five sentences come from the same source, you can put a citation at the end of the last sentence to apply to all the sentences, not just the last sentence. As opposed to repeating the citation four times. In a discography, it might look like only the last album in the list is being sourced to AllMusic, but AllMusic has been used to source all the albums, every album in the list. I suppose I could add something like "Source:" or "All information from:". I've seen people put a citation at the bottom of tables to indicate the same. A footnote will appear before or after the table to indicate the entire table. If this is unclear, let me know. I'm going to do a little research about this.

Vmavanti (talk) 18:43, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't share your hostility to AllMusic, though I agree the album years are sometimes wrong. All sources make mistakes. If you find a perfect source, let me know. You can email corrections to AllMusic. Sometimes the year given is the recording date, sometimes the release date, sometimes neither. Sometimes the discography mixes the two. The more complex the discography, the worse AM does. The older the discography, the worse AM does. But I believe it is false to say AllMusic is unreliable. Eddie Condon's is a mess. It's hard for the reader to know what's available to listen to or buy. Breakstone's was mostly right. I can write a fairly accurate discography using AllMusic (its dates and covers) and comparing the dates to Discogs.com, which has its own share of problems. Sometimes I'll look at Amazon, but it is rarely helpful. Specifically on AllMusic, I read the album review if there is one, because that has more detail about the album. I'll read AM's biography of the musician. I'll click on the album cover. I'll click on "Releases". I dig and compare and analyze. You mentioned the copyright date isn't always the release date, but I'm not sure that is correct, assuming one is reading the cover correctly, and assuming the cover itself is correct. Some old jazz covers don't have dates. I don't know why the copyright date would not be the release date, unless you mean the first time the album was released. I have enough experience with albums and album data to know what I'm doing. When I add a discography to an article with my edit summary "added sourced discog" I mean that literally: every album title, every label, every date has been carefully considered. I've gotten better at it as time has gone by, so you might find something from a while back that I got wrong. So what? If AM gets a date wrong, it's usually not more than a year or two off. That's not the end of the world. Pictures of the covers have become very valuable to me but they are not a panacea. I come back to the reader. The reader wants to know what's available.

Vmavanti (talk) 00:27, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I sometimes use "Source: [citation]" as a separate line after a discography; it's clearer than having the citation attached to the end of the last entry, as you suggest.
 * I brought up the AllMusic Sonny Rollins discography on another page recently. ~40% of the entries covering his first decade had obvious errors in the sidebar dates. And I randomly chose him to look at. I've no idea what they do to get it wrong so often, but it can't be human error each time: there's something seriously wrong in how they add and/or display information on dates.
 * I admire your checking of dates & I try to do much the same thing. Unfortunately, though, no one is going to see or look for edit summaries unless they're following a page, so unless the sources are listed in the article, information is going to look unsourced. (I realised this late, as I gave edit summaries such as "details, from Penguin's 9th" for a long time, without citing that source in the article.) Which brings us to the Breakstone discussion with Chubbles et al. on sourcing.
 * Maybe sources are gradually improving though: independent labels often give dates and full personnel for many/all of their releases, and jazzdisco.org covers a lot of ground for big names and labels. EddieHugh (talk) 19:28, 8 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Like I said, the bigger and more complex the discography, the more likely it is to contain errors. I think of Rollins as an exception. On AM it looks like a different person does a different article, and each person has a different method for writing discographies. My guess is jazz discographies is low on their list of priorities. I don't know what the problem is. I read edit summaries every day. I write edit summaries every day. My watch list is in the thousands, and I receive a list of emails every day about changes. The information in a discog isn't going to look unsourced if there is a footnote right there. I do a lot for readers, but I can't do everything them.
 * I just looked at the Jarrett one up to 1973... 5 release dates are definitely wrong and another 2 probably are. That's at least 40% wrong again. Horace Silver: 5 out of the first 13 are obviously wrong... close to 40% again. These aren't exceptions: it's normal. (I'm criticising AllMusic here, not you. I meant that I didn't look at the edit summaries at Breakstone before changing the discography; there was a stand off on the Beatles thing, so I leapt in.) EddieHugh (talk) 01:03, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

Vmavanti (talk) 19:28, 9 February 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 00:28, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Are those intended to be release dates or intended to be recording dates? I'm not always sure. Eddie, I urge you to email or write (perhaps better) AllMusic. Tell them the situation, who you are, your experience with Wikipedia, the problems of trying to use AM as a source, and your knowledge of discographies. All the stuff you tell me. All of it. In specific detail. Repeat yourself. Pile up the evidence. My brother has a saying: The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Sometimes complaining does make a difference. You might get a response (of some kind) if it gets to the right person and if they are motivated to change. Two big "ifs". Do you know anything about the Erlewines? They have been involved in music for a long time. I'm sure they care about the quality of the data, though I'm unsure how involved they are since AM was bought. Stephen Erlewine was in charge for a while. His father started the Ann Arbor Blues Festival in the 1960s and still lives somewhere near Ann Arbor (I think). Maybe you could write him, too. Maybe AM will hire you to help them out if you offer. Or maybe they don't give a damn. But it's worth a try. I'm going to keep using AM as a source, but I'm going to keep corroborating the data with other sources. Thanks.
 * I've heard from others that nothing happens when AM is contacted. There's a musician who's trying to get them to change his dob; that's from so long ago that I can't remember who it is, but I saw the page a while ago and it's unchanged. So my motivation to attempt something with them is low. The Rollins/Jarrett/Silver ones are from separate AM album pages; I clicked on links from their AM discography to get to those pages, but didn't check how they compared with the dates in the discography. EddieHugh (talk) 19:38, 9 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That's a shame. One never knows when contacting companies whether anything will get done or if it can get done. I still encourage people to try and keep trying, because sometimes attention can lead to change. Email is hit and miss. As you know, jazz is a low priority. The audience for it seems to be getting smaller all the time. On AM, remember to look not only at the dates given on the album list discography, but also the "Releases" box on the album page. Often these conflict. It seems that in some cases the dates given behind Releases is the release date, while the dates given on the discography are recording dates. But this is inconsistent, which I attribute to several people working on entries and using different methods. I rely heavily on the picture of the back cover of the album. I know, AM is often slapdash. Perhaps because people have different work ethics. I'm not defending that. I would be embarrassed to publish sloppy information on the web. But that's me. I get embarrassed when I miss mowing blades of grass in the lawn.

Misuse of the apostrophe
I'll give you an example of how lazy American journalists are. As you know, an apostrophe shows possession. So if I write "New York's Five Spot Cafe", I'm saying the city of New York owns the Five Spot Cafe. Which is wrong. A private citizen owned it, not the city. We need to be careful about ownership. Where does this come from? Journalists write in a compressed style because they are usually pressed for time and trying to fit as much text into an article as possible at the last minute. Articles are measured in inches, not words. The computer age didn't change this. It merely made editing easier. White space is valuable. Collect all the white space on a page and you might find a way to stick in one more ad. So "in New York" easily becomes "New York's". Or someone might start a sentence with a number: 2000's Thriller, as though the year 2000 recorded an album. And a million other constructions that become reflexes and formulae. The opposite is also true: one can write expansively to fill the space, something school kids learn easily when given a requirement for page length or word count. Radio and television stations hate dead air. Newspapers hate white space. The sad part is I fear British music critics have adopted the tics of American hipster muso prose without realizing it. I've said before, conformity isn't always bad, but it isn't always good either. Vmavanti (talk) 00:13, 23 February 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 00:26, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That got me thinking! What about 'New York's finest'? EddieHugh (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
 * When people call Philadelphia the "city of brotherly love", you can bet they are being sarcastic. Many people in the northeast are angry for no apparent reason.

Glossary of jive talk
What do you think of the Glossary of jive talk? I find it, in a word, dumb. Bordering on offensive, if not offensive. We run the risk of perpetuating bad stereotypes, though I should say not all jazz musicians talked this way. It's an odd topic for the jazz project. I'm not interested in slang except to tell people to avoid it. Some slang is locked into a place and time and is therefore of academic interest only. The little content that exists here isn't all that interesting. But these are my opinions. I suspect if I prodded it, there would be the usual outcry. Vmavanti (talk) 21:08, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
 * 170 views a day: not bad. It reminds me of Viper Mad, which I did a while ago. The definitions try too hard to be in the style they're supposed to be explaining, and the sourcing could be better. Should it exist? There are a lot of "Glossary of ..." articles, so I don't see why not, given that sources exist. EddieHugh (talk) 00:28, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * In contrast with the Oxford book you mentioned, I do have Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary, which goes through similar territory and was published by the University of Illinois Press. EddieHugh (talk) 00:33, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Legacy sections
I'm a little pissed off about these Legacy sections in biographies. They might as well be called Trivia. First, there's no impartial way to assess the legacy of anyone. It's an impossible subject in the context of objective fact because it will always be subjective and debatable. It's an invitation to add opinion and trivia—or as I like to call it, graffiti. I was working on the Chet Baker one a few minutes ago. People add shit like this: Someone used the name "Chet Faker" in honor of him. Some honor. Another dumb entry speculated a movie character might be based on him, but it's okay because it was followed by the sourced comment that the movie that was planned had been canceled. Such kind people informing me of vital news. I have no feelings about Baker. But suppose this article were about someone you knew. Would you want strangers treating it so frivolously? You know people leave beer cans on Ernest Hemingway's grave. That's not cute or funny or clever. It's immature, stupid, and disrespectful. Is there anything we can do about this compulsion to end every biography with a section titled "Legacy", which then turns into a brick wall for strangers to paint graffiti? Vmavanti (talk) 03:32, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
 * True, the one on Baker is a mess. They're usually fine for musicians, because "legacy" means "musical legacy": the person's importance and influence on music. We could change the heading(s) to narrow the focus. "Musical legacy" rules out the pop culture stuff, as would "influence" or "influence on music". Much of what's there now is about Baker in film and print, which could also be used as a section title to ward off trivia. So: not much can be done, but headings can constrain. I removed most of the trivia from "My Way" a few months ago with this and other edits, eventually changing the pertinent heading from "In popular culture" to "Public use", and that's held. I've also changed some song sections from "Other versions" to "Chart versions", which deters dumping. EddieHugh (talk) 11:49, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Good ideas.Vmavanti (talk) 14:34, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I am unfamiliar with the 1960 film All the Fine Young Cannibals. But does it really have nothing at all to do with Chet Baker? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:55, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

Keyboards
Would you like to make a definitive pronouncement on the use of the word "keyboard"? Is a piano a keyboard? Does the word keyboard cover most anything with keys?—piano, electric piano, organ, synthesizer, harpsichord, celeste, harmonium, clavichord, spinet. I separate these from accordion for some reason. Vmavanti (talk) 17:53, 13 March 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 02:54, 14 March 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 17:13, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * ...no, I can't! But my take: a piano is a keyboard instrument. A piano is not a keyboard. Similarly, the others are keyboard instruments; "she played keyboards" means something electronic/non-mechanical. And that's as technical as I can get. EddieHugh (talk) 00:59, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I thought that may be the case here, having seen people separate "piano" from "keyboard", using the latter to mean an electronic instrument. At other sites and other places and times I have seen them all lumped together under "keyboard". They must have convinced me because I got in the habit. Now, to change back. Keyboard means electronic then.
 * According to me. 'Keyboards means electronic' holds for personnel listings that I've seen for jazz. Maybe at the fusion/rock end they might not bother adding "piano" to the list of instruments if "keyboards" is already listed. EddieHugh (talk) 11:14, 14 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, according to you, but it makes sense provided one is consistent. I'm not sure I understand the difference between keyboard and keyboard instrument. It makes sense to me that a keyboard is something one plugs in. I never felt tempted to call a piano a keyboard. There's no reason for the term "acoustic piano" because it's redundant. "Keyboard" matters only in certain circumstances, let's say a personnel listing with lots of keyboards, synths, brand names. I don't like to see long lists here. The longer the list, the more compelled I feel to substitute "keyboards" for all all those synth brands. The names are of little interest to most readers and you run the risk of promotion and advertising, as in those dopey "guitar rig and amp" sections. There's no need to copy and paste the liner notes. Buy the album. It's about the person, anyway, not the instrument.

Pushed out
Looks like I'm being pushed out of Wikipedia. Take a look at the discussion on my Talk page if you want. I really don't know what the way forward is because anything I say is criticized and used as an excuse to block me. In one day, my aunt was found dead, my sister went to the ER, my dog had surgery for an abscess that went up into his eye, and my three years of working for Wikipedia mean nothing because there are people who want me gone. It makes no sense, but maybe that's the problem—trying to make sense of it. I have a lot of jazz books that I bought for Wikipedia. Maybe you're interested. Vmavanti (talk) 19:47, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Admins tend to close ranks. I don't think you're being forced out – the perceived problem is with wording. If someone writes something such as "you are stupid", they will get into trouble if there's a complaint; write "you were stupid to add x" and the same might happen; choose "adding x is stupid" and it might be fine if there's no link to a particular editor; go for "instead of adding x, we should add y, because..." and all will be fine. Some editors don't worry about such things, do what they want and then take any consequences (Eric Corbett, perhaps), but I'd guess that isn't quite for you. With the other things happening in your life, it might be best to let this bit of aggravation pass. Hang on to the books. EddieHugh (talk) 12:12, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Absurdities accrue to a point that it's difficult to know what to make of them. There's obviously something stupid, contradictory, and ironic about threatening people to be civil. Sort of like "be nice or else!". I'm not even sure what a personal attack is anymore, and I'm not sure I've been guilty of it nearly as many times as I've been accused of. You can tell people are wrong when they start saying things like "Oh, I don't have time to explain it to you" or "You have to figure it out yourself" or "I'm not going to go over all of history, just trust me, it's a pattern". Within one conversation, if you could call it that, one admin said criticizing behavior is OK while the other said it wasn't. One said you can criticize a person's comments but not the person—until I tried it, then I was again threatened with a block. A third party, a guy I don't even know, butted in, accusing me of things I've never said or believed. This is like kicking a man when he's down. When I accuse him of a personal attack, an admin says "Oh, no, he wasn't, and accusing him of a personal attack is itself a personal attack", I start to think "What the hell?" Things really got weird when someone started referring to me in the third personal plural. I was no longer a username or a number—I was a "they". An individual became a collective. Shades of Kafka, Orwell, and Huxley. Shades of Monty Python. Et al. Americans don't have the experience of totalitarianism that Europeans do. We had to learn it about in books, fiction no less. John Adams, one of our greatest founders, did tell us "power is poison", but no one ever studies Adams. Many of us still believe in free speech even where it doesn't really exist.


 * Regardless, after I was told to figure out for myself what a personal attack is, I re-read the documentation, and I was struck by this rather disturbing first sentence: "There is no rule that is objective and not open to interpretation on what constitutes a personal attack". Now I see why admin. use it to so often. Arbitrariness is a v. effective weapon. Lack of definition means "A personal attack means whatever I say it means, so shut up". Shades of Humpty Dumpty: "When I use a word", Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." I especially like Carrol's "scornful tone" bit, with its suggestion of moral superiority and conviction of goodness combined with lack of humor and self-awareness. One contemporary novelist wrote this line: "They were not good or kind. They lied and cheated on their spouses, but they recycled their newspapers!"


 * I know what's like to be a target, and it's always shocking and disturbing though it probably shouldn't be. I suppose the safest way forward is never to use any one's username again. I thought people didn't talk because they were timid. I thought it might be British reticence or stoicism. But it could be a chilling effect created by people in authority who misuse their power. On the internet, even more so than in real life, if people want you gone they will find a way. As usual, I hope I'm wrong.Vmavanti (talk) 14:51, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * There's a lot of truth in that; it reminds me of bits of Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. Don't use usernames or "you": that will probably work, dull as it may be. EddieHugh (talk) 16:24, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

2016 UK EU Referendum
Hello. I saw that you undid my edit with the comment that the word changes were incorrect. Which word changes are you claiming to be incorrect? All of them? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Knieb (talk • contribs) 22:11, 17 March 2019 (UTC)
 * 'commit to ~ing' is correct. See instance C2 here.
 * "In contrast, the legislation that provided for the referendum held on AV in May 2011 would have implemented the new system of voting without further legislation, provided that the boundary changes also provided for in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 was also implemented" is incorrect. The verb "was" doesn't match "boundary changes" (it's plural, so "were" is correct). EddieHugh (talk) 22:22, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Orphans
I'm not sure what to do with these orphan articles when I can't find an article that will link to them. There isn't enough in the orphaned article in common with the rest of Wikipedia. Vmavanti (talk) 17:09, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I forgot to reply. They can be difficult; I'll look at some (the last time I looked, some were not orphaned, but the invisible tag hadn't been removed). EddieHugh (talk) 22:34, 21 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I've done as much as I have the energy for. A lot should be deleted. I proded some, but then I come up against edits such as this, where someone deprods based on information in the article that is unsourced, and when the article has been tagged for sourcing for 9 years. And the supposed chart probably didn't exist. EddieHugh (talk) 22:15, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Incomplete lists
I'm looking at the list of Incomplete Lists. There are about 20 of these and a few of them are labels, such as Sonet and Black and Blue. The template always struck me as odd. How do I know the list is incomplete? Is there a complete list somewhere? If so, I would like to use it for the relevant article. How do you want to solve these articles? Do you expect they can be? Given the problems over discographies, these 20 articles seem especially thorny. To say that anyone's discography is complete, esp. in jazz, given the variables, seems to me a bold claim. I'm OK with doing the work, but I don't know how to go about it. Vmavanti (talk) 19:07, 22 March 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 15:35, 23 March 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 20:16, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Some people use this formulation to set a limit on the scope of a discography: "This is an incomplete list, which will never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness as it excludes bootlegs, mix tapes and other minor records by independent labels."
 * If it's a long list and there's no realistic way of knowing how complete it is, I'd check to see if the 'incomplete list' sentence was added recently and, if not, remove it as useless. EddieHugh (talk) 13:33, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * In some cases there's a filmography. Other than IMDb, what's a good source for that?
 * Depends on where & when it's from. Large collections would be a good start for checking, but maybe not for creating, a list. bfi, for example. EddieHugh (talk) 17:57, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * One was for Norweigian films. A musician. I'm not going to waste my time working on that. I often wonder what people are thinking when they add these templates. Perhaps that we are Santa Claus waiting to grant their every wish.

Cites Unreliable Sources (cleanup listing)
One more thing I've wondered about often. Where the Cleanup Listing says "Cites Unreliable Sources" is...more or less wrong, because that section is including articles which have the template "Relies too much on primary sources". Looking at these articles shows the offense: using the official site. Which is acceptable at WP provided promotional and interpretive material isn't involved. Wouldn't every musician want to have thorough and accurate information on their site? Who knows how these things work. An official site ought to be a good source. If it were me, I would want not so much my life story but at least a complete discography to encourage people to buy. So my point is: this heading on the Cleanup Listing is wrong. An official site is a reliable source provided it's used correctly. Problem is, many people use it incorrectly. If that section of the listing included only sites which used IMDb, the header would make sense. Vmavanti (talk) 20:24, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

Selective discography
I have a real beef with this one, too, mainly because it's used so deceptively. I suspect many people use it to inflate the worth of the musician, to make the musician seem more important or at least more prolific. Perhaps with a table for two items, a beautiful waste of time. Sure, there's the OCD thing, fans, collectors, and so on, but that doesn't justify it either. No one should be selecting albums for the discography, selecting albums as representative to recommend. Selected according to what principles or criteria? I don't know, because the article never says. Just as I think there really is no such thing as a complete discography, there is no such thing as a selective (or selected) discography. By the way, it makes more sense to me to say "selected" than "selective" because the items have been selected. The items are not selective; they are things, and things don't select (except for androids, and who knows what they're thinking?). To some degree all discographies are selected because that is the only alternative to complete. I see people use the word "partial", but you could plug that into everything I just said. I avoid problems altogether by using the simpler, sugar-free term "Discography". I think this is what readers expect to see, and they understand (before long) how things work on Wikipedia: inchoate, in Heraclitean flux, often incorrect. It's possible to try too hard. I admire simplicity. Vmavanti (talk) 20:45, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Agreed! EddieHugh (talk) 21:09, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

St. Albans, Queens
I don't see what this article has to do with Wikiproject Jazz. Unless you object, I'm going to remove it. Let's stick to music and musicians. Vmavanti (talk) 16:02, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

Aliyah from the UK and Labour
I accept that multiple factors affect the level of Jewish emigration from the UK to Israel. However, if it is legitimate for the article to include assertions from leaders of the community that a Corbyn government is an existential threat to the British Jewish community i.e. that most Jews would leave, and to say that most British Jews are considering leaving, which was immediately before the emigration stats in the article but has since been deleted, surely it is legitimate to also look at whether, given this, the emigration rate has changed? Jontel (talk) 12:37, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I've added a couple of links as you asked and left it out of the lead. Hope that resolves the issue for you. Jontel (talk) 15:47, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Jontel, yes, "it is legitimate for the article to include assertions from leaders of the community that a Corbyn government is an existential threat to the British Jewish community", if sources state that. And they do.
 * Yes, "it is legitimate to also look at whether, given this, the emigration rate has changed", if sources cover that...
 * ...but no, it's not ok to link these two things if the sources don't. That's WP:SYNTH. And that's what you've done: the sources you added don't mention Labour. EddieHugh (talk) 20:07, 28 March 2019 (UTC)]
 * Thanks for your response. Yes, we have two separate bits of information. There is the leading British Jewish papers and former chief rabbi saying that the propect of a Corbyn led Labour government is leading British Jews to CONSIDER whether to emigrate. We also have the ACTUAL migration figures in separate articles from the same papers. I think both bits of information are highly relevant to the section on the level of impact on British Jews. I hope they can both be included if I do not link them as I am not suggesting a direct link; it is the sources themselves, in their initial articles, and the chief rabbi, who are suggesting the link. I have added the reference to the papers talking of the "existential threat to Jewish life" in the UK, separated the two bits of information physically and made it clear that antisemitism in general may also be a factor. Jontel (talk) 21:00, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Using two paragraphs doesn't stop it being Synth. The insinuation is that Jews in the UK actually aren't bothered about Corbyn/Labour, because they haven't actually left. There's no source for that. And the link between the two is flawed: the sources have Sacks stating that Jews were thinking of leaving, not that they were thinking of leaving for Israel. Maybe lots have gone to other countries... I don't have a source to support that possibility, just as you don't have a source linking levels of movement to Israel to anti-Semitism in the UK LP. As that's the case, the para beginning "Early in 2019, it was noted that rising concern about antisemitism in general had not been reflected as yet in the level of emigration" should be removed. EddieHugh (talk) 21:28, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, I've removed the material I added. Thank you for explaining this. Jontel (talk) 21:44, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Discography dates part 32
If you haven't already, feel free to change any dates on my edits where the release date is wrong and sourced to AllMusic (or not). I hesitate to use the word "wrong" in this context because I realized that when it comes to jazz discographies we're not dealing with certainties. My ace in the hole was a photo of the back of the album cover until I realized some of those photos are not American releases. Most of the time it's reliable but not always. As you know, there can be a run of album covers with wrong information. There does seem to be a consensus on the internet that Discogs.com has a lot of reliable information. I wish some of those diligent contributors worked for AllMusic. But the persistent discrepancies on AM, the ones that don't look like typos or carelessness, leave me wondering if there are other factors or variables about which I am ignorant. I wish I knew where they got their information. Occasionally AM has albums that Discogs doesn't. Where do Discogs.com contributor's get their information? My guess is from the albums themselves, usually the most reliable source of all, but I don't know. Discogs.com is fallible, too. It's a mistake to quote it as gospel. You can't always go by the date in the column on the main page. You have to click on the album and look at the list of releases. This gets back to my point about covers. Given that albums are released at different times all over the world, sometimes under different titles and tracks, as a practical matter WP can't include all of this information, and it's not of interest to many people. As an editor one needs to ask carefully: Is this really that important?

Discogs.com contributors have a habit of separating albums based on a leader's bands. I mean: with this duo, trio, quartet. If it's an established band, OK. Some musicians form bands every twenty minutes. They have a new person on an album, and so that becomes a new band. It gets excessive. So long as we know the leader. Discogs.com solves this by the "View All" link, which isn't always correct. On WP this habit easily slides into OCD fiddling and hair splitting. Really, who gives a shit? Except maybe for Miles Davis's First or Second Quintet or that kind of thing. Diehard fans, yes. Common reader, no. I see it on discographies when leader sections get additional divisions and subdivisions. I don't even like to see "studio albums" separated from "live albums". There's rarely a reason to include compilations except from a misguided sense of thoroughness elevated to a commandment. Tables for one or two items. Fiddle, fiddle. I see it on DAB pages. Categories with one or items. Indentations, excessive detail. Some people feel the need to sort everything, but on DAB pages it's better to have fewer categories. Every break due to a header or indent stops the eye. Sometimes a group of ten items with no headers is easiest and fastest to skim. There have to be reasons for what we do. Good ones that can be explained and defended.

It still makes sense to me that Discogs.com can't be used in citations because it relies on user-generated content. That's a good rule. It's good for people to work harder to find reliable sources no matter what subject they are writing about. It's good to stop and think and analyze rather than rush out information. Less information is better than more information that is badly sourced or unsourced. Reliable sources are tough to find because there aren't that many. Sources we consider reliable make mistakes. When I worked at a newspaper, an editor told me that if they printed retractions for all the mistakes they made on the previous day's paper, they wouldn't get any work done. The same person called newspapers "the first draft of history", and as we all know, the first draft of anything is crap. It's a starting point of a long process, not the end point. Vmavanti (talk) 16:59, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Alan Rankin Jones
Hi,

I've been having some trouble researching this jazz composer/lyricist/pianist, and I'm wondering if you'd like to check it out or help.

Alan Rankin Jones is very undocumented and enigmatic. He composed one of my favorite tunes ("Easy Street") in 1941, but I can't find much other information on him. The sources in the article are substandard at best, but I'm sure Jones abides by notability standards.

Let me know if what you think.

Best,

–Adamilo (talk) 23:06, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I've had a quick look and found... nothing. Did he go by another name or alias? On notability: as it stands, the biographical article meets criterion 1 of WP:COMPOSER, but that might not be enough if there's no information about his life. I'll have a more sustained look later. EddieHugh (talk) 11:49, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Adamilo, there's 1930s newspaper coverage of an Alan R Jones, who was the pianist in the Broadway show Fifty Million Frenchmen; it's all about a marital scandal. It could be him, but that's not enough to include it. Good work finding the year of death. EddieHugh (talk) 16:16, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Archive.org has been of help, but there's still very little coverage. There's also a disconnect between the article Easy Street and AR Jones' article; I'll fix this.. –Adamilo (talk) 16:29, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Almost nothing. I guess that he was sometimes "Alan Rankin Jones", sometimes "Alan R Jones" and sometimes "Alan Jones", which makes searching difficult, as does the only thing he's known for – "Easy Street" – being a common phrase. I've seen the 'review' by The Instrumentalist, but it's about an arrangement, and has nothing on A(R)J. EddieHugh (talk) 16:53, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Speaking
Thanks for the comments you volunteered on my Talk page. They have no effect on the debate, of course, but that's normal. They matter to me. Whatever else happens in life, money, fame, trophies, the love of others, standing up in a time of need (rather than acting like Judas or scurrying from the light like a cockroach) is what separates the men from the boys. If there's one thing the world needs, it's more men, fewer boys. But to be fair, it's possible that a classic chilling effect has been created by excessive, confusing rules that are often enforced arbitrarily and unjustly. Vmavanti (talk) 17:02, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Wired UK article about Brexit Wikipedia page
Hi EddieHugh,

I'm a journalist for Wired UK magazine and I'm writing a piece about the Brexit Wikipedia page. I see that you've been a really active contributor to the entry and would love to talk to you about it. Are you up for being interviewed for the piece?

You can find my email on my Twitter page if so.

Thanks, Matt Mrey445 (talk) 10:11, 15 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Mrey445: that article could be an interesting read. I was heavily involved with the Brexit page, but gave up more than a year ago because the level of bias on it proved impossible to address and the aggravation of trying to deal with that was not worthwhile. The record is in the talk pages; I recommend realising/remembering that there is no record of edits that people wanted to make but opted not to make. EddieHugh (talk) 12:51, 17 April 2019 (UTC)

Brexit Party
Please vote now now changes to page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brexit_Party#Polling_day._Vote_now!

Thanks Reaper7 (talk) 12:43, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

A syncopated barnstar for you!
Haha! Thanks: that's a new one to me. I'm wading through copyright: a photo of the sculpture in Toledo isn't possible... video? I doubt it. Audio: probably, but how to choose? 15 secs of Tea for Two virtuosity, as you hint at? 25 secs of Aunt Hagar's Blues for dissonance? But see if you can answer the talk page question that I'm about to post. EddieHugh (talk) 22:29, 28 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, I know, Mr Ten Percent doesn't really satisfy anyone, does he. But gladly there are now plenty of YT video clips with copyright compliant licenses. Whatever..... your careful improvements at that article are very much appreciated, Eddie. The man was a genius. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:37, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

Possible resource for release dates
Jazzweek.com has a directory of CD releases from the 21st century. This may come in handy. It's a list with nothing but album, musician, label, and date, so it's easy to download into a spreadsheet or other program. Vmavanti (talk) 15:27, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I'm doing a spot check to validate... so far:

Vmavanti (talk) 00:17, 18 June 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Susanne Abbuehl April they say March 2002; ECM say October 2001.
 * Susanne Abbuehl Compass they say July 2006; ECM say May 2019, so not the first issue
 * John Abercrombie Cat 'n' Mouse they say Feb 2002; ECM say Feb 2002
 * John Abercrombie Up and Coming they say Nov 2016; ECM say Jan 2017
 * Muhal Richard Abrams Streaming they say Nov 2006; Pi say Oct 2006
 * Art Ensemble of Chicago The Meeting they say Sep 2003; Pi say Aug 2003
 * Preliminary conclusion, based on 2 record labels and people beginning with 'A': I think that what Jazzweek is calling "releases" (at least in its url), is actually the first date (week) of airplay submitted to them. So, at best, it could be used to show that an album had been released by that date (assuming no promo copies, etc). Even then, it would be hedged with 'usually', because Up and Coming appears in Jan 2017 in their table, but Nov 2016 under their 'releases' list (before the ECM date). EddieHugh (talk) 16:21, 17 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Too bad. But if you go by year and leave out the month, the results are better. I thought a web site concerned with radio would be more accurate. I'll take a look. I don't know if I would use ECM's web site as the criterion for accuracy.
 * True: ECM is a bit dodgy too, as it's never clear which version of a release it's describing; I feel that it used to be better. The year/month thing can work, but not well with things issued around the end/start of a year. EddieHugh (talk) 10:19, 18 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I should clarify. ECM is mostly reliable. I thought so at first. But the more I looked, I thought they re-package and re-sell albums in a way that sometimes confuses the matter. They have their reasons, but from my point of view it's so dumb because what I want to find seems so simple but the labels make it so hard.

Boris Johnson
Hi there. In the recent edit to Boris Johnson you removed stuff about his policies in the Conservative leadership election. Everything I wrote was in the BBC News source given, under Compare the candidates' policies and careers (the interactive bit at the bottom). Will undo your edit unless any pressing objections. Andysmith248 (talk) 16:15, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * There is also a reference I should have added here . The stuff not counted in the BBC News source is in this one. Andysmith248 (talk) 16:20, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I didn't see the info in the 'click for more info' bit on the BBC page. One way of pointing it out, I think, is to use the 'at' parameter in the cite news template to direct people to what to do on the source page. As you point out, the Independent source is also required. On details: the catastrophic consequences aren't "for Conservative voter trust" according to the Ind ("consequences for voter trust in politics"), and "promised to retain the £39 billion divorce payment the UK is due to give the EU upon withdrawal" isn't an accurate summary of the BBC ("retained until there is 'greater clarity about the way forward'", and the two sources clash over the income tax proposal so it might be better to cut that bit. Thanks for the clarification on the sourcing. EddieHugh (talk) 18:20, 20 June 2019 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks for responding. I have tried to rewrite it in the way you suggested with some added info on numbers of votes. Andysmith248 (talk) 10:03, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

In reverting another edit, I may reverted something you added separately. You may want to check. GoodDay (talk) 21:26, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

Deprodding compilations
I sent this to an editor after they deprodded an article about a June Christy compilation. Let me know if you disagree with it.

"You suggested merging or redirecting when you deprodded a June Christy compilation album. It's a good idea in some cases to merge or redirect. But not here. We usually discourage including compilation albums even in the main discographies and main articles. This is because compilations are usually not significant. Particularly in pop and rock, for example, compilations are usually repetitious, as in a Best of or Greatest Hits album, and provide nothing new or significant or notable. Articles created about those albums, when they have any content, provide nothing new or significant or notable. In fact, creating an article to announce the release of a compilation album appears a lot like advertising to me. The fact is, there are many places that announce these albums, and WP is not in the business of selling or promoting. WP is not the place to go for the latest thing."

Vmavanti (talk) 17:04, 2 July 2019 (UTC) Vmavanti (talk) 18:31, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I prefer to avoid articles on compilation albums (collections of tracks from old albums definitely; I'm not bothered as much about other instances, especially if there's previously unreleased material... is that still a compilation?). So, if this one is/was collections of tracks from old albums, then it's unlikely to be worth keeping (unless it emphatically meets notability requirements); whether to redirect... maybe, but if it's just to the JC article or discography, then why bother? Having it would just encourage someone to change it to an article. That sounds like agreement... EddieHugh (talk) 18:27, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree. If new material is included, it might be worth mentioning, and there are several jazz labels that burrow through the archives, such as Resonance with Wes Montgomery. So yes, there are exceptions.

New goal: To a ten year backlog
I thought of a new goal: to reduce the Cleanup Listing to a ten year backlog. On my spreadsheet, this means resolving about 230 articles. One from 2007 (Lindy hop today—unsourced!), about ten from 2008, and the rest from 2009. Looking at that small group from 2008, I would like your opinion on a few of these. Do you think Jazz band and stride (music) are substantive? Can they be merged or deleted or neither? What about these dances (St. Louis Shag, Boogie Woogie)? I don't know anything about dance and I have almost no material on the subject. What to do about Chronological Classics complete discography? Vmavanti (talk) 17:48, 8 July 2019 (UTC)
 * I haven't done much here in the last few days; I'm thinking through the implications of this. Stride is/can be substantive. Jazz band ...is a band that plays jazz... that's an indication that the article's got no direction. It's not much more than a collection of opinions and statements of the obvious. I'd be happy to see it merged with something, but what? The discography: ideally, keep it. I could use various Penguin guides as a source for a lot of the entries, which would allow the no sources template to be removed. The dances: are they actually about jazz? I don't think they are, even taking a generous interpretation of the term. If they're not, remove them from the project, and on to the next one. EddieHugh (talk) 18:30, 8 July 2019 (UTC)

Weary Blues merge proposal
Would you give your opinion on the merge proposal for Weary Blues? Thanks. Vmavanti (talk) 12:48, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

The latest drama
Getting fired for any reason is a normal day in the 21st century. Most people I know feel that way. Granted, this is a volunteer job and things perhaps ought to be different. But maybe absence of pay is the problem. If people aren't motivated by money, they are motivated by power, which to me is often far more insidious. I would add ego as another motive force, ego in the sense Freud meant, a sense of one's self. After all I've done for WP, I still had an admin. block me very briefly until someone else had to come along and set her straight. Blocked for what? For something I said? That's stupid. Policing words is stupid. I take the traditional view that there is a clear difference between speech and action, but not everyone shares that view. WP should be less concerned with whether people are saying nice things and more concerned with solving real problems. I'm not a bureaucrat or a hall monitor. I don't aspire to dictating to others about how to live their lives. I was never the kid who ran to the teacher to tell on the other kids. I like progress. I like to get things done. Talk is cheap. Vmavanti (talk) 12:42, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
 * The drift of opinion looks like it's in the opposite direction to that. If it turns everyone into polite, non-judgemental, consensus-seeking editors who do lots to improve the content, then great. If it turns everyone into polite, non-judgemental, consensus-seeking editors who don't improve the content, then the project's in trouble. That's a big gamble. EddieHugh (talk) 18:37, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Welcome back
What persuaded you? –Vmavanti (talk) 14:24, 27 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm not back... as such. I'm still making as few additions to articles as I can, but I still follow my watchlist and so sometimes modify changes made by other editors. The Fram situation is still unresolved; things should become clearer next month. EddieHugh (talk) 18:57, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

Capri Records selective discography
I've talked to you before about removing the "selective" or "selected" from the headers and using simply discography alone. We agreed on that. We can't really allow people to choose their favorite albums, even if the choices are sourced. There is a selective discography at the Capri Records article. I don't see how we can let people choose their favorite albums from an entire label. Everyone is going to have a different opinion. But I'm always hesitant to delete or touch material that is sourced. What do you think? –Vmavanti (talk) 00:54, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
 * "Selected" is closer to "incomplete" in true meaning. I don't see it as adding anything. Being pedantic, we could argue that a source is needed for "selected", and if we know that the discography is incomplete it's probably because we know of more that could be added, in which case they should be added. EddieHugh (talk) 16:28, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

Steve Lacy
When you change redirects into disambiguation pages, please keep in mind that there are often incoming links to the redirect that need to be re-targeted. Steve Lacy has 280 incoming links which probably all need to be sent to Steve Lacy (saxophonist). Leschnei (talk) 11:25, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * I know, but I suggest alerting the editor who changed the redirect on 5 Sep. That created the problem. Is there an alternative solution to changing it back to redirecting to the saxophonist? (I'm not opposed to that if it's justified by being primary.) EddieHugh (talk) 15:47, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I didn't look through the history carefully enough. I'm not sure what the best solution is here; this might be a case where the (many) links just need to be changed. Leschnei (talk) 21:30, 15 September 2019 (UTC)
 * No problem – I probably wouldn't look through the whole history either. Changing them all is likely to be the solution; I don't know any of the other Steve Lacys, but the saxophonist probably isn't big enough to be considered WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. EddieHugh (talk) 16:16, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of Jason Moran


A tag has been placed on Jason Moran requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the article appears to be about a band or musician that does not credibly indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such articles may be deleted at any time. Please read more about what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the. Sceptre (talk) 01:28, 12 October 2019 (UTC)