Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 10

Establishing Heading Formats for Symphonies
Fellow editors, for some time now the editors who have been collaboratively establishing the cycle on Haydn Symphonies have been using a standard taxa in the subheadings of these articles. A good example can be found at Symphony No. 73 (Haydn). However, these headings have recently been removed by several editors, who have suggested they are cumbersome. Moreover they note that the generic labels for Haydn Symphonies do not work for those of, say, Bruckner, Ives or perhaps Myaskovsky. DavidRF and myself have been using this format specifically for Haydn symphonies, however, for quite some time and when we established the convention (as I see it, David may wish to correct me), they were derived from the standard information available for each symphony from the canonical - i.e. HCRL - source. However, it may be germane to reconsider the question in light of their removal and therefore I would ask that other editors who may have an interest to weigh in. Really, as I see it, we need to determine if a single taxa will work across the body of all symphonic work, or if we should establish some kind of sub-convention as has been the practice until now with the Haydn Symphonies (and some others). I would personally argue for their retention within the corpus of Haydn symphonic articles but am interested in hearing other views, of course. Eusebeus (talk) 23:50, 24 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Um, what exactly do you mean? The subheading like "Date of composition and scoring" and "movements"? Certainly, as the ultimate goal of any WP article is for it to be featured, then the headings would eventually need to be there in some form or another, and there's no reason to remove them per se. If this isn't it, then can you expand? Also, where's the discussion on all this mostly going on? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 00:18, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * In general I'm not in favour of standardizing section headings (if that's what is meant) within large groups of articles - I think it's better to retain some flexibility. However there are capitalization problems (see Template:HaydnSymphonies). Perhaps this would be an opportunity to adopt the Grove/Oxford capitalization rules as used by the Opera Project (explained here)? -- Klein zach  01:23, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * What's the Grove/Oxford style for French and Latin? The link you provided only does Italian and German.DavidRF (talk) 01:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually it does include French - which is similar to Italian - but not Latin which the Opera Project doesn't normally need. Do you have access to the Music Grove? Unfortunately I don't. Latin may be tricky because it was originally in all caps - the Romans didn't have lower case. -- Klein zach  01:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * OK. Missed the French.  Huh.  So, the Grove style would be Le matin, Le midi, Le soir, La passione, La chasse, La reine (La Reine if its specific?)... These types of things aren't worth fighting about in my opinion, but some of those would take some getting used to.DavidRF (talk) 03:26, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Editing - like life - is much easier if you have a system in place. (Yes - Le matin, Le midi, Le soir, La passione, La chasse, La reine would be correct according to the standard style.) It's worth noting that book publishers get these things right - but recording companies often don't. -- Klein zach  03:35, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Huh? I had a system, but it apparently wasn't the one agreed upon.  This will be easier to adjust to than those ridiculous hyphens between the key-letter and  "flat"/"sharp" that people felt strongly enough about to touch countless articles yet never established any basis for this preference... but these trivial things aren't worth fighting about, so whatever.  I digress.  :)   I left La Reine because that might be referring to Marie Antoinette and just any old queen.  Also as a sanity check, La passione has nothing to do with the crucifixion or else it would be capitalized.DavidRF (talk) 04:19, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

We currently have La reine de Chypre, La reine de Saba, and I see the Symphony No. 85 (Haydn) has both Queen and queen in the text - but what I'm suggesting is a project guideline, not case by case discussions which can be a bit tedious, as you've noted (Huh! Huh? etc). -- Klein zach  05:24, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We seem to have strayed slightly, although I agree with Kleinzach's general point - we should follow the naming convention (thanks to David for making the changes). My question, however, is whether we should continue to use a standardised heading/sub-heading convention across the corpus of Haydn Symphony articles. I say for organisational purposes that we should. OTOH, I defined the convention, so I have a bias. Eusebeus (talk) 18:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * The problem I have with these headings is that they are excessively mechanical. For the stubs, they make the article look like a robot looked at a database and thoughtlessly grabbed the information and plopped it down. In that case it would make more sense to just have a database rather than trying to write an encyclopedia. Horn of Plenty (talk) 19:52, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. They provide a standardised framework for discussing the material on an ongoing basis. Although many of the Haydn articles are currently rather thin on content, that is no reason to strip their organisational structure. Moreover, might I ask that when you add in references like this one that you consider what, exactly, they bring to the article. That article is currently sourced with four references that are a blend of peer-reviewed material in leading journals, the standard reference (Harrison) and HCRL - the canonical source for Haydn symphonies. W Lister, The First Performance of Haydn's ‘Paris’ Symphonies, Eighteenth-Century Music (2004), 1: 289-300 H.C. Robbins Landon, The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn. (London: Universal Edition and Rockliff, 1955) Bernard Harrison, Haydn: The "Paris" Symphonies (Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 101 Emanuel Winternitz, Bagpipes and Hurdy-Gurdies in Their Social Setting, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New Series, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Summer, 1943), pp. 56-83 The source of the nickname "L'ours" has been amply sourced as it stands and I see little need to confuse the issue with a well-intentioned, but unrigorous, largely ambiguous explication more suitable to blithe programme note writing than a serious encyclopedic treatment. I mention this here to see if anyone else has a thought about this issue of references. Eusebeus (talk) 20:15, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Starting another tangent here. :)  I'm flexible, but I like the sections.  The section names should be revisited, though.  As User:Anton Mravcek mentioned on another page of this discussion its fairly odd to connect the "Date of Composition" with "Scoring".  I suspect that was an earlier attempt to merge stubbed sections.  It makes much more sense to merge "Scoring" (or "Instrumentation") with "Movements"... maybe title it "Music" (or something better or leave it as "Movements") and lead off with the one sentence list of instruments before the movement list followed by discussion.  The "Date of Composition" is really the "Background" and for shorter articles it could be merged with the "Nickname" or even merged into the top section for even stubbier articles.DavidRF (talk) 20:46, 25 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair points, all. I can no longer recall why I lumped Date of Composition with Scoring. I would certainly support a reform of the headings, but their outright extirpation is unnecessary. I will copy my reference guff to the talk page of 82. Sorry for the distraction, but we might as well get our group to weigh in. Eusebeus (talk) 20:50, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you might be way too close to this. No one is advocating the "outright extirpation" of headings. What there needs to happen is a flexible case-by-case review instead of a straitjacket conformity enforcement carried out by someone who takes any edits as comments on their own knowledgeability of a topic. Anton Mravcek (talk) 22:43, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Some of the edits done have simply removed the headers and made no other changes. Sometimes batches of 5-6 symphonies are done in edits like these.  So, I can see how one could feel this way.  While, I agree we don't need tons of sections in stub-articles, a cursory review of any merged sections should be done to make sure that the information is not randomly ordered in the new section. (I'm thinking about the Clock case where the nickname description ended up way down at the bottom).  Personally, I think "Movements" should always stay and we can put the instrumentation in there as well.  Newer Mozart stubs are doing it this way (see Symphony No. 15 (Mozart))  The rest of the sections can disappear for stubs and be included for larger articles (and added back as stubs grow).  My two cents.DavidRF (talk) 00:57, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * My two cents are that sections should not be too short; we should wait until the article has a certain length before adding section headings.


 * On another note, Eusebeus, please don't address us as "Gentlemen"; some of us are ladies. Thanks very much, yours truly,  Opus33 (talk) 06:30, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I regret that my comments above have been taken User:Anton Mravcek as anything beyond a standard application of WP:BRD, which attains to any set of mass edits without explanation on any article in mainspace. And I note that the editor in question (Horn of Plenty) did appear to be setting out to extirpate the subheadings categorically. I may have misinterpreted, but it seems a reasonable conclusion - insinuations of ownership are thus unnecessary. (I have amended my salutation per Opus 33.) Eusebeus (talk) 16:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Did I ever remove a References heading? Did I ever remove headings from a long article? Horn of Plenty (talk) 22:25, 27 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Suppose I posted a musical example for piccolo, only I transposed it down a few octaves plus some random interval and set it in tenor clef. Then User A replaces my example with the same melody but written in treble clef with a few ledger lines, and I angrily tell him, "You were wrong to do that, because my way of doing this was approved by a concensus [I 'neglect' to mention it was just four people] three years ago and this is the right way to do it no matter what!" Who in their right mind would side with me? Next, User B comes along and replaces the example with one in treble clef but with a 15ma indication instead of ledger lines. The disagreement between A and B would me more nuanced than the one between A and I. But maybe A would concede there are cases where it makes sense to use tenor clef for music examples. One has to take into account normal usage and usual context. The tenor clef is normally used for instruments whose compass does not comfortably lie within either the treble or bass clef. It is also occasionally used for bass instruments venturing into their higher compass for the occasional solo. The usual context of the tenor clef is in music for professional players. Amateur players would rather deal with a bunch of ledger lines above the bass clef than an unfamiliar clef. Even some professional players are willing to re-examine old traditions and ditch them if they no longer serve any useful purpose (or in some cases, maybe they never did, e.g., rules for transposing instruments written in bass clef which are normally written in treble clef).


 * So what is the usage and context of headings? They are used to break up large blocks of text into more manageable chunks according to logical, innate divisions of the material, and they're also used to help skimmers find the content they're looking for quickly and efficiently. The context is nonfiction. If headings are placed in a way that makes the reader wonder if the headings were chosen randomly, or simply carried over from a similar piece, or mislead the reader as to how the sections overlap, then headings are counterproductive. But if the reader feels that the headings help him/her focus on precisely what he/she wanted to know and give him/her the option of ignoring what he/she might enjoy learning but doesn't have the time to read carefully, then headings are useful.


 * We need to look at each heading one by one and ask ourselves if it really serves any useful purpose or if it's some old tradition better chucked by the wayside. Del arte (talk) 20:27, 26 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Date of composition and scoring. In some cases this grouping is not as nonsensical as it might seem; knowing the exact date might help clear up some questions about the scoring, and there might be tons of scholarly research looking at watermarks, type of ink, etc. In other cases, we know the exact date and we know that what instruments he had available. In those cases, clumping these two things together is of no help to a skimmer; the skimmer looking for the date of composition is better served by the simple act of writing the year as four digits, while the skimmer looking for instrumentation data is better served by the simple act of using numerals for the number of instruments (e.g., "piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, ..."). So this heading is useful... sometimes.
 * Movements. If the article has a detailed overview of each of the movements, this heading might absolutely make sense. But not everyone here wants to write these articles fully born on the first draft. Some of these might stay as stubs for a long time. In those cases, this heading merely takes up space in two nearby positions (the TOC and its actual place). What about two- or even one-movement Symphonies (e.g., Sibelius No. 7, Simpson No. 9, a few middle-period works by Havergal Brian)? So this heading is useful... sometimes.
 * Analysis. I sometimes see this one used where others might use "Movements."
 * Description. Ditto this one.
 * Form. Ditto.
 * If we must have conformistically uniform headings for all these articles that are longer than stubs (and I'm still not convinced that we do), then let's pick one that will seem sensible for every conceivable case. Form, Description or Analysis will work better than Movements, imho. Horn of Plenty (talk) 22:25, 27 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Nickname. Granted that I haven't seen this heading used when it doesn't apply. Still, except when there is lots of mythology and research surrounding a nickname, this is a heading that merely heads a single sentence (e.g., "In Sweden it's called the "Swan" Symphony). So this heading is useful... sometimes.
 * Reception. For the more popular pieces with a long and complicated history of reception, this heading is necessary. Not so much for pieces that were influential to other composers but were otherwise forgotten until now. So this heading is useful... sometimes.
 * Discography. Generally, 18th Century composers don't have any say on how their music is packaged in 20th or 21st Century discs, so this topic represents a very logical and innate division of material. Still, there might be cases when there is some overlap (e.g., a record label decides to package a group of pieces in the same way the composer wanted to). For one of those influential but till-now forgotten pieces which have only been recorded once, it might not make sense to have a discography section. So this heading is useful... sometimes.
 * Notes. Usually used for footnotes, though sometimes this is just placed in "References." To this one I say: OK, whatever.
 * References. Ideally, every Wikipedia article should have references (and not just scholarly references, let's not ignore the value of popularizers' writings). Besides, it enables the skimming tagger to quickly verify that yea, this article does have references. Find another article to pick on. So this heading should always exist.
 * External links. With concerns about spam, we need to be so selective about what kinds of external links are allowed that in some cases no external links are allowed whatsoever. A heading for an empty section is pointless.

In conclusion, only the "References" heading can be completely justified in every scenario. The others should be applied thoughtfully on a case-by-case basis in a way that reveals the logic of the material clearly without distracting the reader by drawing unwarranted attention to themselves.

Music Project proposals
I've posted about the future direction of our Music Project 'parent' here. It's relevant to this project because it involves a decision about whether or not a Music Project banner goes on all music article talk pages (and other things). I'd be grateful for opinions/comments. Thanks and regards. -- Klein zach  09:16, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Marc Geelhoed
When are music journalists notable? When are blogggers notable? Would anyone like to express a view on this article? -- Klein zach  05:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have intuitions about "sufficient for inclusion" criteria; harder to judge on the "necessary for inclusion" side.


 * Sufficient: the subject works full-time for a major outlet, such as The New Yorker a big metropolitan daily newspaper, or a major broadcast outlet such as the BBC.  I think these people tend to have a lot of influence and should get into WP for free.


 * Necessary: for bloggers, I'd want to see lots of evidence that they're cited and influential.  Perhaps use Google for "what links here"?  If they're not widely cited, we should delete them from WP.


 * FWIW, my intuition is that Marc Geelhoed ought to be removed unless more evidence emerges that he is truly influential. Regards, Opus33 (talk) 17:17, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I've put it up for deletion. It's an old article - dates back to 2005. -- Klein zach  22:24, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The prod was removed so this is now at Afd, see here. -- Klein zach  02:21, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Assessments
The assessments page for this project says to only use Stub,GA, and FA to evaluate articles in this project. In scanning through some of the unassessed articles, I've seen plenty that would merit Start, C, or even B ratings on the standard assessment scale.

Is there a reason why these shouldn't be used? Magicpiano (talk) 16:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * From what I recall, there wasn't much interest in spending too much time classifying and reclassifying the articles. The finer-grained ratings require a system of constant article review and I'm not sure we have the available editor-hours for that. DavidRF (talk) 17:12, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I can understand both the lack of desire to rate, and the lack of hours to do so. Since I'm pretty new here, the lack of rating makes it somewhat difficult for me figure out how and where my peculiar background and talents can be applied in a reasonably focussed way.  It seems to me that if there's a goal in this project to have more GA/FA articles than there currently are, rating needs to happen within the project (i.e. before the outside review of GA occurs).  Judging from some of the unassessed articles, there are probably a non-trivial fraction that aren't too far away from GA, but since I'm new here, I don't want to go about proposing articles for that status just yet, I'd rather tag articles that appear to be better than stub-class as just that, and let more experienced editors in this project drive them toward the GA process.


 * Is there (or should there be) a way (within the scope of this project) to propose articles that either (1) appear to be near GA status, possibly excepting a few things, or (2) should be raised to GA status because the subject matter is deemed to be important. Should there be a consensus list of "important" works/ensembles/composers/performers/performance spaces that should be examined preferentially for elevation?  (At the risk of starting religious wars I could probably come up with some lists as starting points.)
 * Magicpiano (talk) 21:29, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * As you will see from the top of the page ('Banner bot run now finished'), I've been working for several months on the bannering of Classical Music articles (and those of related projects), Bannering creates a full list of articles (see Category:WikiProject Classical music articles). We now have about 9,300. The next stage is to use a bot to automatically classify stub articles on the basis of the presence of stub templates on article pages. All the bot owners we use have been on holiday so this has been delayed for a few weeks but I hope we will be able to get it done soon.


 * After that we will need to discuss where to go next, considering the large number of articles and the very few editors currently involved. We will need an assessment scale (see for example the Opera one here). The present banner is 'assessment enabled' so classes can be manually added on an individual basis if the project agrees - and there are other bot-driven options. I'd stress however that this is all far from trivial and we need a full discussion here and some expression of real interest before we go further. (Ideally we'd need a team of three dedicated assessors to work on the articles. . . .) Best regards. -- Klein zach  22:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for giving me a snapshot of what's going on. I'll try to keep track and contribute where and when I can.Magicpiano (talk) 15:30, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Good. If you have time, perhaps you might like to draft a customized assessment scale? That would also be a good way of getting to know the problems involved. -- Klein zach  00:20, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll start applying some brain cells to it.Magicpiano (talk) 13:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Questioning the value of assessments
I generally question the value of these assessments. So we end up with a bunch of articles labelled "stub, start, C, B". Now what? Nothing has changed. The articles are assessed without discourse by adding a variable: no review, no commentary. It's not really how a wiki, or a scholarly project of any sort, should work. Finally, the people who did work on an article have their work reduced to a drive-by "letter" that they may find offensive (I've been there, and seen it). These grades, by themselves, are subjective and useless. I'd strongly encourage Magicpiano and others to work instead on classical music content: that's what will make the articles "good", and perhaps "good articles", and perhaps even "featured articles". Those two levels are at least processes—they are "ratings" that involve some community review and interaction with the article writer. Don't worry about not being an expert or a good enough writer; any effort on an article is more valuable than this "assessment" stuff. Whiskeydog (talk) 01:22, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think I can relate to what Whiskeydog is saying. If someone comes along and puts a "C" grade banner on something you've done, without providing any sort of comment -- well, they've done their little bit to keep you from having a nice day, but what else has been accomplished?  So I would only want to have assessment if it were made obligatory (somehow) to include comments and suggestions for improvement.  Opus33 (talk) 05:47, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have this page on my Watchlist, even thought I'm not a project member, so please forgive me butting in! I work on the 1.0 project that set up the assessment scheme.  The main purpose of assessment is to allow you to see where the weaknesses are in your subject area.  If Bach and Mozart are A or B, but Beethoven is Start, you know what to work on.  If you use the bot's output, you can keep track of what articles you have.  There are various options for how to use the system:
 * Leave everything unassessed (except perhaps Stubs, GAs and FAs), and just use the bot to track raw numbers of articles, etc. This would be unusual - most projects want information more fine-grained than that - but it's do-able.
 * If you want a little more information, then you can just use Stub-Start-B-A (and GA/FA). A few projects still use this system, without the new C-Class, and it will allow you to separate the nice (B) articles from the general mass of articles that are Start or Stub; the Bs are good starting points if you are trying to write more GAs or FAs.
 * Or you could use the full system, including C-Class, which many projects seem to like.


 * While it's true in theory that everyone should be writing content, in practice some people lack good writing skills, or maybe they just enjoy assessing!. So I would argue that if people want to assess, let them; if they want to write content, let them do that.  We've seen surprisingly few problems with people getting upset about these quality assessments; in contrast, the importance assessments have been much more problematical in certain subject areas (e.g. Military History, which doesn't use importance).


 * The end result for the 1.0 project is a list like this (which is only from a test run in March); you can see how we used the data from the WikiProjects to compile this selection. A modified version of this script will be used very soon to generate our selection for this fall's DVD release.  Anyway - do whatever is best for your project! Walkerma (talk) 08:24, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * My position on this is somewhere between Whiskeydog and Opus33 on the one hand and 1.0 project on the other. I don't like assessments and in particular I don't like the 1.0 project ones, if I had to design a publishing system with quality control (which I think is necessary) I would use something quite different. Having said that we have to recognize WP realities. The 1.0 project is well established and few editors are going to attempt to change it.


 * If a project decides not to do assessments then there is a danger that another group of editors will step in and do it for them. This is what happened with all the musical/opera biographies. The Biography Project Musicians group ran a bot through 50,000 articles (10 percent of the Biography 'Mega' Project total) and have since organized a group of editors with no apparent interest or knowledge of the subject to do instant, nominal ratings (ongoing now).


 * My view is that assessments are a necessary evil. Of course they should be proper written ratings, not nominal 20-second assessments (see for example the kind of assessments we did on the Wagner Project, as on Lohengrin). Either a project decides to banner articles within its scope, standardizes them as appropriate, writes guidelines to cover particular local editorial problems, invites peer reviewing (involving assessments) - or it can decide to opt out. If it does opt out it will be disempowered, and other groups will take control.


 * As a result of the last bot run (see early discussions for details) we know there are 9,300 articles under the scope of this project which are not being looked after by the other classical music-related projects (Composers, Contemporary Music, Opera and the Opera descendants). Having now seen many of these articles in the course of preparing the bot run, I can say that the standard is much lower than that of the other projects. There is a strong contrast between Opera, for example, where actual project members are involved in editing (though obviously not creating) all the articles, and Classical Music, where most of the articles have been written and edited by people who probably don't even know the project exists.


 * So my recommendation is to go ahead with assessments - albeit in a slow, stage by stage, well-organized, deliberate way. -- Klein zach  09:29, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * In starting this discussion, I never intended to suggest that contributors should drop everything they're doing and start assessing articles (echoing Walkerma's observation that not everyone is cut out for every task), or that (IMHO) assessments must be done. (I like Kleinzach's approach that assessments ought to be done in some sort of managed way.)  I also imagine that those who really don't like assessments are free to ignore them.  I agree with Opus33 that doing an assessment (especially those that are higher on the scale) ought to require a non-trivial effort on the part of the reviewer that should include feedback in the form of article-improvement suggestions.


 * Since I'm new here and would like to contribute high-quality material, I'm trying to figure out what constitutes a high-quality classical music article. I thought that looking at existing high-quality content, and an assessment scale, would help me do that.  There is high-quality content already present in this project -- it's mostly luck of the draw to find it at the moment.  The project itself has no real assessment scale, or useful guidelines (beyond the generic GA guidelines) on producing articles that have high-quality content or layout.  The guidelines in WikiProject_Classical_music/Compositions_task_force are good start, but they don't really even give me a good idea of what words to use in the section headings -- a subject that I'm sure there have already been wars over.  Considering that the high-quality articles I've come across differ on some of these things, I came here for help. Magicpiano (talk) 13:26, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * For myself, I have never made a single contribution that was in any way remotely influenced by the assessed status of an article and I strongly suspect I may not be alone. Assessments, while entirely harmless, are a mere bureaucratic undertaking that produce, as best as I can fathom, no tangible consequence. It's fine if we wish to go ahead and grade articles on the 1.0 system - one's as good as another; I don't see it changing existing editing patterns and leading to a systematic improvement of articles. Kleinzach's earlier suggestion of thematic content division under the Classical Music umbrella would be a better place to start since then we could at least iterate criteria germane to individual subject areas (like the Opera project has currently in place). Eusebeus (talk) 17:48, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * While I sympathize - for example I'd barely distinguish between class B and class C - I am influenced by stub indicators. These alert me to sub-standard articles etc. -- Klein zach  08:51, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Responding to some of the points above... there are two inefficiencies in writing a review on the talk page along with your assessment. The first is that you likely are not addressing anyone. The second is that, if you're capable of review, many of the things you'll note in that review you could instead apply directly to the article: you don't have to be a content expert to structure the article better, fix grammar and spelling, improve layout and style issues. My second point is that, as Kleinzach notes, the assessment grading system is suboptimal. What "article graders" look for are a number of items that they can quickly note the presence or absence of. Most of the assessment grades don't require reading the article, because an eyeballing tells you where it fits in the system. The assessment factors are quite orthogonal, leading to absurdities such as when a reasonably comprehensive, well-written article is graded "start" or "C" because "it doesn't have enough citations". The point, then, is that assessment is not a proxy for the reader's experience of an article. It's largely an internal game played by editors. (In times past, I have assessed articles. I wanted all the Noble Prize-winning scientists to have a grade. If the article wasn't too long, I called it "start". If it was a couple of screen lengths, I called it "B". Those were the only options; very little to nothing is "teased out" out of a one-dimension grade.) Finally, on the point that some editors "like to" assess articles, it begs the question. Some editors like to vandalize, but we don't consider that a constructive way to edit. Whiskeydog (talk) 00:20, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with a lot of what you are saying, but I think it applies much more to low level assessment (stub/start/C) than the higher level (B/A/GA/FA). Peer review - which is hardly something invented by WP - can be very effective. For example we have just seen a successful review process on List of operas by Mozart (see here). -- Klein zach  13:52, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I hear you on the issues with the assessment categories. It's something that I picked up on right away, because a fair number of articles in this project seem to have cites but lacking in other aspects, like historical background or critical analysis, which (as you point out) appears at odds with a narrow reading of 1.0 assessment guidelines.  (Sometimes the cite is just the liner of a recording the writer used to populate the article.)  I'm beginning to think a more useful assessment outlines everything that describes a GA or A-class article, and assigns grades in between that and Stub based on how many of (and/or how well) those things are filled in the article (basically loosening some of the language of the standard assessments on specific things like cites, and adding language on how much or how well).
 * I do take issue with your inefficiency points. 1. On addressing nobody: you are addressing any future contributor.  (To me, this is just like leaving edit summaries and notes on talk pages about your edits.  I have no way of knowing if previous contributors are paying attention anymore.)  2. On the idea that a reviewer can necessarily apply changes to the article: matters of structure and prose, sure.  But: I'm not an expert on Stravinsky, but I could probably determine if the article on Rite of Spring needed cites, or a more robust historical background section (to name two examples that come immediately to mind), without being able to actually provide either at the time (if ever). Magicpiano (talk) 12:46, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

As an addendum to my argument, I'd like to point out the 'featured article review' now in progress for sculptor Henry Moore. The 'nominator' suggests that the article is not featured-quality and instead suggests 'C class'. Remember, 'C' is the newest 'grade'; it's below 'B', and above 'Start', meaning that what was once considered a featured article is, according to this person, now two levels below a 'Good Article' (which is two levels below a 'Featured Article'). Can you see how silly this is? Does this grading ("useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study") have any correlation with the merit of the article? Is the reader unfulfilled by this Henry Moore? To the extent that the nominator is quoting 'C' to make a 'point', we see how explicitly unproductive these grades are. There's no one around to defend this particular article during its 'review', but you can imagine the effect these statements have on volunteers who create content for wikipedia. Perhaps that's why there's no one around to defend it.

I'd like to think that the classical music wikiproject (and I'm invoking the stuffy and scholarly stereotypes about c.m. here) could be a haven from this absurdity. Sure, somebody who probably isn't involved in this project modified its talk-page template so that the template would accept one of these 'grades', but nobody has to fill them in. Neither has anyone, ceteris paribus, any authority to keep a 'stub-start-C-B' in place once it is filled in. I don't begrudge the need to identity the better-quality articles (for official releases of Wikipedia in other formats, among other purposes), but the low-end stub-start-C-B business—which really is the 'system' we're talking about here, because the other grades come about by different means—well, it's ineffectual, controversial, and not in keeping with the spirit of Wikipedia. I harangue against it because the more naive technocrats who like to push buttons are, with this system, disturbing the human resources of this project. Whiskeydog (talk) 07:38, 17 August 2008 (UTC)