Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Contemporary music task force/Archive 10

D

 * Robert Dick - I assume it should be the flautist rather than the botanist but is this the only composer named Robert Dick?  I ask only because the article is tagged (flautist) rather than (composer): I assume he is more noted for is performance than his composition?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  18:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Peter Dickinson (musician) is an orphan (this pointed to the novelist before I dabbed it, BTW). --Jubilee♫ clipman  18:50, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Oscar van Dillen - substantial article and notable enough by the looks of it, but totally unreferenced since its creation in 2004, tagged as such in 2007. --Jubilee♫ clipman  18:55, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Paul Dirmeikis - any one know enough to unstub and reference (from 2004)? --Jubilee♫ clipman  19:01, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I am working on it. I know this composer/painter/poet personally, though third-party references are proving a little tricky to find.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't find any either. If no third-party refs, wouldn't he then fail notability criteria? ♫ Cricket02  (talk) 14:59, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, but I said "tricky", not "impossible". I've not exhausted all avenues of inquiry yet. And with the recent avalanche of articles tagged for ref improvement, I'm being kept very busy.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 22:42, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Good luck with this Jerome. Very often, personal friends and acquaintances are very tricky to source.  However, it will be worth the time, either way, and very rewarding if you do establish notabiliy!  --Jubilee♫ clipman  01:21, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No probs. I've found two sources so far, which should be enough to be getting on with, though the article still needs expanding.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 06:31, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

*Salvatore Di Vittorio - apparent autobio, but actually quite good: needs decent refs. --Jubilee♫ clipman 19:04, 11 January 2010 (UTC) AfDed, see below.


 * Paul Dolden - tagged with COI concerns but I don't see that from history; not that great anyway, however. --Jubilee♫ clipman  19:08, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Avner Dorman - er... "refs see above" rings alarm bells for me... No time to thoroughly read this, of course. --Jubilee♫ clipman  19:13, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Of the above, only Peter Dickinson and possibly Avner Dorman strike me as notable, but you wouldn't necessarily guess that from the articles. Salvatore Di Vittorio is another suspect self-promotionalist with no real evidence of notability.  He has already been deleted from the Italian WP for that reason.  --Deskford (talk) 22:14, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Articles for deletion/Salvatore Di Vittorio - nominated per Deskford's astute comments above. I think Giuseppe Di Vittorio, also known under the pseudonym Nicoletti is fairly established, though the article could do with a bit of a cleanup. I wonder if it is his dad...?  --Jubilee♫ clipman  23:45, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

E is not too bad
A few mis-directs corrected and several articles to source/cite but nothing pressing. I'll try to get half way throught the alphabet tommorow, but after that I might be without any internet connection for a while as I am going to my mother's out in the sticks (North York Moors, actually...) for a few days of rest away from the city. I suspect I will give you all plenty to get on with though while I am away... --Jubilee♫ clipman 00:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Masterprize 2003
Having found the reviews of Masterprize 2003 for Nicolas Bacri, I've added the references to two of the other finalists as well: Christopher Theofanidis and Bechara El Khoury (composer). Both these articles are in need of cleanup. The remaining finalists, Arturs Maskats, Robert Henderson (composer) and Anton Plate, don't appear to have articles. --Deskford (talk) 16:10, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Deskford, I've swapped eyes (!) and it looks OKish now, as do those others. AfD stays for now though, given that most support is weak or borderline etc.  --Jubilee♫ clipman  16:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Changing tack
For now I will simply check the list from F through Z to check the links and correct/remove/unredirect as necessary. Later, I will systematically go thorugh each section (eg F-H etc) and add source/notability tags and/or PROD/AfD/Speedy as appropriate. It looks as if A-D is producing enough headaches as it is, so adding yet more near-NNs or apparent NonNotable Notables (as I called them somewhere) would be counterproductive at this point. I will warn this project (and Composers) before I go ahead with the biggie though. This is in its very essence a cross-project operation, of course, and some of these composer are actually Opera composers etc so they (at least) need to be in the loop, too. I hope all of that makes sense? --Jubilee♫ clipman 17:13, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Addendum - I am creating a list in my userspace and adding names of the worst offenders, if any one is bored...? User:Jubileeclipman/List of problematic 21st-century composer articles  --Jubilee♫ clipman  17:42, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Having said that, I cannot let Tom Flaherty go unnoticed! He is was also on List of composers for the classical guitar as a criminal, sneak thief and river pirate rather than as a composer... I have put Tom Flaherty (composer) as a redlink in both lists, now. --Jubilee♫ clipman  17:42, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe once you've made your list you should drip feed them to us at a rate we can cope with over the course of a year.... As for your pirate of the classical guitar, I think sneak thief might actually be an appropriate description for the way guitarists habitually appropriate music meant for other instruments!  --Deskford (talk) 18:11, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed (the drip feed, that is). I think John Williams  (guitarist) might take offence at your other comment...!  --Jubilee♫ clipman  18:25, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * It does make sense to change tack. Mass AfD/PRODs risk throwing out babies with bathwater. The pool of editors with the expertise and willingness to participate in AfD discussions (and rescue articles where appropriate) is relatively small, too small to do justice to more than two or three a week, at most. A badly written article, one that no one has worked on for a long time, even one that was written with COI is not per se a candidate for deletion. Using AfD to force a clean-up is pretty much frowned on. My personal view is that no one should nominate an article for AfD unless they have personally checked exhaustively for references to support notability and failed to find any. Also, suspect articles should be checked first for blatant copyvio and tagged for speedy deletion if found. It saves a time-consuming AfD. I think drip-feeding is a very good idea. There's no rush, and you want to make sure your members have time to create content too. Voceditenore (talk) 18:29, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks Voceditenore. Fortuitously, I just found There is no deadline which essentially makes the same point.  AfD should not be used to flag up articles for cleanup etc, I agree, but articles often get cleaned up anyway during the process, as now, which can only be a good thing.  I was too hasty with my first few AfDs above, indeed.
 * Anyway, I'll probably only get to J or K before my mini-Wikibreak, but my userspace list (see above) already contains a huge number of problem articles if people are looking for something to get their teeth into. --Jubilee♫ clipman  19:27, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I wonder if the Article Incubator might offer us an alternative way of dealing with some of the problem articles if we think they can be brought up to scratch with a bit of work. --Deskford (talk) 19:34, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * That process is still being finalised, though it is worth checking it out and discussing this present issue with the editors involved over there. Userfication might be a better approach: that is the way I handled Quartal and quintal harmony (though I had never heard of the specific process until now).  --Jubilee♫ clipman  19:42, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

An H I cannot ignore
I added this entry to my user-list:
 * Lou Harrison - unclear citation style using ibid and mixing Harvard-style with linked footnotes and inline external links. The inlines are pretty lacking anyway.

I think we just need to define the citation style and make sure everyone follows it. (I find it hard to spot the Harvard-style, BTW, when I flick through articles to check for inlines. However, as has been argued time and again, it is valid.)  --Jubilee♫ clipman  23:32, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Except for the parenthetical "ibids", I don't see anything that could be called parenthetical referencing. However, I do see one bare external link masquerading as a footnote, and why, oh why isn't the New Grove article on Harrison even mentioned, while relying instead on flaky sources like record-liner notes?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:56, 12 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Ibid refers back to (Miller and Lieberman 1998) at the end of the third paragraph of the Biography section I suspect. However, ibid can indeed be broken...  And yes: the actual sources are awful.  However, Hans Werner Henze isn't that brilliant, either when you look at his sourcing and citing style...  It is baffling that such big names are so poorly sourced/cited (see my list above, too, half way through Working on the list...).  --Jubilee♫ clipman  00:05, 13 January 2010 (UTC)


 * There is also an inline EL like this:  I have expanded my commentry to reflect this fact. --Jubilee♫ clipman  01:49, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Michael Carnes
There has been considerable work done on this article since it was listed at Articles for deletion/Michael Carnes (where there had been some confusion as to his identity). Could members who opined early in the discussion please take a look at the revised article. Voceditenore (talk) 09:31, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Withdrawn. Good work, Voceditenore and Cricket!  --Jubilee♫ clipman  13:31, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm still not entirely convinced of his notability, but the AfD has been withdrawn, so perhaps I'm just in a mean-spirited mood today. Anyway, to demonstrate good faith I've put in two references to the sources that were already quoted.  After reading the sources I'm starting to think I could maybe have accepted the Composers in Red Sneakers as notable, but they don't have a group article.  With regards confusion over his identity, his website describes him as Composer, Photography, Engineer &mdash; do I take it he is not the writer of the two films that come up (Mr. Woodcock and Furry Vengeance) when you click What links here on his page?  --Deskford (talk) 22:19, 13 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Deskford here and I've put a note on the Afd, basically asking which refs are supposed to establish his notability. -- Klein zach  06:00, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No, he is definitely not this Michael Carnes. The links in Mr. Woodcock and Furry Vengeance are mislinks as often happens on WP. I've just put a detailed explanation on the AfD page about the various sources used in the article and why they all refer to the composer. Whether other editors consider him notable enough, given what has been established about him and his works is a separate issue. I am reluctant to further expand the article until a definite decision is made to keep it. If the decision is delete, I'll archive the material in my userspace for anyone who wants to write an article about the Composers in Red Sneakers collective. Voceditenore (talk) 07:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Voceditenore: Why not just go ahead and do the article on Composers in Red Sneakers? You've obviously done the research. Jubileeclipman and Deskford are doing a great job cleaning up a very large set of neglected articles. We should let them get on with the job and not get bogged down with little details. -- Klein zach  08:17, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Apologies. I wasn't aware that participating in an AfD started by Jubileeclipman would be "bogging him down in details". The stated goal of those AfDs was to get the articles referenced/improved to the point where a more accurate judgement could be made about their notability, which I and another editor did. I have no problem if the consensus is to still to delete some of them, but at least it will done on an informed basis. I have some of the material needed to create Composers in Red Sneakers, but not enough to do it justice, nor do I have enough time to create a decent article by myself at this point. I have however, addressed several of the problems listed here. For now, I'll leave the rest of you to get on with it and will definitely avoid future AfDs from this project, unless they are opera-related. Voceditenore (talk) 08:45, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
 * No apologies needed! Your source finding skills are much admired. (Perhaps you would like to write a referencing guide for the WP:CM projects?) However my view remains that substandard, unusable articles diminish the encyclopedia. They require quick attention, and they shouldn't be handled exclusively in terms of future potential. The actual state of the articles now has to be addressed. -- Klein zach  09:38, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Joel Rust
I've just stumbled across this article on a composer of doubtful notability. His only claim to fame seems to be that he won a BBC/Guardian competition for young composers, and the only references quoted are from the BBC and the Guardian. The article seems to have been created by one of his fellow finalists in the competition (she also created an article on herself, but that seems to have gone down the speedy delete route).

Joel Rust has already survived PROD and AfD &mdash; see Articles for deletion/Joel Rust. The outcome of the AfD was keep, citing WP:HEY, but in the subsequent two years it doesn't seem to have had any WP:HEY work done to it. As far as I can tell from a quick web trawl, Joel Rust has meanwhile become keyboardist with an indie rock band with an inactive MySpace page.

Thoughts, anyone? --Deskford (talk) 14:10, 14 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Afd again? Based on the information you have given I don't think the article is viable. -- Klein zach  06:52, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Joel Rust
Re-nominated at Articles for deletion/Joel Rust (2nd nomination) as per above.

I was a little cautious about creating another composer AfD discussion, as a number of users have raised legitimate concerns about excessive use of AfD to force article improvement. (I have mixed feelings on that issue: I can see that it's not really the way AfD is supposed to be used, but it can result in cleanup of articles that in some cases have been sitting for years with maintenance tags on them.)

However, in this case I believe the subject not to be notable at this stage in his career.

--Deskford (talk) 15:39, 15 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You obviously checked this one out before nominating it so I think it's fine. No problem. -- Klein zach  15:46, 16 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I have spent hours on this and have left a detailed analysis over at the AfD. It is incredible that it has survived so long, actually...  --Jubilee♫ clipman  22:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * ...but no longer than today, in fact. Well spotted Deskford.  --Jubilee♫ clipman  04:15, 23 January 2010 (UTC)