Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Archive 22

Infoboxes, again!
I wonder if Hyacinth would like to explain about the infoboxes he has added to Luciano Berio and Philip Glass, the edits he has made to Template:Infobox Musical artist and Template:Infobox Musical artist/doc  and the changes he has made to the project page here ? A discussion would be preferable to a point blitz. -- Klein zach  01:42, 16 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Regarding this project page an explanation is preferable to bald assertion. Hyacinth (talk) 03:31, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

IP vandalism: time to protect the main articles?
How many of our articles are vandalized each day? An average of 10 or a dozen, or more? Famous composers seem to be an attractive target. How many worthwhile edits do we have from anonymous IPs each day? Very few, I think. So I'm wondering if it's time for us to think about protecting the top 15 or 20 articles here: Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven. . . etc etc. What do other people think? -- Klein zach  02:20, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I follow, e.g. Mendelssohn and Wagner, which seem to get hit several times a week by vandals - but there are also constructive edits from time to time by both registered and anonymous editors. It would be a pity to make them appear 'no-go' areas, ring-fenced for the elite.--Smerus (talk) 05:26, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * PS while on the topic of main articles, see this, on the Opera project site.--Smerus (talk) 05:30, 21 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Full disclosure, I'm watching about 65 composers' pages. -- Klein zach  09:14, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * so when do you get time to eat or go to the bathroom? :-}  --Smerus (talk) 18:40, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a dwarf thing. But perhaps you've got the right approach. Maybe I should sign off 63 composers and become a vandal-hugger. . . . -- Klein zach  05:03, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * yeah, just take a break an accept life.....by the way if you want to pass some time here in Kyiv, I am arranging two recitals here in June by Jonathan Powell in June - Alkan, Ives, Finnissy, Bax, Rachmaninoff.....should clear the intellectual sinuses...--Smerus (talk) 08:52, 22 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Right. I've taken a couple of dozen composers off my watch list including the higher-profile Bach, Debussy, Delibes, Handel, Haydn , Hindemith, Mendelssohn, Purcell, Saint-Saëns, Schoenberg, Smetana, and Vivaldi. Perhaps someone more sympathetic to WP policies on anonymous IP editing can watch over them?-- Klein  zach  02:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Question: Infoboxes / headline hierarchies
Just having a look at some articles in the scope of this project, and was wondering whether it was still the case that project members discourage the use of infoboxes? The last listed discussion was two years ago; Wikipedia's changed a lot in that time. Anyhow, just checking, no need to start an argument about it. - Jarry1250 (t, c) 09:00, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * please, no infoboxes!--Smerus (talk) 09:42, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Not ALL project members. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 11:16, 23 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, please no biographical infoboxes. -- Klein zach  23:10, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

Jarry1250 owns LivingBot which makes style changes to articles. There is currently a discussion about the use of his bot to change headline hierarchies ( ==H2==, ===H3=== etc.) at Village pump (miscellaneous), see here.-- Klein zach  00:21, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Featured sounds needs YOU!
Interested in listening to some beautiful music? Want to close your eyes and travel history and time? Featured sound candidates is for you! Whether you want to simply review the proposals of others, or to search Commons' extensive collection of music to find something by your favourite (public domain) composers, featured sounds can use your help.

Come and join us today!Shoemaker&#39;s Holiday (talk) 11:42, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia composers: vital articles
FYI: the following have been designated as the Vital articles for composers and musicians:

Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Louis Armstrong, Igor Stravinsky, Elvis Presley, The Beatles

-- Klein zach  23:29, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

GA Reassessment of Egardus
I have done a GA Reassessment of the Egardus article as part of the GA Sweeps project. I have found the article to not meet the GA Criteria. As such I have put it on hold for one week pending improvement. I am notifying all interested projects and editors of the possibility that this article will be delisted from GA if work is not done to bring it up to GA standards. If you have any questions please contact me on my talk page. My review can be found here. H1nkles (talk) 02:19, 4 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I have answered you there. Sorry it's a rant, but it's what I think. Antandrus  (talk) 04:37, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Liszt project proposal
See WikiProject Council/Proposals/Franz Liszt. -- Klein zach  11:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Please say what you think of this proposal on the page linked above.  Ross Rhodes (  T   C  ) Sign!  15:51, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

'Listas' and 'nesting' parameters/Biography project
Hi! I took a short break from my major obsession, cleaning up the Category:Biography articles without listas parameter, I noticed the attack on WP Biog that was made by a couple of members of this group. Because there were such differences among the number of articles in this project I found your list of articles and found two things. I have been working on since early this year and I know that the listas parameter in the Biog banner works advertised when the banner is the only one on the page or if any other banner I have seen is on the page. Could there be a problem with this project's banner?
 * The number is much closer to 4,000 than to 5,000 as was claimed by the attackers.
 * Almost all the names are sorted incorrectly!

I have asked a banner guru I know to look at the situation but he won't be back until later in the week. By the way, the nested parameter was never needed by WPB and is no longer needed by WPBS. Also, the consensus is that WPBS is not to be used where there are less than three banners on the page and not to be collapsed or converted to WPB unless there are more than five banners on the page. JimCubb (talk) 22:08, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * AFAIK the 'Listas' parameter is only used by the Biography project. What is the logic of having two systems coexisting? I realize that 'Listas' attempts to correct the way the software works (which lists by article title i.e. John Smith (footballer) under J rather than S), but is it really helpful? Disclaimer: I don't have strong feelings about this. More a matter of scepticism. I'm wondering if it would it be better to correct this comprehensively, once and for all at the software level?


 * "The number is much closer to 4,000 than to 5,000 as was claimed by the attackers." Attackers? (I think critics might have been a better word to use.) Anyway you can get the correct figure (which apparently is 4,388) at Category:WikiProject Composers articles. 5,000 was given as a round, 'ballpark' figure — not used as assault weapon!


 * Thank you for your instructions regarding nesting. No doubt this project can ask one of its regular bot operators to clear up the old coding. -- Klein zach  22:55, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

The listas parameter determines how a talk page is sorted in a category, even in the Category:WikiProject Composers articles that I erroneously called a list in my third line. As I noted I have asked a banner guru to look at the problem with the order in which pages appear in your articles' category. There are a couple of places which address the proper listing of pages (and I can't remember where they are). There is no apparent reason for Talk:Đuro Živković to be where it is in your category. There are three project banners on the page, Composers, Comtemporary Music and Biog and each has a listas parameter of "Zivkovic, Djuro" yet in your category he is listed under "Đ", apparently by the page name. The other categories to which he has been assigned have him under Zivkovic. As I wrote there is no apparent reason for the discrepancy to appear only in your category.

It has been hard to keep up with the changes in the WPBS. I believe that I had a small part in some of them. I suspect, but did not check, that many of the shells were attached before the changes were made this year. The presence of the nested parameter does not hurt anything. (Don't let the advocates of WPBS scare you out of using WPB. The latter still works and works quite well.  Some of the changes in WPBS were because I kept harping about how difficult it was to use compared to WPB.)

The "3 or more" and "more than 5" things date from when the template was introduced, in 2005, when the latter was given, "even though it is unlikely that any article will be in more than three projects." I only read that about six months ago and had to laugh because almost every article that is legitimately C-class or above is in at least three projects and could easily be in more.

Congratulations between the time you wrote and now the number of articles in your project grew by one! The number of pages in Category:Biography articles without listas parameter has dropped by five. Good things are happening. JimCubb (talk) 22:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you for referring me to the important stub article on Đuro Živković. Editors here are contributing to the encyclopedia. That is to say they are creating and developing articles, so I regret there may not be a lot of responses to your technical messages here. You may well be right about the shells. AFAIK there isn't any controversy about it. "Congratulations between the time you wrote and now the number of articles in your project grew by one!' Sarcasm? -- Klein zach  00:07, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

"'Congratulations between the time you wrote and now the number of articles in your project grew by one!' Sarcasm?" I clearly indicate when I am being either sarcastic or facetious. Irony comes natural to me and is not noted. It is an underlying goal of projects to increase the number of articles that they cover. It is a goal of those who are concerned about Category:Biography articles without listas parameter that the number of pages in the category be zero.

You either miss or are ignoring the point. Whether you are doing so deliberately or not is of no concern to me. My concern is that your Category:WikiProject Composers articles is sorting its contents incorrectly despite all the correct parameters and it does not upset you. That makes me wonder what else is wrong in the articles in your category that does not upset you. The possibility that you do not care about blp designations frightens me and almost causes me to doubt your good faith.
 * JimCubb (talk) 04:36, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

Dear JimCubb, there is a tricky dividing line between being offensive and aggressively defensive. Let's all try to keep well behind that line and stay courteous without implying (actually or 'almost') bad faith to each other. Best regards, --Smerus (talk) 10:32, 12 June 2009 (UTC)


 * What a bizarre discussion. A recent change in enwiki's site configuration has allowed us at  to very quickly fix the listas functionality on WPBM banners. These articles should now sort under their correct sortkeys; it will take some time for the change (which affected all 40 million category links on enwiki) to propagate to all pages and categories.  Happy‑melon 10:49, 12 June 2009 (UTC)

notability/referencing of some composer articles
I've been working through the unassessed composer articles, and have thus far turned up the following entries that are listed as living for the most part, but are either unreferenced, lack evidence of notability, or both. I (or someone else before) tagged most of them for one or both of those issues. While I'm not suggesting they're fodder for deletion (I suppose I'm a bit of an inclusionist), interested parties might look at providing appropriate references and evidence of notability. (Many of these have "External links" that may or may not include sources sufficiently reliable for these purposes. I have not examined them.)


 * Joel Puckett
 * Joel Garten
 * Jody Diamond
 * Philip Cashian
 * Peter Scott Lewis
 * Pedro Vilarroig
 * Raoul Pleskow
 * Richard Grayson (composer)
 * Ronald Caltabiano
 * Sergei Slonimsky
 * Stephen Dodgson (probably notable as BBC announcer, unreferenced)
 * Stephen Jaffe
 * Stephen Truelove

There are about 180 articles left, so this list is likely to grow.  Magic ♪piano 17:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * There was also one oddity, which I'm wondering if this project should cover. Check out Piotr Zak.  Magic ♪piano 17:45, 3 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've put up enough (I hope) to save Dodgson and Slonimsky from perdition. Both stil need more, especally Slonimsky.--Smerus (talk) 18:07, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't see any great problems with minor composer articles like these. Based on one quick scan through them, they all look just about notable. The articles may be poorish but they won't attract many readers, so low priority? One request: if we rate them nominally as 'stub', can we make sure the article page also has the as well? Category:Unassessed Composers articles is now down to 100 articles. Thanks for helping with this. -- Klein  zach  23:36, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't think they're necessarily problematic either, but others might. It thus seemed prudent to raise their profile here. (I'll try to be more diligent about adding stub templates -- I've been hit-or-miss on that count.)  Magic ♪piano 01:17, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I know about Piotr Zak from a hardcopy source, which I'll have to find -- it's been years since I read it (probably my old Oxford Companion) -- so I can add at least one dead-tree reference to that article. Antandrus (talk) 01:49, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Most of the Category:Fictional composers are not included in Composers . . . Incidentally, I've recently made the two Grove hoax articles into redirects and put them in a new section in the article. -- Klein  zach  01:56, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Finally was able to dig up where I read about Zak; it was in a 1967 essay by Hugh Ottoway. I added a cite and reflist to the 'Piotr Zak' article.  Antandrus  (talk) 16:08, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I havebannered Zak under 'contemporary music' rather than composers,which I think is more appropriate. (Cf. P. D. Q. Bach, for example)--Smerus (talk) 05:31, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

Why WikiProject Biography?
This exchange may be of interest...--Smerus (talk) 05:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)


 * This is an important discussion. I hope other people will wade in. As you probably know, 500-odd wrong assessments of Composers Project articles by the Biography Project caused us to halt the automatic bot run, involving hours of 'manual' checking. That's the legacy of the 2007 Biography Project 'campaign' that put banners on more than 500,000 articles. -- Klein zach  07:05, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Actually Biography is currently listed as one of the parents of this project, together with music. I suggest we make Music the sole parent (and delete Biography) in order to avoid any misunderstandings. -- Klein zach  05:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, Project:Bio is very much an absentee parent. I think we should be contacting the Child Support Agency. Do they help maintaining the actual articles? If not, we should delete them. --Folantin (talk) 07:59, 10 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Just for the record, this long discussion, What is the point (of the Biography Project), eventually faded out but I'm intending to summarize the suggestions put forward for reform. -- Klein zach  23:58, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Unbannered Composers
I am involved in adding listas parameter to the WP Biog articles that do not have it. Once in a while I come across a composer who does not have this project's banner. May I put a link to such pages below as I have done with Vano Muradeli? Is there a member of this project who would prefer that I put the links on his or her Talk Page? (I really do not want to have to maintain a text file with this project's banner and run the risk that I would complete the parameters incorrectly.)


 * JimCubb (talk) 19:27, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Vano Muradeli


 * Feel free to add the Composers banner when you do your edits if it seems appropriate. This will add those articles to the Unassessed Composers category, which some of us keep an eye; we can then figure out whether or not it really applies.   Magic ♪piano 19:59, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Assessments
We've cleared (for now) Category:Unassessed Composers articles. Here are the figures for the different assessments (written, duly processed, nominal or whatever):


 * FA: 11
 * FL: 0
 * A: 2
 * GA: 12
 * B: 332
 * Start: 2947
 * List: 46
 * Stub: 1492

Any comments? Perhaps the small number of FAs/GAs — relative to Bs — may reflect this project's low interest/confidence in those processes?-- Klein zach  03:58, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Charles J. Suck
This article is listed at Articles for deletion/Charles J. Suck for any members who wish to comment. Voceditenore (talk) 15:51, 21 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The article needs category(s). --DavidRF (talk) 14:17, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * done Voceditenore (talk) 16:35, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

New York Philharmonic archives
Just a heads-up on a new potentially very useful resource:
 * The New York Philharmonic's Performance Archive (with works and their soloists) from 1842 to the present.

The poor things were so proud of their new archive that they added it to zillions of articles. Two of their editors are now indef blocked, as is the IP for history.nyphil.org. Voceditenore (talk) 12:32, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * It may be somewhat useful, but it IS a bit too specific for an EL to every (or any really) composer article. Imagine if, say, 10 different orchestras had such an archive and ELs were wanted for each? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:12, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No it definitely shouldn't be added to articles unless it's referencing a specific performance, e.g. a world or US premiere. It's more useful as a research tool for editors. Voceditenore (talk) 14:36, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Giacomo Facco
I attempted to tidy up the article on the Baroque Italian composer Giacomo Facco about a month ago. WOuld anyone like to look at it to see if I missed any possible improvements? Thanks, Snow93 (talk) 00:36, 25 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input! I've made some improvements to the formatting (so that it was consistent with the current norm) and fixed some grammar. I also added a list of works. But the article is still in pretty bad shape; I just don't have the time right now to rewrite the biography and the works section. Maybe I'll look at them some time later. --Jashiin (talk) 13:41, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Aria page move
Today an editor moved Aria to Aria (musical term) and then redirected Aria to Aria (disambiguation). The move has broken over 600 incoming links. Another editor is requesting views on reverting this. For members who may wish to comment, see Talk:Aria (musical term). Voceditenore (talk) 08:57, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Update: an adminstrator has now reverted the move. Voceditenore (talk) 10:02, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Request for assessment / copyediting help
I'd like to request a re-assessment of Arnolt Schlick and Nicolas Gigault. I've expanded those articles and they're properly referenced now - unfortunately, both composers are relatively obscure, and so for both there's just a single comprehensive source. I think the article on Schlick may eventually become a GA if not a FA (it lacks audio samples, and those aren't going to happen, I'm afraid, due to the obscurity of the music). I would appreciate any help in copyediting it, because my writing skills aren't too sharp, and I've had no collaborators on the article, so I must have missed quite a few redundancies and things.

I have also created two satellite articles for Schlick: Johannes von Soest and Henry Bredemers. For some reason I erroneously tagged them with the Classical music project tag, but I've rectified the mistake. If someone could assess them, please do. Keep in mind that both composers are practically unknown and no works by them survive; the articles cover essentially everything there is to cover and use the most comprehensive sources available today. (I didn't add inline citations to the Soest article due to the fact that they'd all point to the same pages.)

--Jashiin (talk) 11:55, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Paul McCartney GAR notification
Paul McCartney has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 04:59, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Jonathan FeBland - Conflict of Interest
I hate to blow the whistle, but I'm pretty sure the primary contributor to the article on composer Jonathan FeBland is actually Jonathan Febland himself. That user has signed some of his posts on other talk pages as "Jonathan FeBland" and "Znethru" is the twitter id for Febland. There might be a notability concern here as well -- the photo in the article looks like it was taken in a child's bedroom -- but he does have a CD in print at a minor label. But notability concerns aside, editing your own page is considered a major no-no around here. Just bringing that to everyone's attention around here. Not sure how the pages of minor composers like Febland should look or I'd get more involved myself. DavidRF (talk) 17:25, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As far as I know, a conflict of interest does not preclude the subject from editing as long as the contributions are neutral, verifiable and reliably sourced — and a bad photo doesn't imply non-notablity. However, the article is indeed poorly written: gushing, unsourced assertions, no references whatsoever, including claims for notability. Either someone, including, can be persuaded to improve the article to Wikipedia standards or it ought to be submitted for deletion on notability grounds. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:32, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * FYI - Articles for deletion/Jonathan FeBland. Eusebeus (talk) 12:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)