Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Guitarists

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[edit] Extended absense

Hey everyone, just letting you know that personal circumstances have necessitated an extended absense from Wikipedia for me. I will not be able to participate in this WikiProject during that time. I trust that consensus will continue to rule this excellent project, and that you will continue the work of improving our guitarist articles. --Aguerriero (talk) 14:39, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notice to project members

An Admin unfamiliar with the project has nominated ou template-Template:Guitarist infobox for deletion. I have added a vote to keep it...more would help. Anger22 11:34, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scope

Your project overlaps in scope with WP Musicians and WP Biography very considerably. I wonder if it might be best to be a workgroup of WP Musicians, and share their project template with them? (Which will be a form of {{WPBiography}} since they're joining us).

The guitar equipment workgroup could be reconstituted as a seperate WikiProject, perhaps.

My concern is that we're getting more and more WikiProjects with huge scope overlaps, and if we have a WikiProject template explosion it will cause editor resentment and cause problems for all of us who love WikiProjects. --kingboyk 13:15, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It could be argued that the problem is being caused by WikiProjects with huge, overreaching scopes. WikiProject Musicians initially failed because of its huge scope (WikiProject Composers immediately started going, "Yo, too much overlap.") No one could agree on whether all musicians are composers, or all composers are musicians, and how the two should intersect. Now that people are reviving it (and doing an admirable job) you will notice that our founder attempted to similarly engage them to address the scope creep.
WikiProject Musicians does not appear to be mature enough to absorb another project into itself without serious problems. They do not even have established styles or guidelines, or even the entire WikiProject template filled out. I have a problem with integrating a well-defined, well-organized WikiProject (this one) into a less-so project. Thoughts, anyone? --Undead1 18:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I can only comment that Admin Aguerriero created the guitarist project after the apparent demise of the musician project in the first place. I am not totally against a merger of projects provided the specific mandate of this one is maintained(including infobox/templates). With Andy on hiatus and a few key project members on wiki-breaks, I'd hate to see this project get absorbed without input from everybody. My 2 cents anyways. Cheers! Anger22 18:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the points presented by Undead1 and Anger22. I don't see the benefits of a merger...presently. PJM 19:57, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

What's wrong with overlap? It's just more people working to improve an article. --Ortzinator 14:37, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the problem is that different WikiProjects establish different style guidelines and so forth, so when multiple project start looking at an article, there can be conflicts. I haven't really seen those conflicts, but there is the potential. --Undead1 15:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I don't think overlaps are avoidable. There are conflicts between individual wikipedians all the time and we deal with them. The same should be done between WikiProjects. --Ortzinator 15:37, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the concern is also on multiple templates on a talk page. --plange 15:43, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Multiple templates shouldn't be a problem. Many articles fall under multiple projects and for the most part the mandate of one is different than the mandate of the other.(I don't see any WikiCountryProject members rm'ing guitarist project templates and infoboxes from the country guitarists who've been tagged by both projects. One thing that is disturbing is that the Wiki Musician Project instructions for the musician infobox is that it is OK to overwrite guitarist infoboxes with their project's infobox....which is wrong. Certainly if a musician is a notable guitarist...but also notable at another instrument(s) then maybe it could be substituted and the details added in. But it is something that should be discussed on the article talk page first. I just noticed, and corrected a page where a musician project member replaced the guitarist infobox(and the subject was certainly a notable guitarist) with the musician infobox and noted in the edit summary "new and improved infobox". Which, in this case, was neither true nor required. Guitarist project members should be wary of maintaining the project's tagged pages. It's not worth an edit war. I think all project members are open to dialogue and "sharing the load". But, when a musician has gained fame due to his guitar playing abilities...then he is a guitarist first, musician second...plain and simple. Cheers! Anger22 16:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought we just agreed that the musical artist infobox will co-exist with the guitarist infobox as co-equal within this project. (If you disagree, add your comments below where I recently raised this point). In which case, your revert was just as pointless as the original change (more so, in my opinion as the original changer). I assume you're referring to the Rick Nielsen page. I made that change because he's primarily known as a member of Cheap Trick, and that band (and all its other musicians) use the musical artist infobox. Maybe my change note was insufficiently explanatory, but I think that consistency between the Cheap Trick articles is a lot more important than any feeling of ownership that a project may have for individual members of a given band. For someone who's primarily known as a guitarist on his own (as opposed to being associated with a particular band), your objection might be more reasonable. For Rick Nielsen, though, I think my change was wholy and completely justified, and well within the parameters accepted by this project as I understand them.
p.s. I will also admit that I loathe the guitarist infobox. The musical artist infobox is far from perfect, but it doesn't make me cringe anywhere near as much. So, obviously I have some bias issues. But I'm trying very hard to make my point without getting into subjective aesthetics. But if the guitarist and band infoboxes were taken out back and shot, I would stand and applaud!  :) Xtifr tälk 18:07, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

You appear to be missing the point, Xtifr. Your proposal was that the Musical Artist infobox be listed as an alternative, which is fine. But what you did is go into an article and replace the established infobox with your own without obtaining consensus anywhere. That was inappropriate at best - at worst, it is disrespectful to the work done in this WikiProject. If you care to do a bit of research, you will see that design decisions and consensus went into making the Guitarist Infobox. One of them was that visual flourishes were undesirable. I don't happen to agree, but I went with the consensus. See a pattern emerging here?

The goal here needs to be good articles. This WikiProject is specialized, and WikiProject Musicians is less so. It makes sense from a heuristic standpoint to focus our presentation of information on individual articles in the most specialized way possible. In other words, presenting Rick Nielson as a musician is useful - but presenting him as guitarist is even more useful, because being a musician is implied in that way. Don't agree? Fine, but discuss it first and obtain consensus before you reverse the work of a WikiProject. --Aguerriero (talk) 19:08, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Sheesh! I was a little, tiny bit bold and changed one article! You guys are acting like I've been going through Wikipedia and editing every single guitarist article. I came here first, I discussed the principle of using this infobox in a case like this, where there's a band and other musicians associated with the guitarist, I got what seemed to me to be concensus that this was ok in such cases (at the very least), and then, when I make one change to one guitarist article, fully in line with what had been discussed, and I get accused of trying to undermine the whole project and destroy people's work! Can we please get some perspective here? I'm not even reverting the change Anger22 made, even though I think his change hurts the Cheap Trick articles as a group, because I take consensus seriously. What more do you want from me?
Furthermore: the infobox doesn't say "musician". It's named musical artist, but all it says (in this case) is "guitar". If that's not presenting him as a guitarist, I don't know what is! Again, sheesh!  :) -- Xtifr tälk

I'm sorry if I overreacted. There is history here, though, that you might not be aware of. WikiProject Musicians was around before, several months ago. It died because of most of the same things that are going on right now:

  • Scope creep - its scope overrode the scope of too many other projects, including WikiProject Composers.
  • Poor organization - they developed nifty banners and template, but no actual guidelines for writing and editing articles.

The end result was a slew of articles that ended up with Musician Infobox templates on them, but no project to maintain them. I formed WikiProject Guitarists with a narrow scope and defined styles so that wouldn't happen. While I realize your intentions are good, my concern is that the whole Musicians project is going to collapse again and we'll be left to clean up all the articles that got changed over to the new template.

So... I don't disagree with your logic in changing the Rick Nielson template, but I guess my point is that we need more discussion than a handful of people going, "Yeah.. I guess.. whatever." which is just groupthink. I also encourage you to flesh out the WikiProject Musicians before you start editing any articles under its banner. But that's just my opinion, take it or leave it. :) Anyway, peace, and I apologize again if I overreacted. --Aguerriero (talk) 23:15, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] adding "notable instruments" to musical artist infobox

I'm going to be adding a "notable_instruments" field to {{infobox musical artist}}. This should make it fully feature-compatible with the {{guitarist infobox}}. I'm not suggesting that it replace "guitarist infobox", merely that it be listed as an alternative, much as the "musical artist infobox" is already an alternative to {{infobox band}}. In fact, I would recommend that guitarists from bands where the band uses "infobox band" continue to use "guitarist infobox", but guitarists from bands that use "musical artist" would now be able to use "musical artist" as well. (There seems to be a big fight between advocates of "band" and "musical artist", and I want to stay out of that, so I'm simply providing more options here.) I've temporarily put an example (linking to my sandbox) on my talk page. Comments and criticism are welcome. -- Xtifr tälk 09:36, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Update: field now added, so "infobox musical artist" should now be a perfectly viable alternative to "guitarist infobox". The example on my talk page is now "live", rather than coming from a sandbox. Unless someone objects, I'd like to mention the infobox as an alternative on the main project page. -- Xtifr tälk 02:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me, good work. Can't say I'm crazy about the color used for non-vocal instrumentalists, though. --Undead1 13:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

It is completely inappropriate to say on the template page that it is OK to replace the Guitarist Infobox with this template. If you are going to say anything like that at all, I think you should say that it is possible, but should only be done with consensus obtained on the article talk page. --Aguerriero (talk) 19:10, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

That wording was there before (referring to the band infobox), and I did a sloppy, quick edit. Sorry. It's fixed now. I don't think an existing template (of either style) should be replaced unless there's a good justification (like consistency between members of a band). Xtifr tälk 22:39, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
I didn't intend to start any wars here. But, in the case of the Rick Neilson article...yes...he is a member of a group. But, he is a very notable guitarist(a lot of people forget that). And when it comes right down to it...when someone says "Who is Rick Neilson?" the first answer isn't "he's a musician in Cheap Trick" it's "he's the guitarist in Cheap Trick". Beatles members' articles are a good example of project sharing. Paul McCartney...musician box all the way, Ringo...musician box is a given, John Lennon...could have a guitarist box but he has a musician box...and rightly so. BUT...George Harrison...even though he has a very full resume...has a guitarist infobox. And, like Rick Neilson, deserves to be recognized as a gifted, influential guitarist...even if it means a little "infobox-inconsistency" with their fellow bandmates. Brian May, Ritchie Blackmore, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Joe Walsh...there's a pretty long list of artists whose infoboxes will/do/should differ from their famous bandmates. Now, for someone like Dave Grohl...he's the guitarist for Foo Fighters...and...I believe he is even listed as a "notable user" on several guitar model articles. But he was also the drummer in Nirvana, so, musician infobox is perfect for him. Brian Jones, Prince, Mike Oldfield...all guitarists...but like Grohl...all better covered by musician boxes over guitarist boxes. I believe both projects can work together towards a common goal. But I agree with Andy in that we should use the talk pages to there fullest so that, in the end, we're all on the same page. Cheers! Anger22 01:17, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok, that argument makes sense. I don't fully agree, but at least I understand where you're coming from, so we have the basis for some meaningful discussion. And I certainly don't fully disagree either. The main point I do disagree with is that using the guitarist infobox somehow labels someone as a guitarist more than as a musician. Neither infobox does any particular labeling. In fact, the guitarist infobox says nothing whatsover about the person being a guitarist! The closest it comes is the presence of the "Notable guitars" field, which only appears if someone adds data to that field. Otherwise, it's simply a generic-looking musician infobox that happens to be named "guitarist infobox"—something nobody reading the article will even know! I would argue that the musical artist infobox, by virtue of having an "instrument" field that will contain the string word "guitar", actually does a better job of labeling someone a guitarist than the so-called "guitarist infobox". At least as far as the readers of the article is concerned.
Let me turn this around. I don't want to get rid of the guitarist infobox, because it complements the band infobox quite well. (My opinions of the band infobox aside.) What I want is an alternative that can be used for members of a band that don't use the band infobox. One that complements the "musical artist" infobox (as applied to a band) the way that the guitarist infobox complements the band infobox. The band and guitarist infoboxes match; the musical artist (band) infobox and guitarist infobox don't. What can be done about this? It's a problem, and one that didn't exist when the guitarist infobox was first introduced, and the musical artist infobox was brand new, not widely used, and the musician project was in the process of falling apart. Now we can see that the musical artist infobox has a life of its own, beyond the collapse of the musicians project, and I think it's valid to ask how this project can come to terms with that. -- Xtifr tälk 19:56, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hey All

I was just woundering being a new member, where can members go to to have a general chat about themselves or other stuff, becuase most posts on this disscussion board seem important. cheers --Funkinmonks 22:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

There isn't one. Project talk pages are for project issues only. Article talk pages are for discussing the articles(and not the subjects about which they're written) And by Wikipedia policy WP:NOT Section 1.6 - Wikipedia is not a blog, webspace provider, or social networking site. Hope that helps. Anger22 01:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox discussion

All, Anger22 has started a discussion at our infobox talk page about possible changes. I think this is a great idea to really set our infobox apart from the generic musician infobox. Please comment if you are interested. --Aguerriero (talk) 15:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Slowhand

I have marked the article Eric Clapton as needing attention, and am also notifying The Beatles WikiProject because they have their banner on that article as well. Recently someone from the good article project came through and left a note that the Eric Clapton article doesn't use enough inline citations for an article its size. They are apparently reevaluating all of the GA articles and this article's GA status could be revoked if that issue isn't fixed. I will try to look at it, but I am also trying to get to John Frusciante and Eddie Van Halen. If anyone can help out, it would be appreciated. Basically we need to convert citations that are just sitting at the bottom of the article to the footnote style. See WP:FOOT for more info. --Aguerriero (talk) 14:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Peer review

There is now a WikiProject Guitarists Peer review department. You can post and respond to requests there - please keep it on your watchlist if you are interested. Eventually, I hope to develop a method to funnel review requests for guitarist articles from the main Peer review page to our project page. It seems that the more organized WikiProjects (which we are one of) are going in that direction. --Aguerriero (talk) 21:22, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Watchlisted...good idea! Anger22 15:14, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
  • User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
  • User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
  • User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 00:17, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Task forces

I have revamped the page for the Guitar equipment task force and leveraged most of Imoeng's fine work (props!) into a task force page. If you are interested in working on guitar equipment articles (guitars, amps, effects, etc.), visit the page and add your name. There is a special template for guitars, as well as a special userbox, categories, and so on. We still need a template for amps and effects, if anyone is so-inclined.

Thanks to Anger22, many equipment articles have already been tagged to place them in Category:Guitar equipment task force articles. If you want, you can jump into that category and start working on articles, or search around to find untagged equipment articles. --Aguerriero (talk) 21:13, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Lists!

Hey guys, a lot of work needs to be done on various lists of guitarist to get them up to similar standards as List of Telecaster players, which I nominated for Featured List status. I created a new subcategory of Category:Lists of musicians by instrument called Category:Lists of guitarists, where we can place all lists we find and start working on them. Some possible tasks, if anyone is interested:

  • There is now List of guitarists by genre, but there also exists a few lists of just one genre. We should decide if we want one big list, or separate articles for each genre.
  • List of guitarists is up for deletion, but it looks like the consensus is going to be to keep. At any rate, the list needs attention.
  • If anyone finds other lists of guitarists, please place them in the new subcategory.

That's all for now! --Aguerriero (talk) 17:48, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Since we're talking lists...here's a POV pushing, uncited gem that Wikipedia could probably do without: List of notable rock guitar soloists. I am surprised this article even exists. If the generic "lists" are going to survive their AfD's...it's a safe bet that if this one gets AfD'd it'll go away pretty quick. Thoughts? Anger22 (Talk 2 22) 18:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Stuck a +cat on List of lead guitarists. Probably a redundant list. Maybe? Anger22 (Talk 2 22) 20:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Ugh. Just ugh. List of notable rock guitar soloists really needs to go away. List of lead guitarists seems worthwhile. --Aguerriero (talk) 20:36, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Oh, in case you were wondering, there is also List of rhythm guitarists, which I have also placed in the new subcategory. --Aguerriero (talk) 20:41, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stubs

If anyone has time, we really need to go through Category:Guitarist stubs and figure out what's in there. There are a couple of subcategories per country; we need to figure out if more would be useful. Also, I noticed that a lot of the articles in there are really bad - some of them are nonsense, or hoaxes, or aren't guitarists at all. For vanity pages where some local guitarist made a page for himself, it can be speedy deleted. Either tag it with {{db-band}} or make a list here and I will delete them. For non-guitarist articles, we need to put them with the correct stub. A lot of them are not in any categories, not tagged with our project banner, all kinds of problems. Anyone want to work on this? --Aguerriero (talk) 02:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Sure, I'll try to take a look at some soon. Note: if the article is about a living person, you should add {{WPBiography|living=yes}} to the talk page along with the project banner. Xtifr tälk 07:12, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, good idea. Isn't there a bot that does that? I can't remember who was running it, but I thought there was a bot that scanned for articles in Category:Living people and placed that banner on its talk page. --Aguerriero (talk) 18:26, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
There was a bot, but it doesn't seem to be running any more. Maybe it was just done as a one-time thing. I'm pretty sure it was one of kingboyk's bots. Anyway, a lot of stubs don't have the category, which is something else to fix Also, it's good to add Category:Date of birth missing if it is, or "Category:YYYY births" if it's not (e.g. Category:1980 births). -- Xtifr tälk 00:21, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Whoops, that's supposed to be Category:Year of birth missing; the DOB missing is for articles where the year is specified but not the day. Xtifr tälk 00:27, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Gotcha. I have been looking through the A's and there are TONS of articles that are no more than "So-and-so is the guitarist from such-and-such band." and then a stub template. Any opinion on whether these are desirable? --Aguerriero (talk) 01:50, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Opinions differ. I'm probably overly-generous with such stubs myself. From what I've seen at AfD discussions, a merge to the band article is probably more appropriate. On the other hand, if it mentions more than one band, or solo work, then it should probably be kept. If you really want to get fancy, you can always check google or allmusic guide and see if you can find some information to expand the stub a little, too. (Just remember, no cut-and-paste copyright violations, please.) Depends on how much time you want to spend on a single stub, I suppose. Sometimes I get fancy, sometimes I just categorize, tag, and move on. :) Xtifr tälk 08:23, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I have been spending some time on each one. Copyedit, category, stub, project banner, so on. If they are obviously bollocks and don't assert notability, I delete them on site. And since I have your attention, please change the pink color for the infobox. I promise I'll never say another word about the infobox if you just change the color. I implore you. --Aguerriero (talk) 18:22, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Man, this is more work than I thought. I'm still in the A's. --Ars Scriptor 17:19, 1 December 2006 (UTC) (formerly Aguerriero)

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