Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization

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[edit] Session musicians

Shouldn't there be a category for session musicians? (That page could use some attention from someone with more knowledge than me, BTW). --EngineerScotty 22:03, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sort keys

I'll be honest, I'm a little unconvinced about using sort keys different from the actual category title, i.e. "Cello" for "Canadian cellists". This is partly because the categories I just sorted were already using the name of the instrumentalist rather than the name of the instrument, and partly because I find it a little misleading to sort "singers" under V for "vocals" rather than S. I mean, where is the average Wikipedia user going to look first?

Of course, I haven't managed to find any official guidelines for this. (Partly because I don't know what kind of heading to look for.) I'll let that be the last word, as soon as I can find it. –Unint 02:41, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe there are guidelines yet, that's kind of what this project is for. However, if you can find some pre-existing guidelines, that would be useful. I'm personally not really all that invested in whether we use "Cello" or "Cellist". I initially went with the "Cellist" pattern because most of the categories I had come across were using that pattern. I'm sure both are pretty prevalent in existing categories, and all-in-all, it probably doesn't matter much since most of the time they'd end up being sorted in the same place anyway since they'll usually share a number of letters in the beginning of the word ( e.g., both start with "Cell" and it's unlikely that anything else in that category would be sorted between "Cellist" and "Cello"). The only apprehension I have in switching is that--if it doesn't matter that much--I don't see a good reason to change since it would require resorting all the categories that have already been "officially sorted" by the project (see /Progress).
As far as whether to sort singers under "S" for singer or "V" for vocals, I initially went with Vocals because I ran across it a few times in existing categories, but I definitely think we should discuss which is of more use, "S" or "V", and I'm totally open, I don't really have an opinion on it. I also think it's a bit of a special case, and doesn't neccessarily have to match the others.
B.Mearns*, KSC 12:37, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
Er, personally I have not been very consistent with the sort keys for the categories that I have "officially" sorted. Particularly, I left existing sort keys alone, as long as the word had the right root. If we want to make another sweep to standarize them, now would be the time, while the list is still small.
As for what the guideline should be... I'm of the opinion that we should strive to use words from the category name, verbatim, since this would require the least human judgment and so would allow for the most consistency. (Actually, despite that, I tried to implement some "invisible" sort keys recently. It really didn't work out.)
Also, there was a recent CfD for Cat:R&B vocalists here. I proposed rename to "R&B singers", but there was no consensus, and the closing admin suggested that subcategories ought to match the supercategory. Personally, I'm not sure if there is anything to the semantics of the words that would mean that not all "vocalists" could be described as "singers", but if you have anything to raise regarding that then I hope you'll bring it to the table when we do a CfR for some of these next time. (The question is for which ones, of course.) –Unint 19:28, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Children's music

I just ran across Category:Canadian children's musicians. There are currently no other categories for children's musicians sorted by nationality or anything else, really. Category:Children's musicians itself is very sparse. Shall we integrate children's music as a genre here? (Well, technically I already did it halfway...) –Unint 03:22, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

It's fine with me, I think children's music is appropriate as a genre. Any other opinions on this matter? B.Mearns*, KSC 12:39, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Punk rock

The categories for punk rock are currently inconsistent. The current structure:

So, there's a disagreement between "punk" and "punk rock" shown in the current scheme, but at least one subcategorization seems to be placing "punk rock" as a subcategory of "punk". Meanwhile, "punk rock" is the title of the main article for the music section of the punk article. "Punk music" also redirects to "punk rock".

The bottom line is that I strongly suggest we rename some of these categories. I cannot offer to do it, however, since I don't know anything about the music in question. –Unint 03:37, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll look for where it's written, but I know I've come across a wikipedia guideline that defines "Punk rock" as the musical genre, and "Punk" as a person/culture; meaning these should all use Punk rock. I think that's a pretty fair guideline to use; are there any other thoughts on this? B.Mearns*, KSC 12:42, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Dance artists by country"

Have a look: Category:Dance artists by country. Category:Canadian dance music artists is at least well-populated, if mistitled according to our guidelines, but all the remaining categories are worse as they are improperly capitalized and mostly empty. What's more, it seems that "dance artists" is a label that doesn't work well with the current Wikipedia categorization scheme: it's subcategorized into Category:Dance music, which is dedicated to various forms of electronic dance music. This is then placed in Category:Dance, which is dedicated to traditional forms of dance: social, ballroom, and such. (I'll be taking this up with WikiProject Music genres soon.) I really have no idea what to do with this, right now. –Unint 04:06, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Subgenre categories

So I noticed there's some kind of strange categories like Category:Electronic musicians by genre. This is strange to me because "Electronic" in this case, is the genre. I understand it's supposed be by sub-genre, but in that case, shouldn't the category be "Electronic musicians by subgenre"? Is it even neccessary? I just assumed, for instance, that Category:Techno musicians would just be a direct sub-category of Category:Electronic musicians, as well as a sub-cat of Category:Musicians by genre. I'm not sure how many other categories there are like this, but I think we should define some guidelines for how to handle it. B.Mearns*, KSC 12:57, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'm going to try to bridge the gap here. This was created by the creator of WikiProject Electronic music as part of early categorization efforts (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electronic music#Categorization), which have since petered off since the creator in question has disappeared and no one seems to have really taken charge since.
Anyway, I'm going to integrate the relevant parts of our category structure into theirs, in the hopes that someone will pick up the other end of the line eventually. However, I still couldn't say what to do with "musicians by genre", save to say that I haven't been able to find an equivalent for the other genres I've looked at so far. Or maybe I'm missing something. –Unint 19:22, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Teachers

I would like to see a category for noted teachers (pedagogues) -- Some musicians are very prominent as performers, while others are primarily known as teachers. In particular, I would very much like to see a subcategory under, say, the classical violinists category, for prominent violin teachers. Someone like Dorothy DeLay or Ivan Galamian would fit here, whereas, say, Joshua Bell would be better known as a performer. Does anyone else think this would be useful, or should this be a subcategory under the music education category instead of the musician category?J Lorraine 09:39, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sorting bands named after people

I came across the article on The Dave Brubeck Quartet, and noticed that its categorization sort keys were listed as "Dave Brubeck Quartet, The". IMO, bands named after people should be sorted by the person's last name (that's how I've seen it done elsewhere). I changed that article to use "Brubeck Quartet, The Dave", but I think it might be worthwhile to document this style on the front page here, since apparently, it's not as obvious as I might have hoped. (And if anyone disagrees with me about sorting this way, I'm willing to listen to counter-arguments.) Xtifr tälk 18:56, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the naming convention. The main page really needs some organization, but if you can find a place for it now, go for it. Otherwise I am going to try to reorganize the page in the next couple of days (don't hold me to that though). – Heaven's Wrath   Talk  02:06, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "state" musicians

There is an entire, existing heirarchy of "American musicians by state", a subcategory of "American musicians". And a similar heirarchy for "Musical groups by state". There's even a few categories of musicians from specific cities (e.g. Chicago, New Orleans). Since it's general Wikipedia policy to push articles as far down in a category heirarchy as possible, and since the "American musicians" and "American musical groups" are both categories with too many entries which need constant weeding, I think it would be good to mention the state subcategories on the main page here, in order to increase awareness of them. Xtifr tälk 19:04, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

As a followup: there also seem to be musician categories for at least some of the Canadian provinces (possibly all, I haven't checked). Then there's the whole "British" vs. "English", "Scottish", "Welsh", "Cornish" mess, which seems to be somewhat contentious. Help, mommy, I'm scared! :) Seriously, though, I do think it would be good to at least mention the existence of sub-national categories, to encourage people to look for and use them. Even if we don't get too specific. Xtifr tälk 21:02, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm the one responsible for most of the less-populated Canadian provincial ones, and yeah, I probably should have worked that into this page at the time. However, I balked more or less upon considering the rewriting that would be necessary (including an understanding of geographical regions for the more convoluted contries).
FWIW, the Canadian ones seem to be working out. (I only excluded the Northwest Territories after checking every biographical article from that region manually.) However, I'm not at all sure how much people check this page... –Unint 02:02, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Musicians by band

Just in case people are interested, I've begun filling out category:Musicians by band. Along the way, I'm making sure musicians have categories like "American rock guitarists" and the like. Feel free to participate if you desire.--Mike Selinker 08:29, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] 'Popular' category descriptions.

Hi,

The WP:PipeOrgan team are attempting to clean-up the Category:Organists and various sub-cats. One such category is Category:Popular organists. As this suggests some POV, we were wondering what to rename it. Do you have any conventions? Is the convention Category:Pop organists or perhaps Non-classical organists? Can you suggest something for us?

Thanks,

MDCollins (talk) 09:10, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

My first thought was "popular music organists", as the general antithesis of classical, but that gets no Google hits at all. "Pop organist" at least has some hits, but it might be conflated with pop music itself. I notice that Category:Popular music does not really have a corresponding artists category, but rather artist categories for more specific genres; however, you're working with so few articles that this really isn't feasible (save for the already existing Category:Jazz organists.
Maybe Categories for discussion could work out a suitable name if you nominate it with the destination name open for discussion. (I'm assuming you have all the resident organist experts within your project already?) –Unint 20:42, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Not necessarily - it is a new project, so there may be more experts around the place somewhere! I'll bring it up at CfD, thanks MDCollins (talk) 14:29, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A request for someone to double-check my efforts, please

Having recently discovered the categorization guidelines, I've tried to put them into practice at Category:Oboists, which until I started had all the articles in the main category with no sub-categories. I think that I've correctly understood about Level 2 / Level 3, N I and G categories, but I'd appreciate it if someone could have a look to check that I've got the right number of categories linked to each other in the right way! I'm also part-way through Category:Harpists (a few national sub-categories before I started) and Category:Violists (top-level category only before I started) and so pointing out any mistakes I've made in the Oboists section would save me going wrong there as well... Thanks, Bencherlite 17:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

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