Template talk:Infobox Song

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This article is within the scope of WikiProject Songs, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to songs on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Template:Infobox Song page.

Contents

[edit] New infobox proposal

I've recorded some thoughts at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs#Infoboxes which are pertinent to this template. I'm (boldly) suggesting a rather different approach to the infobox. Please feel free to comment there. Flowerparty? 01:47, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My suggestions

  • In my opinion color of this infobox should be different than album infobox. I think song infobox should have an unique color or yellow, like a single infobox.
  • Is a "Label" necessary field? Song isn't released directly from a label.
  • I suggest to make a new field, Composer.

Visor 19:36, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

I've already applied above ideas except removing "Label" field. Someone (or somebot) should remove all label infos from articles which are using this template and then, field would be deleted. Visor 20:24, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Single option added

I made it so that a song can be marked as a single. I also made a few other minor cosmetic changes. RttlesnkeWhiskey 12:26, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

  • I had worked on this before I saw the single infobox, as it didn't occur to me that people would distinguish between song and single. So I'm wondering why there has to be a difference. I used this template for the Arnold Layne/Candy and a Currant Bun single and I thought it worked well. Thoughts? RttlesnkeWhiskey 11:31, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Songs that are not comercial "hits"

I like the idea of info boxes as they are useful for standardization. This one, however, caters to a very narrow idea of "song." Namely, comercially released songs for which there is only one notable recording. Perhaps we could have a more general / flexible box that could be useful for folk songs, anthems, etc. (e.g. take a look in Category:Folk songs, Category:Anthems)? -MrFizyx 15:32, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree - see Flowerparty's suggestions above for an alternative song template which would be more suitable for traditional songs and 'standards'. Jud 12:55, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cover

If this is the template for songs that weren't singles, won't most of these not have covers? I think it should be changed so that it does not automatically show the 'no cover' image. --Alcuin 15:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. It just doesn't make sense that a song would have a cover if it wasn't a single.--Fortyfeet 22:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

The image that must be added is the image of the album cover. Armando.O (talk|contribs) 18:17, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I really don't think that's justifiable per our fair use guideline. If a song was not released as a single, a picture of the album doesn't serve to identify it: the album is not the single, and many singles are released on multiple albums, which can even make the image confusing. I'm thinking we should just remove the ability to specify an image here. Mangojuicetalk 20:48, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. --PEJL 21:10, 2 July 2007 (UTC)
The problem with this change is that it has orphaned several images. Not every editor knows the difference between the song infobox and the single infobox. I certainly didn't. If I hadn't happened to be paying attention this week, the single cover I uploaded would have been deleted. While this wouldn't have been an unrecoverable tragedy, it would have been annoying. --GentlemanGhost 05:44, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
On the other hand this change has caused that article to now have a correct infobox, which is an improvement. I think the advantages outweight the disadvantages. --PEJL 16:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Outdenting.

This change is way too big to have been made based on so few comments. Many images will now be orphaned, including images for songs that weren't "singles" in the post 1950-definition but weren't on albums. Slow down. John Cardinal 17:15, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, do you have an approximate estimate of how many articles are affected? --PEJL 17:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. "Stairway to Heaven", for example, was never released as a single, but only as a promo disc; we have an image of the latter that is used as its cover image. I reverted the removal of the cover for now. Before making this change we should find out how many articles will be affected by this, and how many similar situations there are. Λυδαcιτγ 21:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, that image is not a cover, so it could be argued that it shouldn't be used as such in the infobox (and instead moved out of the infobox). --PEJL 21:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Re: estimate of exceptions or whatever. I don't have an estimate, but I wasn't the one who deleted a heavily used parameter from a widely used template. I did see one today, and then noticed that many, many song articles I have edited no longer show images. Dig around a bit, and discover that 2 people decided to delete images from hundreds if not thousands of articles. No warning, just comments from 4 editors, only 2 of whom even discussed the specific change. Poof. <rant-on>I am touchy about this right now because meanwhile every day human editors spend hours slogging through a pile of "fair use contested" images/sounds, piles it only takes the fair use police bots a few minutes to make. If we humans get behind, still other bots delete the images/sounds because 7 whole days have elapsed. Then, who wants to spend the time to get them back?<rant-off> Now some number of images will be orphaned by this change, and the orphan bots will mark 'em for deletion. I don't agree with this change but I don't have the time or energy to contest. People who make this sort of change should give some weight to this: it takes an incredible effort to build something, but only seconds to tear it down. Even if the final decision is to delete the parameter, it should be down more slowly so that people (besides me) can contest the decision, and determine how many exceptions there are, etc. John Cardinal 04:30, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm curious about all of these song articles with cover images ("heavily used" on "hundreds if not thousands of articles" in John's words). What kind of images are they using? We've seen one example mentioned where the song was really a single and the single cover was used. We've seen another that used a non-cover image. The motivation for the change was the idea that album covers were used as the cover of the song articles (which would not be fair use). It would be interesting to know an estimate about the numbers of these different uses. I am not familiar enough with song articles to be able to make any sort of estimate. Can anyone else? Lacking that, I just went through the first twenty articles here and got:
  • 4 used other images
  • 3 used no images
  • 12 used album covers
  • 1 was really a single
The ones with other images predominantly included image captions as well. --PEJL 10:02, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps one change to make would be replacing the cover parameter with image, and specifying that the image is not to be the album cover. Λυδαcιτγ 04:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good. We could deprecate cover but still support it as an alias for image. It might be confusing if the image generated by the image parameter was still placed where the cover is in album/single infoboxes. One option would be to move it down lower in the infobox. We could even move it out of the infobox entirely (to just after the infobox, right-aligned). --PEJL 06:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
We'll still have to deal with existing use of album covers, though. Perhaps we should ask someone to make an AWB plugin that would be used as one goes through the transclusions of this template, that would pop up the image description page for each "cover = ...", and allow the image to be removed if it is in fact an album cover? I have no idea how difficult it would be to make such a plugin. Λυδαcιτγ 05:10, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm disappointed to see nothing has happened on this for 10 months. Changing the word in the template from "cover" to "image" is a good idea, and maybe we could even stick a comment in the template next to the parameter to remind editors about the rule. The template instructions should also say more than what the parameter should NOT be used for; it should give examples of correct use. Also, I see nothing about this mentioned in the template for albums, nor singles. When it comes to singles, the same image is often being used for the A-side and B-side song articles, which seems to be the same violation as the song misuse. Can someone make a suggestion to the singles template people that there should be an instruction saying this on their template (don't use a cover image for the B-side article), as there is on the song template? I would also like to see this explained in the instructions for the album template, even though it's not really an instruction for that template. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 01:52, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] recent changes (October 2006)

hey, this template is dumping this:

{{#if: - style="text-align: center; font-size: 0.7em;"

at the top of pages that employ it. Anyone know how to fix it? --Alcuin 04:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Colour

I feel the colour is too similar to that of albums (atm) when the colour is D9D9F3 -- Ashadeofgrey 23:25, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Track listing songs in quotes

Should both the previous and next tracks be in quotes as well as the song itself? I edited the syntax to have all 3 songs in quotes, but then it was quickly removed. I thing it would look much better. -Crashintome4196 07:00, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Song titles should be in quotes as per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (titles). The problem is that in many infoboxes they already are so hardcoding the quotation marks in the template makes them appear two times (as in the example at template page). Besides, when "prev" or "next" field is left blank quotations appear anyway but this I believe is a minor problem and could easily be fixed using m:ParserFunctions. Jogers (talk) 10:59, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Type?"

What are the values - or what is the purpose - of the "Type" row in this template? InnocuousPseudonym 06:35, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Renaming to Template:Infobox Song

Shouldn't this infobox be renamed to Template:Infobox Song, for consistency with Template:Infobox Album, Template:Infobox Single and others? I see that it was moved in the opposite direction back in January 2001, with no hint as to why. Any objections to moving it back? --PEJL 21:18, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

No objection at all. I've been wondering the same thing for a long time. I think the move should be made, not just for consistency with {{Infobox Single}}, but with most infoboxes in general. –Dream out loud (talk) 04:17, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Y Done. As suggested elsewhere, it would be nice if existing uses of the template were updated. Using AWB or similar for this should be easier than doing it manually. If someone does this, I recommend at the same time adding the standard comment <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Songs --> to the top of the infoboxes, where missing. I've also suggested this at Template talk:Infobox Single (where other renames are being discussed), and someone has expressed their intent to take on this task. --PEJL 09:52, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New changes w/o image

Current format
"Zoo Station"
Song by U2
With larger text
"Zoo Station"
Song by U2
With single line
"Zoo Station" by U2

Since the image parameter has been removed from the infobox, I think the top should be changed a bit to make it look a little neater, not as if an image should be there. I combined the title and "song by..." sections into one box, so now it doesn't look like an image should be sandwiched between them. But the top box should still be changed somewhat. I think that either the top should be changed so either the title is larger than the rest of the text, or the text should just be one line. What do you think? –Dream out loud (talk) 04:34, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I think the current format is satisfactory. The larger text in the second format makes it inconsistent with other infoboxes. (Why should songs have bigger text than singles or albums?) The third leaves off the relevant information that it is a song. --PEJL 11:08, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
I don't know why it would be removed, singles have their own covers, but the songs have the cover of the album in which they are included. Just have to make appear the album cover on it. Sgt. Pepper's* | Talk with the Sergent | on 15:31, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
See #Cover above for why it was removed. --PEJL 16:25, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Previous/next track number?

Is there any way to make the previous and next track numbers automatically assuming -1 or +1 to the track number that was typed in? It would be nicer that way. ^^ gracz54 (talk) 13:07, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Please add support for Audio Samples

Can one of you Wiki programming gurus kindly figure out how to neatly include a section in the infobox that will support audio samples? I would hope that one day eventually every song with an article on Wikipedia will have an accompanying audio sample ... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Schellack (talk • contribs) 15:39, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

You can use {{Extra musicsample}}; usage is similar to {{Extra tracklisting}}. See Ticket to Ride for an example. — John Cardinal 16:37, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
I added field to alert songs that don't have a sample to Category:Song articles missing an audio sample.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 16:06, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
No. Since there is no way to tell if a sample will be considered fair use in any given article the catigory is inapropaite.Geni 20:45, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I strongly question this reasoning. It is undeniable that all fair use additions are under scrutiny, as they should be, but on a case by case basis. However, there is abundant and long-term precedent on Wikipedia for noting articles which would benefit from the addition of fair-use items. The policy at WP:ALBUM and the corresponding infobox explicitly states that a cover of the album should be included (which is always fair-use), and defaults to a placeholder graphic that leads to a list of articles missing covers. This page (which is the official Wikipedia page that appears at uploading) does the same thing. The best example is the the cover placeholder used in this very infobox: Image:Nocover-upload.png. This likewise leads to a list of articles that do not have a cover and the image even encourages users to upload one. The templates: {{Extra musicsample}} provides support for audio additions. And these are just a few examples that are in the realm of music. There are other parallels in other subject areas, including film and the logos of corporations, companies and organizations.
Since there is abundant precedent for this, I am going to revert your changes. But if you find an explicit policy that shows this is not permissible or feel that we should take this further, I am (honestly) open to fielding more comments from the community.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 14:52, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
The no cover image will be delt with in time and that page is not offical in any way shape or form. Pollicy wise you indescrimately encourageing the upload of unfree material in violation of part 3(a) of our EDP.Geni 18:11, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
You actions are bordering on bad faith since (1) Your assertion that "The no cover image will be delt [sic] with in time" is unfounded and (2) There is no 3a policy to WP:EDP at all, so the field certainly doesn't violate it. But, since you essentially "disputed" it (and I hate revert wars) we can bring in third parties to discuss it further.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 14:22, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
No 3(a)? um minimal usage bit?Geni 00:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
The #3 policy is literally irrelevant to our current discussion, and it has no subsections.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 14:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Um no subsections? what about "(b) Minimal extent of use". What are you looking at?Geni 18:13, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Third opinion

From 3o - It seems to me that automatically adding a maintence category that may, in some cases, be impossible to fix (due to fair-use issues) is a mistake. In the event a sample is missing on a specific article, the category could be added by hand, but it should not be added automatically without an evaluation of the fair-use issues surrounding the addition of a sound clip. Perhaps adding a toggle in the info box like (clip-requested: yes) which would allow for the addition of the category would be acceptable. PouponOnToast (talk) 15:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for taking out the time to respond to the request. I will add a toggle as you suggest that will allow editors to remove articles when in the cases where be impossible to fix, or the article is ineligible for a sample. Thanks again for your time.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 16:24, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
You appear to have inverted the order. The default must be to exclude samples, which are rarely acceptable. PouponOnToast (talk) 16:28, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
What do you base this comment on: "which are rarely acceptable?" If you follow the guidelines in the Wikipedia:Music samples and Template:Non-free audio sample, they are almost always acceptable. I've personally added 81 music samples - many of which are in features articles - and only one was deleted because I didn't include something necessary (I don't remember what now since that was months ago). If you have seen otherwise, I would (honestly) be open to considering the any examples you could provide. I think what I find most frustating from the comments from both you and Geni, is that neither of you have yet shown me a single policy to back up your claims or assertions, when I have shown multiple concrete examples of precedent and policy, including an actual message that appears at upload. I'm not a combatant editor; if you look at my (successful) nomination for being an admin, you will see that I have a reputation for being using the correct channels in disputes. But according to WP:DELETE, deletions should be based on "policy and guidelines, not personal likes and dislikes." I take this charge very seriously, both when making edits and removing the edits of others, and I feel like this is not occuring here.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 16:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Non-free content states " As few non-free content uses as possible are included in each article and in Wikipedia as a whole. Multiple items are not used if one will suffice; one is used only if necessary." Things do not default to necessary. I have no problem with people requesting clips in cases - requesting a clip by default is bad. PouponOnToast (talk) 16:55, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Again, that policy has nothing to do with what we're talking about. I added a field that categorizes articles that do not include a music sample. Not even one. If it does have one, then it won't be categorized, much less if it has too many. But audio samples are an important part of critique in Wikipedia, escpecially good and featured articles. If you look at featured song articles, I only saw one of them doesn't have an audio sample. I am a regular good article and featured article reviewer, and am heavily involved in adding samples, references, and critical review sections to music articles of all genres. The category served one purpose and one purpose only, to expedite a totally acceptable process that is already being done hundreds (if not thousands) of times a week. But currently, the process if very tedious. This served to make it go a little faster.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 17:15, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
The category is titled "Song articles missing an audio sample." Not "Song articles without..." but "missing," as if every song article should have an audio sample. Audio samples need to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. Additionally, it didn't work - many many articles with samples were categorized as having them missing. Have it default to off, go through every article with infobox song or single, and add requests as appropriate. PouponOnToast (talk) 17:20, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
OK. I took your suggestion and just added a template that can add it upon request.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 20:19, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] prev/next quotes

For the "prev" and "next" variables, since they're always going to be songs listed there, can automatic quotation marks be implemented? — pd_THOR | =/\= | 16:24, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The ability to hide tracklisting?

Is there any way someone could implement a choice of whether to include a toggle button to hide/show tracklisting into the infobox? While I like using complete tracklisting in song infoboxes, I can see how a reader would be annoyed by a large number of songs running down the page. I see the "hide/show" switch being used in footer templates and table of contents in other articles... does anybody think this could be done here? Pele Merengue (talk) 05:14, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't see any reason why all the songs of the album need to be in the song infobox in the first place. If you want to see all the songs, you can simply click on the link to the album article. Garion96 (talk) 13:35, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Plenty of information that's suggested for the infobox doesn't need to be in the song infobox. If we had a way to include tracklisting with the choice of hiding it, it would be a convenient way to access the information. Maybe it wouldn't be right to implement it into all song articles, but at least the choice would exist. Pele Merengue (talk) 00:29, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Recording/mixing

When listing the recording date(s) of a song or album, do the dates on which mixing took place count? Do they count as recording dates or are they completely different? Andre666 (talk) 09:49, 22 May 2008 (UTC)