Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 10

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Archive 10


Contents

Mistake on RX Bandits page?

I think their might be a mistake on the RX Bandits new Album Page (And the Battle Begun), They are listed as a Punk Rock band, but i'm pretty sure they are a Ska band. They have the trombones + sax sections in their band, which is characteristic of a ska band, also they sortve have a reggae feel, I think they should be listed as Ska. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RyanHLewis (talk • contribs) 18:04, 3 December 2006 (UTC).

Un(der)categorised albums

I notice there's quite a few album stubs lacking by-genre and/or by-year categories, whether or not they have other categories (besides the stub cat, obviously). Would this project find it useful to have a list of these uploaded somewhere? Alternatively, I could use the same data to populate "year of release missing" and "genre missing" categories (subcats of Cat:uncategorised albums, perhaps), though that would require some coding, bot approval, and numerous additional edits. There's also the issue of the use of very broad genre categories like "rock", but one step at a time, perhaps... Alai 03:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Most album articles will not have by-genre categories. The project's intention is to have albums-by-artist categories be subcat's of by-genre categories instead of having the album article itself be a page of that category. -Acjelen 18:16, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Most artists aren't going to have their own categories, realistically, so I'm not at all sure the above is true -- or at any rate, it shouldn't be true, in the long run; it may be true by omission at present. In any case, I could produce the "genre" list on the basis of album articles having neither an "artist" category, nor a (if the artist cats are themselves consistently categorised, that is). My real thrust is: is anyone working on album categorisation, or interested in doing so, and if they are, in what form would the above information be of use? Alai 21:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, all artists are supposed to have their own category. This is the course of action for even artists with only one release. To me it seems entirely sensible to stick with that system and putting by-genre cats in the by-artist cat as per Acjelen and current practice. W guice 08:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I'll believe it when I see it, to be frank, and certainly to describe it as "current practice" is not in line with facts on the ground. However, this is all by the by: the point is, is anyone the least bit interested in addressing the numerous stubby articles lacking either? Alai 01:57, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Would anyone find it useful to have a list of albums that are missing any of the three recommended categories? I'm sure someone would find that useful. But can it be done automatically somehow? Adding by artist and by year categories is almost as easy as adding a stub tag. I'd rather people just added the cats than added a categorization tag. -Freekee 05:14, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
But the difference is that a worklist of articles missing these categories can be produced automatically, whereas adding the (real) categories themselves cannot. (Other than in particular cases like articles having the data in an infobox, but lacking the categories, which itself is trickier than what I had in mind.) Which what I'm offering to do, if someone feels they can make use of it. Alai 00:07, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
I totally missed this thread when I posted my message "Bot needed to tag Uncat albums" (see below). If you are talking about tagging the articles for the uncat album cat, then, yes, I'd find it useful.--Fisherjs 10:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
It's related, but I was thinking in terms of articles missing some categories, rather than all. Something like Cat:Albums missing year of release, or the equivalent in list form. Alai 10:51, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Template trouble

I just set up an infobox for a new article, and the Chronology wouldn't show up. It was an artist with only one record, so I left the last and next fields blank, but the chron didn't show. I put an ellipsis in one of the fields and it was fine. Does anyone know why that is, and can it be fixed, or do we always have to put something in the fields? -Freekee 23:26, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

To show the information, either the Next or Previous release must be present I think. You could bypass that by adding "n/a" to the previous chronology link, at least until he/she releases a new record. -- ReyBrujo 23:54, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
I put in an & nbsp. *shrug* Thanks. -Freekee 04:53, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
This is an intentional behaviour of the template. I don't see a point of displaying the chronology in case of an artist with only one record. Jogers (talk) 09:16, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Ah. That's different. -Freekee 16:07, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Chronology for artist with only one record

What does everybody think about including the chronology box in the infobox, if an artist only has one album? What if they only have one album so far? Should the chronology always be shown? Only shown if the artist has more than one album? Only shown if the artist has only one album and could possibly release another (meaning still living)? -Freekee 16:11, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

I always put it, just so it's clear. doesn't hurt anything and doesn't look awkward. --badlydrawnjeff talk 16:17, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
If there is only one album released by an artist the chronology serves no useful purpose. I find repeating the information which is already available in the infobox superfluous. Jogers (talk) 16:24, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Do you mean repeating the name and date of the album? I think that showing that there is no previous or following album is useful. That something that may or may not be mentioned int he text of the article. -Freekee 16:57, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
It's not really our job to anticipate the possibility of follow-up releases by anyone. Takes the burden of proof off our shoulders, which is always good. -Unint 16:42, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Also, trying to look too far ahead means you get articles with titles like Tori Amos' 2007 studio album. I try to not encourage anything like that. -Unint 16:44, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Freekee above that it is good to indicate in the infobox that there is no previous and following album. The capability is there, it allows album articles to have a standard appearance, and every musician or band will have a first album (Little Earthquakes) and a last album (Anodyne (album)), even if it's the same one. -Acjelen 22:02, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
Having no chronology at all can indicate that there is no previous or following album as well. I think that saying that an album is the only one by a particular artist in the body of an article is far more straightforward. Jogers (talk) 08:45, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
The purpose of the infobox is to show all the main facts at a glance. Showing that an artist has no other albums by having a nearly blank chronology is very straightforward. But what's the drawback to showing it like that? Too many column inches used? You mentioned superfluousness. The only information in the infobox that is never given elsewhere in the article is the album cover . Just about everthing else is usually given in the text - especially, title, artist, producer. Even genre, length, recorded and label are sometimes given. I don't think we should avoid mentioning items in the text, just because they've been shown in the infobox. -Freekee 05:23, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
And the purpose of the chronology is to provide navigation between articles about albums by the same artist. Chronology with only "this album" doesn't serve this purpose. Saying that an album is the only one by a particular artist in the lead section of the article is perfectly enough in my opinion. Am I really the only one who thinks this way? Jogers (talk) 14:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
No, I think you're making sense. Space (album) has no chronology for just that reason. --kingboyk 16:01, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I think it makes sense. I just think the other issues make sense too, and accumulate to a greater importance. -Freekee 06:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Point of Information. How does the proposed modifications handle debut recordings — which by their very nature are without preceding entries? Also, if it turns out that the debut is from a "one-hit wonder" what purpose does a succession box serve? Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 14:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Information: there wasn't any modification proposed. The only direction was to leave the space blank if there was no previous record, or if the current record was the final one. And to place an ellipsis if there was as of yet no later album. -Freekee 01:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
In answer to the question about the point of including a succession box, I think it all boils down to this: Is the chronology box intended to be an informational aid, or only navigational? This sort of question has been coming up a lot for me lately. -Freekee 01:21, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Though there's not much of a consensus here, I'm going to call it. Like I said a couple of days ago, it's a question of the chronology being for information or navigation. Since including it when there's only one album doesn't hurt anything, and provides a certain amount of information, I think it should be included. If you prefer, you may view this as maintaining the status quo. I added a sentence to Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums#chronology, by way of explanation. -Freekee 04:52, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Using the single or album infobox for a non-radio single

Some bands, particularly indie/punk, release 7" singles without any plan for it to get on the radio. For example, "Cough/Cool" by The Misfits. Would the appropriate infobox for this be the single or album one? Because the single infobox to me seems to be about singles that are released to radio and such, vs a single that is released just as a way to put out a couple of songs. My opinion is that the album infobox is the way to go, but what would it get listed as? An EP would seem closest. Joltman 00:27, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Recorded music pre-dates the overwhelming control radio has on popular music, and Wikipedia needs to be able to reflect this. Perhaps the single infobox needs to be altered to be able to handle all kinds of singles, not just those intended for radio play. -Acjelen 01:38, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how Infobox Single is radio-play specific. It has fields for release formats, and record charts are generally sales-based. –Unint 01:53, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs. They have two infoboxes. {{Infobox Single}} for songs that were released as singles, and {{Song infobox}} for non-single album tracks. That's all. -Freekee 01:40, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

New
New
Oldy
Oldy

Improved Template:Infobox Album

Well, nothing serious actually, just:

  • Changing cover size from 200x200 to 250x250px. The reason: gaining more of the template's current dimenstions, making covers larger, and thus - clearer, for us, the Wikipedians.
  • Changing the existent and pretty obsolete No Cover Available image: (Image:Nocover.png) to: (Image:Nocover.jpg), designed by me.

Example of that done!

I believe it's a pretty necessary improvement for Wikipedia's album-related articles (mostly the 250px expansion). --Aston 15:49, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I prefer Image:Nocover.png and don't see any reason to change it. --Fritz S. (Talk) 16:25, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
I see a reason to remove the "No Cover Available" image completely. It adds nothing to the presentation, it isn't consistent with other infoboxes (which don't include an image if, for example in a person infobox, an image of the person isn't entered), and it isn't consistent with other missing entries in the template. If the Artist or Release field is left blank, there isn't text that states "Unavailable", it just doesn't show up. *Sparkhead 16:39, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
The main problem with the new image is that the Wikipedia symbol is copyrighted, and thus cannot be used in a free image (it is like using an existing album cover to create a free image). As for the size change, I have seen people changing the cover size to 250 or 256 pixels in WikiProject Computers and video games. The only problem is that, for someone browsing at 800x600 (which are a good amount of the casual users), that would take almost a third of their visual range. -- ReyBrujo 15:35, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
I do agree about the logo issue and thus released a new Nocover.jpg instead (see image at the left), thank you for bringing it up. Now, regarding to the dimensions, the thing is that the template as for now, includes empty spaces in it surrounding the cover (see: Template:Infobox Album), what, in my humble opinion, seems quite stupid, when the same empty space can be used for good! Anyone thinking 50 unused pixels of empty space (current situation) is better than the same 50 pixels, but well-used? --Aston 18:25, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Whatever the size of the image (200 or 250) I think it should appear full width of the info box – therefore if 200 is preferred reduce the info box width (though I prefer 250 images myself). I feel that indentation of an element – either text or, as in this case, an image – should only be done to convey a meaning, such as displaying a list, quotation or some other subordinate element within the main body of information. If it is of equal staus (as the cover image is with the rest of the info box data) then it ought to be the same width. Indentation just for decorative reasons should be avoided.Ricadus 19:22, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
Keep in mind that there's a third image floating around:
Image:Noimage.jpg
This one
It seems to be a more general-purpose image applicable for non-album purposes as well (though it certainly resembles a CD); however, it has been used instead of Nocover.png, inappropriately, in some articles. –Unint 00:10, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
My issue is a "no cover available" image isn't consistent with leaving other fields in the template blank. There should be no image there at all. *Sparkhead 00:20, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the old no cover image is perfect the way it is. -- Reaper X 00:25, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if i like how this "Image Not Available" is titled. It suggests that there is an image, but wikipedia can't find it. I'm okay with the current no-image available, even not all albums on this list are CD's. Andrzejbanas 02:43, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Maybe we should discuss the three issues here ("image width", "should there be an image?", and "what image?") seperately... --Fritz S. (Talk) 08:55, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. Especially the image width, I've uploaded a lot of images knowing the 200px limit, and this change is going to make a lot of awkward-looking pictures... ---badlydrawnjeff talk 16:09, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Keeping external links to a minimum.

Hi. Someone over at Wikipedia_talk:External_links#Albums has brought attention to this projects current aim to add large numbers of external links to articles in order to attempt a comprehensive linking to professional reviews.

I'd like to remind you all of WP:NOT's comments on this. "Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links", "Wikipedia is not a directory". It has always been the interoperation of WP:NOT in the WP:External Links guideline that external links not used as citations are to be kept to a minimum. Specifically "An article about an album, movie, book, or another creative work may have one or two links to professional reviews of the work."

I'd suggest you rectify this conflict with the policy and guideline on the issue. --Barberio 10:42, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Moving song usage lists from Trivia section

Can we (did we?) standardize around a heading for song usage in movies and whatnot? These tend to populate Trivia sections (example1, example2), which are counter-recommended for both WikiProject: Music and Wikipedia in general.

Best alternative I have found so far is Song usage, used in Furious Angels, and nowhere else. Tried a buncha other artists and found nothing — most don't have enough incidents to merit a separate section.

I've not found a standard heading under Wikipedia:WikiProject Music, Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs, or in any of the example articles (tho I did remove a Trivia heading from one).

Any ideas? If not, can we standardize around "Song usage"?

If/when we come to an agreement, this should probably be added to both MUSTARD and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Songs — edgarde 21:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts: Having a song usage section could act to formalize the inclusion of trivia. Most of this sort of factoid still count as trivia. It would just be named something else. -Freekee 03:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, we could delete this information entirely, but I don't think that's desireable. I think having a Song usage section would discourage Trivia sections, which is kind of my goal. — edgarde 16:59, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not so sure it should be standarized — the gathering of this information seems to completely depend on chance and the dedication of music fans; it tends to encourage the trivia-minded editors, I think, even if by a different name. On the other hand, "filmic" music like Furious Angels is inherently notable for its use in association with films in the first place (i.e. The Matrix). Of course, if the information is relevant in that sense, incorporation of something discussing song usage — in prose format, rather than lists — would be natural.
I'm digging up some examples for reference, once again:
Interestingly, Play (Moby album), the album that's been called the most licensed of all time, has no "song usage" section at all. –Unint 17:37, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Should song usage listings just be deleted?

This is going in a different direction than I expected. Should I just delete song usage examples on sight unless they seem worthy of proper ("prose format") discussion? My goal is to eliminate a few more Trivia sections, and on pages with many song usage Trivia entries it becomes awkward to replant.

One reason I figured we should preserve these, even (perhaps especially) in list form, is for people searching for "what was that tune in such-and-such movie?" Perhaps an encyclopedia is not suitable for that usage. — edgarde 19:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

It's up to you. Personally, as much as I hate trivia, I seldom delete any of it. But back to the root issue, it's a matter of notability. Was the use of the song notable? Was it a high-profile usage and/or in a high-profile movie? And where would be the best place to mention this? The movie article, the song article, the album article or the artist article? I think that list is ordered by descending importance. If the song isn't notable enough to warrant its own article, should it be mentioned at all that the song was used in a particlar movie? -Freekee 05:43, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Infobox Album: Should there be a "no cover" image?

As requested above. Forgetting what the image is, should there even be a "no cover" image? I vote no, as leaving any other field blank doesn't populate it with "Not available" text, I see no reason for the image to be different. Note most other infoboxes don't have default images when one is missing. *Sparkhead 16:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I think we should include the image - it might prompt people to upload and add it to the page. tiZom(2¢) 16:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree we should include an image, both as per the user above and so that the infobox doesn't look like a deflated beach ball. W guice 17:42, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
If an image is to be included (which as stated, I disagree with), it should say something to the effect of "please add one if you can find it". Worded a bit more elegantly than that, but more than just "No image available". *Sparkhead 18:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
I too agree that we should include the image, for many of the reasons already discussed. -Erik Harris 20:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Uh...if we wanna do this properly we need to have this in straw poll format. I shall move the votes of Sparkhead, tiZom, W guice and Erik Harris down here.

Straw poll: Should the "No Cover" image be removed from the {{Infobox Album}} template?

  • Support: I vote remove it, as leaving any other field blank doesn't populate it with "Not available" text, I see no reason for the image to be different. Note most other infoboxes don't have default images when one is missing. *Sparkhead 16:17, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I think we should include the image - it might prompt people to upload and add it to the page. tiZom(2¢) 16:25, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I agree we should include an image, both as per the user above and so that the infobox doesn't look like a deflated beach ball. W guice 17:42, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose: I too agree that we should include the image, for many of the reasons already discussed. -Erik Harris 20:11, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose: As per tiZom's reason. -- Reaper X 20:31, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support The placeholder might motivate people to upload the missing image. Equally as well, the sight of a "deflated beach ball" might motivate someone to upload the missing image. It's my view that in either case, placeholder or no placeholder, an insignificant amount of work would get done; if motivating people to upload missing images is really the issue, then a more coordinated effort is required (e.g. devise a talkpage template and corresponding category for articles missing album art). I find it silly to make decisions about the article namespace, designed for readers, based on how editors might react in the future. (Especially since there is no proof, except for one's personal intuition, that editors would indeed react in this way.) Optional parameters have made this self-referential image obsolete, and as already mentioned most other infoboxes do not resort to this practice. Punctured Bicycle 21:03, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support removal. I don't recall seeing any other infoboxes on Wikipedia that have "no image" images. And I don't think the template would look bad without an image in it. -Freekee 03:18, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support removal per Freekee and Punctured Bicycle - or was that Deflated Beach Ball? ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose 08:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Support removal per Ian Rose. --Fantailfan 13:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment: does any other template have an image placeholder? I can't think of one. *Spark* 13:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Oppose if it encourages people to join in that can only be good, is this not what wikipedia is about?? --Ehouk1 22:47, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Comment Rather than a "No Cover" image, why not just use text requesting an image in the space where the image would go?:
This article about an album
lacks an image of the album's cover.
If you can provide one, please see
How to upload album cover images*
*Link to a page regarding image size, etc.—Nicer1 (talk • contribs) 09:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Bot needed to tag Uncat albums

I have been spending a fair amount of time recently trying to keep the Uncat albums to a minimum. It might save time for those that tag articles for this category if we were to run a bot to look at all albums in Album stubs and its subcats and, if no cat is found, tag as an Uncategorised album. Could do the same for any article with an album template on the talk page or an album infobox and, again, no category in the article. Anyhow, this is an idea I had, but I know next to nothing about those that do the bot thing.--Fisherjs 19:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Here's a list of album-stubs that have no (other) categories in the Cat:albums sub-tree. (There's also some that have incomplete categorisation, as I noted in the earlier section.) If you don't mind working from the list, feel free to strike out any articles or sections you've categorised. If it's really necessary to put them into the uncat-cat first, something in the way of bot might be possible, though I'd probably need to work out something to take care of the possibility of false positives were I to do that. Alai 00:43, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not bad, but it would be a lot better if it were dynamic so that a simple reload of the page would remove the articles that had cats added to them (the way Uncat albums works). Striking through isn't too annoying so I'll work on the list bit by bit. I have been only adding the [[Category:YEAR albums]] because I wasn't sure if I should tag an article with a category like [[Category:ArtistXYZ albums]] if the category doesn't exist already. Maybe there's a discussion of this somewhere in the archives. Anyone recall?--Fisherjs 19:26, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Bots ought to get approval from the technical committee (of which I'm a member as well as being a member of this project, natch). Anyway, speaking on a personal basis not as a BAG member: Creating ArtistXYZ albums categories might be good, but you ought to have the bot upload a list of the redlink categories it's created, or better still just create the category! These things can be created generically I think if you're confident that you have correct the artist name (yes, false positives again).
Artist name: FKK My Old Boots
Albums category: Category:FKK My Old Boots albums. Should belong to Category:FKK My Old Boots and Category:Albums by artist
Artist category: Category:FKK My Old Boots. Should have a {{catmore}} template, should contain the eponymous article (FKK My Old Boots), and should belong to Category:Categories named after musicians.
All pretty simple stuff, well easy to do programatically I'd have thought. If you wanted to be really helpful, you could create artists categories for all the xxx albums (by artist) categories which don't have one yet. --kingboyk 20:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think anyone is talking about populating the 'real' categories by bot, and if they are, it sounds like a large can of worms to me. For one thing, it's a free text information retrieval problem, which would be tricky to get even moderately accurate (unless one did so on a very cautious basis (such as extraction only from fixed phrases, or better yet, infoboxes)), and secondly, it assumes there's community consensus for having singleton categories for every marginally- (or dare I say, allegedly-) notable band or artist there exists an album article on, which seems to me to be at best an open question (and not something the BAG alone can make a determination on). Alai 22:51, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Fisherjs: That's not exactly "automatic" either, since it depends on the editor removing the "uncat" cat, but yes, I know what you mean. I'm not mad-keen to create and populate more 'cat-missing cats' by bot, since while doing it without error-checking (principally, for categories that have been added more recently than the dump information) is likely to be fairly accurate, I'd rather not get the complaints about those few errors, and doing it with error-checking isn't completely trivial, since it requires some integration of the category hierarchy, and the bot code, which currently I handle completely separately. (The release date categories would pretty simple to handle, though, so if I do this at all, I'll start there.) OTOH, if it gets more albums properly categorised, I may look at this in the longer-run. Alai 22:40, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
It occurs to me that there's a simpler way to do this, at least as a first step: I can use existing bot code to check for there being any explicit category on the current article text (and use a slightly more restrictive input list from the db query). That should be pretty robust to false positives, and requires no encoding of the category tree. It'll miss some articles which have some categories (including just cleanup cats and the like), but not any album categories, but it's likely to catch most of them. I'm going to file a task approval note on this basis, but if anyone here has any thoughts, please chime in (there, here, or elsewhere). Alai 05:17, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Filed, anyone that wishes to share their thoughts either way at WP:BRFA please note. Alai 03:16, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Trial run completed, so there's 50-odd additional articles in Cat:uncategorised albums. Assuming the task gets final approval, I'll complete the album-stubs, and gradually progress to other stub categories on the same basis, if people are in favour. Alai 23:21, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Looks good to me. I'm in favor of this running on any album stub.--Fisherjs 07:56, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad to hear it. Of course by definition, the more "sorted" album types are somewhat better "categorised", but obviously still lacking a year-of-release category, are probably undercategorised by genre (the likes of "rock" is not usefully specific), and still aren't in the "permanent" category space. Anyway, if anyone has a contrary (or supporting) position before BRFA wends its way to a conclusion... Alai 11:54, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I've finished the album-stubs (there were only a few left by the time my bot's week's trial was over), and it's currently running on Cat:2000s rock album stubs -- not all of those have even a by-year category, somewhat surprisingly. So there's now getting on for 200 articles in Cat:uncategorised albums. Alai 03:03, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

And now the Cat:1990s rock album stubs. Alai 01:14, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Catalog numbers?

One of the things that bothers me most when using Wikipedia for music is that relatively few of the entries on individual albums, CDs, singles, etc. contain catalog numbers for the records or CDs -- or alternately, they are either UK-centric or Americocentric (ignoring differences between releases in the two major markets). And they are sometimes incorrect, reflecting currently available versions rather than the originals. I know that it could get crazy because of different numbers and release dates in different countries (US, UK, Canada, Japan, etc.) and different configurations (LP, CD, etc), not to mention reissues and remasterings. But if this is going to be a comprehensive encyclopedia, I feel that this information is essential. (Giving credit where credit is due: The Beatles' discography does a nice job at this.) Cheemo 00:07, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Not to imply that the discussion is closed, but it has been discussed previously. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums/Archive_4#Inclusion_of_catalog_numbers -Freekee 05:44, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
And while catalog numbers are a separate issue, feel free to improve articles on recordings that are too UK- or US-centric. It is also important that articles touch on both the original form and any later changes, but if one is lacking—add it. -Acjelen 15:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Infobox (chronology and producer) questions

Two questions here:
1. Under any condition is it appropriate to include album covers in the chronology section?
and
2. When listing multiple producers, should each producer be separated by <br /> or with commas?
--NPswimdude500 04:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

My opinion is that it is not necessary to separate names with a line break, in the infobox. I would advise against album covers in the chronlogy for two reasons. First, there is no reason to have two examples of the same cover in an article. Second, under WP:FAIR there is no reason to have an illustration of an album cover in an article about a different album. -Freekee 05:34, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps Love Spirals Downwards is a relevant example? Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 14:52, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
It looks good. But I meant what I said, that it wasn't necessary to separate them. :-) Though it appears swimdude took my statement as a rule. I might add that if the list is fairly long, giving them line breaks might be excessive. -Freekee 20:54, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
For multiple producers (or writers for songs, etc) I do either depending on what comes out 'neater'. If I can fit two on a line easily, I separate with a comma. If not, I use a line break. I see FreeKee's point re. line breaks when there are many producers but following my method you could use a combo of both commas and line breaks to keep it neat (i.e. not split names) w/o going overboard. Admittedly I tend to work on 70s and early 80s albums where a maximum of three producers (often only one) is common. From that time on multiple producers for different tracks has become far more common. BTW, also agree with FreeKee re. the chronology covers. Cheers, Ian Rose 23:28, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
I didn't necessarily take your statement as a rule, but the example infobox is in that format as are a great deal of existing album infoboxes. In some instances, when there are 10 or more producers (as often is the case with hip hop albums) it looks pretty poor when the producers list is that many lines long. Apparently the producers section is still a gray area. As per the chronology and album covers query: After reviewing WP:FU it seems as if there is no justification for the use of album covers in the chronology section. Additionally, WP:MUSTARD states that album covers should not be used in discographies, for the same Fair Use reasons.--NPswimdude500 01:06, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
I guess I'd say to list the people in whatever way looks best and is easy to read. Personally, I'd consider saying "see below" if the list of producers was too long, but I haven't had to do that, so that might not really be that good either. -Freekee 01:46, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Professional reviews

Appears to be a difference of opinion as to what to do if a review doesn't include a simple, unambiguous star or number rating for an album. I've seen the words 'Unrated' or 'Not rated', I've seen one-word interpretations of the gist of the review (e.g. 'Favourable'), I've seen short/sharp quotes (e.g. "balances on the precipice of..." no, sorry... "stands at the summit of western pop music" - yes, just been going over Revolver), and I've seen nothing but a link to the review. Be nice to gain consensus on what should be done here. My opinion is that the last-mentioned, i.e. don't put anything but the link, is by far the best. Star or number ratings are convenient but their absence shouldn't require that something else has to go in its place. 'Unrated' or 'Not rated' sounds a bit weak and could even be interpreted as saying 'not worth rating'. 'Favourable' or some other word is the editor's interpretation of the review and is always open to question. Quotes are necessarily going to be selective and look a bit clumsy. However IMO both 'Not rated' and the quotes are better than the 'Favourable'/'Unfavourable' concept. That said, imagine my surpise when I went through WP:ALBUM and found that 'Favourable'/'Unfavourable' appears to be encouraged. Is this old policy which hasn't been swept away in the last clean-out or does the project really believe that such one-word interpretations of a professional review make sense? If I'm right the first time, let's get rid of that bit from the project page straight away and if I'm wrong and it really is policy, I recommend a change there for the reasons above. In any case, like to see some discussion. End of rant... Cheers, Ian Rose 09:07, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Good point. Quotations are too selective. "Favorable" could be considered original research. "Unrated" could be wrongly interpreted. I also think that nothing is by far the best. Also, while on the subject of reviews, I'd like to point out that it was brought up that WP:External links states that only one or two reviews are to be linked. -Freekee 15:53, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Well I suppose the Idea would be to have a "critical reception" on the page for each album then instead of a "Professional Reviews" part of the infobox. This will probably make a lot of articles seem more biased or unbiased since like it or not most people who create album pages are biased towards the group and will either add tons of negative reviews or add tons of possitive ones. I really just add any reviews I can find that seem notable (from known websites, newspapers, etc.). I think removing the stars seciont might not be the best thing to do though, but putting in favourable or non-favourable sort of is too large. I remember someone suggesting before to make a template for "+/-" that never really put through for these kind of reviews. Bah! This is turning long. I'm cutting it off here. Andrzejbanas 22:00, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Also, on thinking about it again, most links arent' really external links for common sense, but are Citations really. Andrzejbanas 23:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
A "Critical reception" section in articles would be great. Then links would be citing references, rather than stating someone rated a record so here's a link. Aside from that, prose about reviews is good to have. But nobody's recommending getting rid of the numberical, star or letter grades from the infobox reviews - only summaries for reviews that don't have them. You're irght, though about the bias. For that reason, I would prefer to add as many reviews as we can find. One or two is not a good sampling. Makes me wonder if we should even have reviews in the infobox. -Freekee 05:33, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Right, FreeKee, I think those review links in the infobox should stay, whether or not they have star/number ratings or not (see Revolver as of today for an example of how I think it should look, Sgt. Peppers is fine too except we should replace the date on the RS review with 'link' - we don't put dates on the others). Yes, 'Critical reception' is in fact a section on a number of A-rated album articles and I think it's a good idea - that's the place to put some quotes from the reviews, or simply in the body of the article if it isn't big enough to justify a separate section. Cheers, Ian Rose 11:29, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
What about professional reviews that don't give stars or other quantitative mark? I know Gramophone reviews classical albums, but doesn't give them stars. -Acjelen 03:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
That's what we're talking about. :-) Or at least what started the whole discussion. -Freekee 06:33, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Care should be taken to avoid confusing original research with the concept of deductive reasoning. Reviews without metrics — which must still be cited — usually contain language to indicate the affect of the reviewer which may be positive (Image:Positive.png), negative (Image:Negative.png), or indifferent (Image:Indifferent.png). --Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 13:48, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

To my personal taste stars or arrows don't suit Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. They look trivial and somehow inappropriate. I second a "Critical reception" chapter. A great idea.--Peter Eisenburger 03:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I think the reviews issue has been hashed over and settled repeatedly. Personal taste does not rule in Wikipedia; while it would be of great importance in Fantailpedia or Fantailblog, this is a project which is charmingly devoid of personal opinion, original research and intuitive reasoning. The sole criteria for inclusion is source validity. Critical reception is a five-syllable term for reviews. Professional reviews are almost always contemporaneous (I can't believe I spelled that correctly the first time) and therefore are almost always coterminous (which I didn't spell correctly the first time) with the album release. That sentence should be towed out to sea and sunk with gunfire. Reviews written at the time are amazingly narrow-minded and parochial but are nevertheless illluminating. Re-evaluations (such as those occasionally found at Pitchfork and which constitute most of the AMG reviews) are almost always illuminating, if often anachronistic. An unoriginal but nevertheless comprehensive gloss on critical reception should be a part of the article, if you get the time and the album is Notable. --Fantailfan 00:53, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Releases listed on a record label article? Also, band list necessary when all bands are already mentioned in text?

I was working on the Plan 9 Records page, and removed a section that listed every release by the label in chronological order. It has since been put back, so I wanted to see others' opinions on the matter. Is it appropriate for a label's article to list everything the label has put out? Granted, in this case it was only around 20 releases, it still seems a bit gratuitous. And another thing, the label put out stuff by only four different acts, all of which are referenced in the article. There is then a 'Bands who were on Plan 9 Records' section that lists all of those artists again. Should that list be there?Joltman 00:00, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Both lists seem like a good idea to me. If a release list gets too long it can still be split off... As for the bands list, if people just want to know what bands are/were on a label, such a list is probably the easiest/quickest way to get that information. After all, we also have discographies in artist articles, even when all their records are mentioned in a history section. --Fritz S. (Talk) 16:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Some collectors target certain labels (e.g. Vertigo, Blue Note, Stiff, Factory) rather than particular bands, so in these cases finding a way to show a comprehensive list of titles including useful info like catalog numbers would be a helpful resource. Ricadus 19:37, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Uncat Albums

Uncategorised albums is getting close to 40 - might want to give it some attention. Aelfthrytha 16:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Stubs?

Lately, I've been placing or removing stub tags on album articles, according to the following criteria: infobox, track listing, personnel and at least a sentence of text. What do you think about that? Are all of those required, and do you think a more substantial amount of text should be required? -Freekee 04:42, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

That seems a little light to me. I'd tend to think that if an article were to remain as brief as that long-term, and was regarded as being essentially as complete as it was ever likely to get, it'd be a candidate for being merged into a "List of" articles (at least where there's several such for the same artist). But if people are happy with "finished" album articles being as short as that, this might be an exception to the general rule. Alai 05:30, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
When I think of a non-stub, I think of something along the lines of say This Time Around or Pink Moon. I think the amount of text on Appalachia Waltz is a minimum for a non-stub tag. Obviously few album articles will reach the length and quality of articles like Illmatic, but if a stub tag encourages improvement and expansion, it would be better to keep it there. -Acjelen 06:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
On the other side of the coin: ideally if an article is of more-than-stub-length (and isn't horribly in need of attention otherwise), but doesn't have all of the above, it'd be moved from the stub category into some more specialised cleanup category. (Infobox missing, release date missing, etc.) Alai 06:29, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Freekee's criteria seems good to me... They match pretty much what I suggested earlier when we discussed Wikipedia 1.0 Assessments. --Fritz S. (Talk) 16:15, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Judging by what I see here, Budgie's Bandolier isn't a stub any more. I was wondering what more this minor piece of rock history needed. The whole music project isn't very well signposted. Perhaps we could have a sample entry showing the minimum requirements. Incidentally, Windows Media Player collects album covers, but I've no idea where it stores them on my computer. Any ideas? Patrick Neylan 23:35, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

EPs

Should an EP count as a seperate album or not? It's made from previously released songs, so I think it should not count. It bumps an artist's album count up to six, when they've really only released five and several other discs* with already released music.

  • One of which is currently being counted as a full-length studio album.JimmmyThePiep 15:18, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Wouldn't this depend on the EP? --badlydrawnjeff talk 15:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
  • Well, we generally count an EP as an EP. What's the artist? What 'album count' anyway? W guice 15:39, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Some were originally released as mini-albums in their own right, e.g. the UK version of The Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour" that was subsequently bulked out with other tracks and re-released as an album later. I think the original EPs from the late 1950s were 7 inch vinyls but played at 33&1/3rd rpm, but by the 1980s the term was applied to 45 rpm disks containing more than one track per side, including 10 and 12 inchers, especially when the material was never on any albums (e.g. Kraftwerk's "Tour De France" from 1983 being one such).Ricadus 16:24, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Agree with Ricadus. In the late 70s and early 80s many Australian bands released EPs or mini-albums which counted as stand-alone works (Models, The Birthday Party and The Laughing Clowns to name just three). I think the situation was similar at that time in the UK. Cheers, Ian Rose 08:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we as WP editors should take a position of judging a full-length album or EP as "counting" or "not counting" just because it contains previously released material or someone thinks the band or musician didn't "really" release it. The triumph of the long-playing album of new material is over so we might as well adapt to it, especially since the new situation is very close to the early decades of recorded music (allowing for changes of media and scale). -Acjelen 21:36, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Separate from what? They're official releases by the band. Albums get articles, singles usually get articles. Why wouldn't EPs? Basically, they have the same notability requirements as albums. If they're compilations, they usually don't deserve articles. If they're original recordings, they do. -Freekee 04:32, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Auto-cat albums by changing template

If we add [[Category:{{{artist}}]] to the Inforbox Album template, all those articles will bew categorised. Is this a good idea? Rich Farmbrough, 11:45 17 November 2006 (GMT).

The problem is that an artist field in most infoboxes links to an article about the artist. And besides, there is no way to actually create a category automatically, as far as I know. Jogers (talk) 12:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think it's necessary, since all albums are supposed to be categorized under albums by artist already. Albums should be in that category and not the general artist category. -Freekee 06:02, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
You also have piping issues. -Freekee 06:04, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Notability

There is a notability album guideline which would get rid of 90% of the articles covered by this wikiproject - Wikipedia:Notability_(albums) - I suspect people may be interested. Secretlondon 16:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

This is only proposed guideline so far, I encourage WikiProject members to discuss the matter. I also think the estimation of "90% of the articles" is inaccurate. -- Reaper X 19:18, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
The inclusion points are good criteria for deciding on how to flesh out existing stubby articles – or indeed whether it's worth spending time on an article altogether. I do think that in most cases any compilation albums of pre-existing recordings should be merged into a single article for the particular musician or band, if they are needed at all. Ditto song stubs.Ricadus 19:42, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Please take your comments to the Notability (albums) talk page, not here. -- Reaper X 19:44, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we should discuss it here. We're the album project. Maybe we should write our own policy and present it for possible inclusion. -Freekee 03:04, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Personally I think most any albums that have been featured in review in a few large and notable music sources should be on this site. Andrzejbanas 13:24, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Proper way to note tracks that are soundbytes?

I was cleaning up The Devil's Rejects soundtrack and it has a bunch of soundbytes from the movie. Is there a proper way to note them as such? Should anything be listed as the 'artist' for these? Joltman 12:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I had (have) a somewhat similar issue with Have a Nice Decade, the difference being that these soundbites are (a) part of the track at the end and (b) refer (however obliquely) to the next track on the CD. I decided to use inline referencing, with smaller typesize and italics:
  1. James Taylor (1970): "Fire and Rain" (Taylor) – 3:54 Sound clip: Interview with a member of the Lakota nation during the Wounded Knee Incident
  2. The Raiders (1971): "Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)" (John D. Loudermilk) – 3:27Sound clip: Description of the "Jesus People" of southern California
  3. Ocean (1971): "Put Your Hand in the Hand" (Gene MacLellan) – 2:57
My solution was, as you can see, to descrbe the clip (with links as they referred to historical or cultural events) in the cut in which they appeared. I could have done it somewhat differently:
  1. James Taylor (1970): "Fire and Rain" (Taylor) – 3:54
However, as only 25 songs out of 160 have clips, I didn't like the visual effect.
On the other hand, if they are tracks of their own and appear between each track, I would use a variation on the second list:
  1. James Taylor (1970): "Fire and Rain" (Taylor) – 3:54
  2. Sound clip: Interview with a member of the Lakota nation during the Wounded Knee Incident

--Fantailfan 12:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

External LInks

I saw your list of review sites. It has many possible review sites, which is great. But, I am seeing these added as external links rather than citations. As a member of the spam fighting wikiproject I am seeing alot of link farming. Would it be possible for you guys to emphasize properly citing your reviews. (As sources no less).

  • Also I noticed a few odd links on your list of review sites. They are
    • Buy.com : has no reviews, but does have a "professional reviews" link on the left side of album pages – it contains brief excerpts from reviews from magazines like Mojo and NME, which do not have searchable online databases, and also includes the date and page of the review. --- Something with the name of the site is striking me as an advert, and not a potential source of information. If a page can only link there, we might as well doubt its notability.
    • iq451.com : has no reviews but has clickable links to many reviews, some of which are professional --- It does not even have any reviews. Thus it is not a good source.

It would be very nice if more emphasis on using citations was made, rather then bare external links which only encourage linkfarming. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 03:18, 21 November 2006 (UTC) P.S. if you want to see how much spam we are really getting please check out #wikipedia-spam on the freenode network. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 03:34, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Regarding citations... that sounds like a good idea. Instead of link, in the review section, it should simply be a reference, by way of citing the source. Actual links should only be given for a couple of reviews, as someone reminded us above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freekee (talk • contribs)
What are these example of these couple of links that should be given? I'm curious. JoeSmack Talk 08:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you're asking. To clarify/expand my statement, the list of review summaries in the infobox should use ref tags instead of direct links to the reviews. There's really no reason to link readers to the reviews, except to enable fact checking. Wikipedia isn't meant to be a starting point for information about things, it's meant to be the source of information. Direct links should be given in the External links section, and we should be careful to make sure they're good ones. And there's really no need to be redundant between External Links and References. -Freekee 09:04, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Eagle, I think it's clear that both buy.com and iq451.com (as well as metacritic.com) are not sources of reviews to be linked, but review finders. Those sites would not be linked/referenced in the articles, but the sites they link to would be (assuming they meet other criteria). -Freekee 04:20, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Removal of "No Cover" Image

The straw poll above came even basically (5/4 support), but I'd like to make another comment:

No other infobox has a placeholder image. Not (any heavily used) one. Though if anyone can find even one other instance I'd like to see it.

The only argument I saw for keeping it was to encourage a user to upload an image. Available covers on other album pages will accomplish that. It serves no purpose.

What makes the album template unique in this regard? For consistency's sake with other templates, the placeholder image should be removed. Not looking for another straw poll, but an actual argument beyond the "encourage upload" one. Thanks. *Spark* 03:11, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, what other reasons are there besides conformity to other templates? A user new to Wikipedia might not recognize a "deflated beach ball" and know that you can help out by uploading an image for an album. Neither will the placeholder that we currently have. Some may be fooled by the "No cover available" statement. My suggestion would be adding a footnote below the placeholder explaining this.
It really burns my ass that this conversation is still going on. Its a waste of time deliberating over this in my eyes. We need to focus on reducing the amount of album articles with these placeholders or something. Why not modify the template so infoboxes with blank cover fields are automatically added to a category like "Album infoboxes needing covers" or something? That way some users can just go through it and upload the images.
But besides that, my opinion is just conservatism. Why mess with it if it's not hurting anything? I don't see how it's creating such a fuss over whether we have it or not. Even if we deleted it, there's someone in the future that will bring it up and suggest we have one. It's just a bunch of dancing around the bush. -- Reaper X 03:58, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Another reason beside conformity is that it looks bad as is. I don't get this "deflated beach ball" comment, it looks fine without a picture. Be that as it may, the conversation can take place while other activity is going on. I have a change ready to go for the template, see talk over there. I also created a new category Category:Albums without cover art. The template is protected now (that's what I get for transcluding the doc) so I cannot make the change myself. But I've tested it in my user space and it works fine. *Spark* 13:53, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't think we need a category for that. The File links list on Image:Nocover.png already lists all articles that use the image. If someone wants to upload missing covers, they can work from that list. --Fritz S. (Talk) 14:28, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
That's an unorganized list. Why not make it easy as possible for those looking to help out? *Spark* 15:13, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I checked out the what links here page for Nocover.png and there are no album pages there as of this post. Is my disbelief justified? Is there seriously no album infoboxes lacking a cover, or is there some kind of strange error? -- Reaper X 19:11, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
That's just the list of links to the image's description page. The list of articles that use the image is at the bottom of the description page: Image:Nocover.png#filelinks. --Fritz S. (Talk) 19:19, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Ah geez I'm an idiot. Well, in that case, I wouldn't see a problem with working from there. A category wouldnt do much else than alphabeticize the list, theres no need to take up more space. -- Reaper X 19:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Any idea why image resources work differently in that respect? If their "what links here" worked like other pages such lists could be worked with far more easily. Is there a way to extract *only* that list from the description page? *Spark* 23:56, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

After looking through the list, I have to say I changed my mind and now think that a category might not be such a bad idea after all, since so many articles using the image are in fact song articles, and not album articles. --Fritz S. (Talk) 11:24, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

To do list

-Freekee 03:40, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Category:Needs album infobox has well over 200, but there seems to be a bug in the counting of large categories. Maybe we should move all these numbers up to the To do list at the top of this page, however?--Fisherjs 12:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
That's 891 articles. It seems to be counting only the number of articles on that page, and not in the category altogether.
I thought about putting those numbers on the to-do list, but I wasn't sure anyone reads that on a regular basis. I wanted to get some attention. I wish there was a way to add the category coutns automatically. -Freekee 04:46, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Question about track listing

I'm trying to conform the page for The Sweet Escape to standards. One of the writers for the song "The Sweet Escape" is Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam, commonly referred to as Akon. Should I really include his full name; it would probably take up a whole line by itself. — ShadowHalo 01:17, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

If Akon is common enough, that should be good enough. For decades, composers were listed on records only by their last name, so a single name ought to do it. Besides, you could just link to the article (Akon), and then it will be clear. :-) -Freekee 05:02, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:45, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

More on uncategorisation

I forgot to mention that I bot-populated the Cat:uncategorised albums with the Cat:hip hop album stubs lacking any non-stub categories; next, I can do the Cat:Heavy metal album stubs and the Cat:Electronic album stubs. I also notice that there's a lot of song-stubs lacking permcats; if the album-catters are interested in working on those too, I can set up and populate an Cat:uncategorised songs maintenance cat (I've mentioned this at the Songs wikiproject already). Alai 14:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

You'd think since the weather (in the northern hemisphere, at least) is getting worse, more people would be here, and giving opinions. I wonder why it's so slow around here. Anyway.. .it sounds decent to me. -Freekee 04:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Beats me, but any such category that people are emptying, I'm glad to refill. Talking of which, I've 'botted somewhat over a listings page of the HM&electronic albums into the above. Hopefully there will be another db dump soonish, and I should be able to get more recent data on albums-missing-cats. I notice there's quite a lot of "uncategorised stubs" in the music area in general, instead of "songs", I could just create an Cat:uncategorised music stubs (or Cat:uncategorised music articles, more generally still) cleanup cat... Alai 17:50, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Adding stubs from all the genre-album-stub categories is definitely a good idea. The song and music sound like a good idea. Try posting about it over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Music and Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs. -Freekee 18:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I do plan on adding them all, just gradually, lest 'supply' get too far ahead of 'demand'. Didn't get any takers at WPJ-Songs, have now mentioned it at -Music. Alai 21:12, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Possible page format

I won't go into the details, but I ran across 30 Something and designed a table to list the albums of a band in a Discography article with basic information given for each album (Title, Release Date, Chart Rank, Tracks). This allows the capture and organization of basic information about albums that aren't important enough to have articles of their own; those that warrant articles can have the album title on the Discography article link to the album article. Have a look at User:Nicer1/Sandbox; note the links for A World Without Dave and I Blame the Government. The table is presented in two different formats; be sure to scroll to the end of the first table to see the organization of the second. There are additional comments about this on the 30 Something Talk page.

I'm not familiar with this project and don't really want to get too involved; this was my attempt to find an improvement to a pretty paltry article. I do notice that one issue here may be that there isn't really a place for an album cover image in the table. I wonder, though, if it's necessary to have such an image for an album that doesn't warrant its own article; the images could be placed in the separate article. The same idea would apply to the Infobox—for use only on album-specific article pages; only basic album info would appear in the table on the Discography page.

Alternatively, a thumbnail of the album cover could be placed under the album title in the first column of the first table example; a smaller thumbnail could be added to the second column of the second table example. I've illustrated both using Image:Noimage.jpg

Thoughts?—Nicer1 (talk • contribs) 09:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

1) Discographies aren't supposed to have album covers (fair-use, and all that), but if there is no album article, the article that does discuss the album maybe could have the image. 2) I like whichever table that has less deadspace - the second one, I think. 3) I don't care for the use of categories in discographies - only in album articles. 4) In any case, since it's not complete, I think the categories should be removed from your sandbox, so readers don't follow the links to your page. 5) I don't think it's right to link to words in song titles. If the song is a cover version, feel free to link to the original song, and maybe put a link in that article.
Did you plan on maing this a stand-alone article, or including it in the band's article? -Freekee 23:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
1) Don't know if there's a way to include enough commentary in the discography table to justify using the images or not; it would be a good thing to do, I think. 2) I like the second table version as as well. 3) The track lists were copied and pasted from the existing articles about the albums (which are basically just track lists). I didn't link back to those articles in the draft to illustrate how a link to an expanded article would work. I'd like to see all the other "track list" articles deleted in favor of a single article with this table. You can find those links at Carter USM). The categories were included in those articles, so got copied and pasted as well. 4)I've added the leading colon to the links so as to make them a link to the category page rather than having the page included in the category. 5)I would tend to agree about not having words linked in the song titles; however, if there isn't to be an article about the album, it would make understanding the song title easier (I had never heard of Domestos, for example). Again, I just copied and pasted what was there.
What I had in mind was that the Carter USM Discography section heading would be a link to a separate article that looked like this draft. Including it in the band's article gets a bit unwieldy, in my opinion, but it's WikiProject Albums' to do with as they please. Or do nothing with as they please.—Nicer1 (talk • contribs) 03:00, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
My first impression is that both designs look pretty ugly – kind of clunky looking – is there any way they can be made more elegant? Do the table cells need to be a solid black line – or even visible?
Cover images could be very small, 60 or 100 pixels perhaps – users can click on them to see the image at a larger size if they want.
I think separating the chart info, cover picture and record label info is better – otherwise how would you clearly and concisely display multiples, such as US/UK/German/French/etc entries in the charts (as will happen with major artists). The first table also makes better use of the screen width.
This design assumes readers are interested in an overview based on album releases, yet some musicians simply record stuff pretty much continuously and pick and choose what gets released on albums, sometimes not at all according to the dates of recording. There was an interesting Miles Davis discography design in one of the Columbia box set releases that listed all the tracks chronologically (according to recording sessions, rather than commercial release packages) and used thumbnails of album covers as icons to show which albums the fruit of the recording sessions ended up on. Some sessions had 3 or 4 of these thumbnails, so they were a useful device rather than just a decoration. Ricadus 20:02, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Ricardus had a good point about using up the horizontal space. How about three columns? One for image, one for track listing (including authors and times), and one for all other text (see the album infobox for the list of important info)? A suggestion about how to use this is for it to be a stand-alone discography article. The band's article should include a link to it along with a list of studio albums (just so people don't have to go to far to get the most basic info). If this discography is the main source of info about the albums, it will be fine to include the artwork. -Freekee 00:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Actually, there is a much better format available on the Eminem discography article. I was unaware of its existence until User:Punctured Bicycle clarified the retention of the Carter USM albums here. As I said on that page, I will bow out of the discussion; those with more knowlege about what should be presented can decide how to present it. Thanks.—Nicer1 (talk • contribs) 15:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Needs album infobox conversion

It may be possible to create a bot to automatically do the infobox conversions for us. Could someone please enlighten me as to what needs to be done? Thank you. (Radiant) 16:33, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Most of the articles in that category are Wikitables (and also happen to be songs, not albums). So there doesn't appear to be an easy conversion. I just paste in the table formatting and drag the values from the table to the template. -Freekee 02:41, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
There would be an easy conversion if the order is always the same? (Radiant) 09:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Is it possible to verify that the order is the same in each case? Or would an automatic conversion just quietly "go wrong" in such cases? Alai 16:27, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, I converted all of the ones for U2 songs, and they all seemed to be the same (except where there were extra chronologies). Also, if they converted wrong, it would probably be obvious. The main thing is that there are different infoboxes and tables for songs than albums. I don't see many albums on the list, though. -Freekee 04:44, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I just went through the list and converted the three remaining albums manually. Now only songs are left, and I'm currently writing some regex to convert them with the AWB... I think it'll be better to do this semi-automatic/assisted than to have a bot blindly go through them, in case something gets messed up. --Fritz S. (Talk) 10:55, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
That was my thought. Basically if it's possible to write a regex to do this automatically, it should be possible to do it in AWB, with a human in the loop. Alai 18:36, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Cat:Uncategorised albums

Back up to just over one listings page. (Don't blame me, blame my bot!) Alai 16:26, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Have you gone through all the stubs? If so, I'm wondering if you can do something similar for those articles that don't have album stubs but do have Album Infoboxes.--Fisherjs 23:17, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
The category is starting to get up there again in number of articles —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.133.221.27 (talk) 01:24, 17 December 2006 (UTC).

Category:Albums without cover art

Hey, do you think that it's worth changing that caegory to Album articles without cover art? It looks like it's talking about the albums themselves. -Freekee 05:05, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Pedantic git, aren't you? To be honest, I agree (I'm a pedantic git too). ;-) Cheers, Ian Rose 07:32, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Fellow pedants, technically it's Album Infoboxes without cover art. *Spark* 12:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
While you're correct, in that the category is populated by instances of infoboxes without images, an article missing an infobox and an image could be added to the category by direct use of the category tag. -Pedantic Git #1 03:49, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Style guide for track listing

I haven't found style guide for track listing. How should I format it? Geevee (talk|contribs) 19:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Have you looked at this? Jogers (talk) 19:58, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, how stupid am I. Thank you! Geevee (talk|contribs) 20:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

When tracks are sets

This problem is applicable really only to some genres — I've noticed it with Celtic music albums. It's "specialty" nature may be why it isn't addressed in the style guide. Said problem arises when several (short) tunes are rolled up into a single set. The set is given a title as a whole and, being only one set, is only one track. Several examples of this appear on Cherish the Ladies' album, The Girls Won't Leave the Boys Alone. Track 5, for example, is made up of three tunes: "Mullin's Fancy," "The Raveled Hank of Yarn," and "Gilbert Clancy's." Yet the tunes make up a single track, called "The Raveled Hank of Yarn Set." The same thing happens for track 9 ("The Colliers' Set") and track 13 ("The Last Night's Fun Set"). Is there a policy for such cases?  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 16:34, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I brought this up a while ago. For reference, the answers I got: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 7#Track listing display issues. Probably worth drafting up some guidelines for the main project page, but nobody's ever gotten around to it. –Unint 17:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Translations

I have noticed that many artists popular with Spanish speaking music fans (Celia Cruz, Marc Anthony, Tito Puente, etc.) have discography deficiencies. Have you ever made a broad task of translating info from Spanish wikipedia? TonyTheTiger 15:08, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry

Should List of recordings preserved in the United States National Recording Registry have a Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums tag? TonyTheTiger 15:09, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

On the one hand, I say "sure, why not?" On the other, I say that not all of those recordings are albums. -Freekee 16:38, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

Subgenre?

Can we put subgenre(s) of the album? I have made some example. See Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Could we carry this on? Marhadiasa 12.25 10 December UTC

Do you mean another field or just listing multiple genres in the existing field? --*Spark* 13:07, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
He set it up with Hip hop as the genre, with East coast and Hardcore indented underneath, showing them as subgenres. I wouldn't split up the field. I think there are more advantages to showing the subgenres, than disadvantages. Though in this case, I'd probably leave out the first line and go directly to the subgenres, since it's pretty obvious that East coast hip hop is hip hop. Showing the subgenres would eliminate some edit wars over genres, but it runs the risk of people putting in every last genre that might apply to a band. There are other ways to show it than indenting, as well. You could just list them (vertically or with commas), or you could put the subgenres in parentheses. I woulnd't recommend standardizing on one way. -Freekee 16:24, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Methinks listing the genre as the only entry is best; for the subgenre[s], use the appropriate category tag[s]. Infoboxes are intended to be as concise as possible; cluttering them with information about subgenres could be quite counterproductive. --Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 18:31, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
How about separating them with commas? -- ReyBrujo 18:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I have made a proposal at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians#Genre wars and the distinguishing of genres and styles that relates to this.
It would involve distinguishing genres and styles, a "style" being a subgenre in this case. As part of the proposal, i asked that {{Infobox musical artist}} be modified so it also has a Style(s) field. Perhaps the same can be done for {{Infobox album}}.
I would appreciate feedback on this proposal. I am going to push hard for this proposal to be put into action, and I appreciate any supporters in helping me do so. Thank you. -- Reaper X 01:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Image naming conventions

Hi, I just joined this project.

I would like to know the naming conventions (if any have been established [I haven't found any]) for images of album covers? Normally, this does not pose a problem, as I use this template: Image:Title of Album (Artist Name album), following Wikipedia's suggested convention. However, I am now at a road block because I want to include alternative album covers in some pages I will be creating/editing, and there is no convention for alternative covers.

Here are two naming conventions which make the most sense to me:

Notice the capitalization of "Alternative" in the first, but not the second example. Also notice I use alternative not alternate.


Any comments or other suggestions? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Twas Now (talk • contribs) 01:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC).

Personally I prefer small image names, just for how it looks while editing. I don't know that the naming conventions apply to image uploads. I see no reason to not simply append a number to the original name. --*Spark* 01:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Why do you feel it's important to have standardized naming? -Freekee 05:36, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
I think that as long as you give a title that's clear, and preferably uses whole words, it's good. I know I failed that practice myself in the past. (I haven't uploaded an image in ages) I don't see any reason to spend effort standardizing image names. ~Gertlex 07:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Thunder and Lightning

I think the Thin Lizzy album Thunder and Lightning should be moved to Thunder and Lightning (album) and a disambig page should be put in its place as already there are 4 other things linked away from it including the Book, Tag Team, and Comic, not mention the physical phenomena itself. Anyway, i was hopping i could leave it with you guys to sort out and do as its your area an all. --- Paulley

  • I wasn't sure whether the album should be moved or not, so I just made a disambig page and linked it at the top, replacing the multiple links with just one. Joltman 13:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough, looks good to me. Thanxs -- Paulley

Article list

A few projects have started article lists which, when finished, will allow members to keep up with recent changes to their articles through using a recent changes program. I am in the process of beginning such a list for this project. Please inform me if you would find such an effort either a duplicate of current efforts or otherwise pointless. Thank you. Badbilltucker 20:50, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Something like a filtered watchlist? -Freekee 15:46, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Should EP articles that need to be disamgiuated use (album) or (EP)?

When an EP's title needs to be disambiguated, should the article title be Title (album) or Title (EP)? Joltman 12:27, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Since there are instances of an artist releasing an album and an EP under the same title (Magical Mystery Tour is almost an example), I think Title (EP) would be the best disambig for EP's. — edgarde 13:13, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Upcoming albums

Hey all, I was going through this category just now with WP:AWB in order to check if all articles were tagged for the Project when I can along to a couple of band pages in the category, such as U2 and Maroon 5. Before I did anything either way, is this a correct category that artists should be a part of? Am I missing something? -- moe.RON Let's talk | done 04:51, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

The cat is for albums only. I hope there's not a category for bands with upcoming albums. And U2 doesn't even have an "upcoming album," as far as I can tell. -Freekee 05:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Request for a new rating category

I would like to request a new rating be created to allow categories to be rated as a category like the one that is currently used by WikiProject Songs. Artist Specific Categories don't really fit in any other ratings. Thank you. Rainer1 06:59, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

There already is a "NA" (non-article) category for the assessments. Maybe that one would be the one you're looking for. Badbilltucker 16:01, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Query

I have a question and I figure this is the best place to get it answered. My question involves the credits section in the album Things Fall Apart. (Things Fall Apart (album)#Credits) Is that too long? Should the technical credits be removed so that only the performance credits are left? KOS | talk 15:03, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

My suggestion is what I usually do; pair up people that do the same thing. ie.:
  • Steven Stevenson, John Johnson - violins
  • Ellen Elly, Michael Mitch, Patty Patrick - engineers
Instead of:
  • Steven Stevenson - violins
  • John Johnson - violins
  • Michael Mitch - engineer
  • Patty Patrick - engineer
  • Ellen Elly - engineer
I ran into the same problem in one or two Grateful Dead albums that were remastered. I hope this helps. Cheers! -- moe.RON Let's talk | done 01:45, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I think it looks fine. Ron's suggestion works too. Definitely leave the technical credits in. You could change it to two columns (I forget how to do that, offhand). One question, though. Why is The Roots listed as "primary artist? What does that mean? Doesn't The Roots have members? Shouldn't they be listed? -Freekee 05:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
The band listed as the "Primary artist" is possibly to avoid confusion. From what I gather, the artists mentioned by name – D'Angelo, Erykah Badu, et al – are part of a musical collective known as soulquarians. The Roots also has members who are part of the collective. I hope that helps. Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 19:55, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Um... not really. If... never mind. -Freekee 04:51, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Extra album Covers

Is it possible to show more than two album cover images in the infobox?Justin Foote 18:59, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Yes. See The Dark Side of the Moon for example. Jogers (talk) 19:09, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
They ought to learn the difference between ‘alternate’ and ‘alternative’ though! Ricadus 02:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Category:Uncategorized albums

It is starting to fill up with 70 or so articles —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.131.124.22 (talk) 20:43, 18 December 2006 (UTC).

Extra chronology won’t appear

I have just added an extra chronology to The Pearl (album) but only the chronology that comes last will appear. Could someone take a look and see what my mistake is? Justin Foote 23:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

The album template only supports one "Misc" field. So if you use two Extra Chronoloy templates, they both must be in the same "Misc" field. I did this to fix it. However, since you only have two chronologies, you'd be better off using the standard template's chronolgy fields, and adding only one Extra chronology. -Freekee 00:37, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Nocover.jpg

Image:Nocover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 03:07, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Nocover.jpg

Image:Nocover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 18:00, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Nocover.jpg

Image:Nocover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 20:43, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Nocover.jpg

Image:Nocover.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 07:32, 6 December 2007 (UTC)