Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Composers/Archive 10

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Archive 10

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1 Anton Fils or Anton Filtz?
2 Proposed new infobox
- 2.1 Proposed new infobox continued
3 Richard Wagner Project

Anton Fils or Anton Filtz?

Grove 1980 gives Filtz as the primary spelling and Fils and Filz as secondary. Grove 2001 gives Fils as primary and the others as secondary. I would accept the more up to date Grove as more authoritative, but the vast majority of his scores (though they are not that many) give his name as Filtz. There currently are no redirects pointing to Anton Fils and I would like to create them but only after being sure of the answer to the question: Which is the preferred spelling? Anton Mravcek 20:40, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer Fils, since it appears to be the current consensus among musicologists. Here's a couple reasons. Looking at the bibliography in the online Grove, there were several important publications on him after 1980, all of which use the spelling "Fils" as the better of the two. The Grove article itself explains the spelling issue, giving that official sources tend to spell his name "Fils", but the publishers tended to make it "Filtz." Also, his father spelled it "Fils." Actually, as long as we have redirects in place and give alternate spellings at the top of the article, I think we could either way. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 17:26, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new infobox

I promised during the first marathon infobox discussion to try my hand at designing a new composer infobox that would maximize the potential benefit to articles while minimizing the potential harm, and to come back here when I had something to propose. It's taken some time & real life has interrupted the work a bit, but I finally have a "beta" version to show, so with apologies for resurrecting a discussion I'm sure many hoped was dead, here it is:

User:Turangalila/sandbox/Infobox composer

The page includes a draft "template-documentation" page with cut-and-paste markup & instructions, plus a few hypothetical examples of the template "in action." I've tried to leave almost all the paramters optional, and to emphasize in both the markup and the instructions that they should be deleted if not applicable, oversimple, etc. Obviously if folks actually want to use it in articles it should be moved to the Template namespace.

Please have a look and let me know what y'all think — I think comments should be posted here on this page unless they're purely technical, in which case a comment on my sandbox page might be better. I'm cross-posting this at a couple of other WikiProjects to solicit as much opinion/help as possible, but the consensus of this project carries the most weight for me.

Thanks, —Turangalila talk 16:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong support Excellent work, Thank you.

{{birth date}} already has class="bday", so you don't need to add that separately.

Also, be aware that using "birth date" templates for baptism dates will add the date to the hCard microformat as a birth date, though - I suggest we either avoid the template, or create a "baptism date" template.

I would wrap a class="note" around the whole "date of death" TR; and make the other "notes" apply to whole rows, also, so as to include their labels.

Andy Mabbett 17:19, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong Oppose – Still wholly against infoboxes for composers, even this new version. Firstly, how many edit wars are going to start over what nationality to put in the second line for an Eastern European composer? Who decides which notable works make or do not make the infobox? There's just too many problems surrounding inclusion of information for an infobox.

If you really want infoboxes, have a page full of infoboxes for evert composer somewhere on WPComposers, but not on the article page itself. It just defeats the point of the article. Centy 18:24, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, interesting. Thank you. A few concerns, let's see...

I'm not altogether happy about this "Other occupations" lark. It tends not to be very helpful. Sometimes you get stuff where the field is useless as a summary, and you simply have to read the actual article for it to make any sense. Then again, an awful lot of composers moonlighted (not just moonlighted in many cases, made their living this way, for many centuries composing not profitable) as harpsichordists/pianists/organists - Dowland, Handel, Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky - and pre-20th Century you tend to assume this to be the case unless told otherwise. I'm not quite sure this belongs in the box. Even now, plenty of composers conduct as a matter of course. Does this really need to be mentioned straight up?

Notable works? Oooh eer. You're only going to have room for two or three at the most, and I can see endless fights over what gets in and what doesn't. Notable is rather POV, anyway. Perhaps "Most popular"? Grove actually does sometimes tell you objectively what's Mozart's most popular opera, for example (I assume they look at number of performances).

Notable students? Again, only room for not very many (I predict fights), and again "notable" is just a bit POV (that's before we get into the question of how many lessons you have to give someone to be listed as a teacher rather than a passing influence).

Nationality. Nationality then, or nationality now? Moreschi ^Talk 18:56, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. With all respect, I think infoboxes are in general a terrible idea, for the following reason. An encyclopedia editor should use his/her brain to decide what's important about a topic, and put exactly that into the opening paragraph. Infoboxes are a device for subverting this principle: they force the editor to emphasize aspects of the topic that may well be trivial and irrelevant. Hence, they're good only for simple topics that come in series and share most of their important properties, such as Magic the Gathering cards. Composers are much more complicated than Magic the Gathering cards. Yours sincerely, Opus33 19:15, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Oppose. Most composers on Wikipedia are historical figures, thus raising all sorts of cultural and evidential complexities that cannot be distilled into little boxes. Including works, students, and teachers raises all sorts of issues as well: Do we include 50 Mozart works? Probably not... 5? By what criteria? Whatever it is, it'll be so arbitrary that the information is valueless. What counts as a teacher? Did Buxtehude "teach" Bach? And so on. Fireplace 20:46, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Support. For crying out loud, I guess this is the reason most encyclopediae have people in charge. They make decisions on what to include and what not to include. They're not afraid of how editors are going to agree on what goes in the article. My gosh, we might as well not have any articles on composers because people will disagree on what should and should not be in the article. We shouldn't even have an encyclopedia, since we have to agree on what we should have articles on and what we shouldn't. I truly believe that infoboxes, in addition to the lead paragraph, are valuable and useful for people not familiar with the subject. They can glance at the infobox, read the lead, and decide for themselves whether the rest of the article is worth reading or not. - cgilbert^{(talk|contribs)} 21:31, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Strong Oppose One of the major problems with infoboxes - exemplified by Turangalila's detailed work - is that the more important the composer, the more difficult it is to devise a suitable box. We have now been through all the arguments against them. Opus33 (above) explains the problem of the opening paragraph vis à vis the box. Centy and Fireplace point out the inevitable anomalies, anachronisms, criteria problems. We can also look at the aesthetic problems - clutter, repetition - that any print enclyclopedia would avoid. The solution recommended by Centy - seperate pages of infobox-type information for people who want crib-sheet-style minimal information is reasonable. That would satisfy those who require meta data/micro formats (or whatever), while providing information for those who don't want to read the articles. The article editors would no longer be responsible for accuracy - this has always been the main problem with having them here. (Compliments to Turangalila for his examples. Thank you for continuing to be the reasonable face (the Sinn Féin?) of the 'box lobby!) -- Kleinzach 00:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Obviously this isn't looking good, but just for the hell of it let me re-re-emphasize a couple of things that are on the sandbox page, if one actually reads it: The "notable works" category is there, as noted on the page, for "one-hit" types or at least those who's fame rests solely on 1 or 2 works (I mentioned Humperdinck). I even hesitated about mentioning the Four Seasons in my Vivaldi hypothetical, but I reasoned that for the lay person (and WP is supposed to be for the lay person) that's what he's about. Note that I left it out of the other three hypothetical examples, and of course for a Mozart it should just be deleted.

All of the parameters in the "work" part of the box are meant to be used only if strongly, prominantly, and nearly exclusively associated with the subject. Thus Beethoven isn't particularly associated w/ one or two works, but Humperdinck is; Bach isn't strongly associated with a particular teacher, but Czerny is; Brahms isn't associated with a particular stylistic group, but Auric generally is; Mozart isn't strongly associated with a particular genre, but Verdi is; etc; etc. My goal is maximum flexibility, not to dictate content at all: there's a bunch of parameters, but as noted on the page, no article would use all of them--many probably wouldn't use half of them. That's what "optional" means. "Nationality," like almost all the rest, can be left blank. Even "Composer" can be taken out, though as currently designed you'd have to replace it with something.

Yes, people aren't Pokemon cards or whatever, but we are a common species, and composers are a particular subset of the species who share a few observable variables. They're born, live, work and die in particular places at particular times. They have relatives. They do something or other for a living. They produce works in particular genres, sometimes few enough to fit in a table. They usually study with somebody and often teach somebody else. Their stuff sounds a particular way, and is often labeled in a way that the composer either accepts, rejects, or ignores. Etc. Etc. Usually if not always much of this is susceptable to summarization in a format that's convenient for the casual reader, the looker-upper on the go, or just folks who learn differently; a format which cannot replace, but can supplement, a well-written prose exegesis. If I've failed in designing that, fine, but I'd be grateful if folks could a) consider all readers, b) try to understand what "optional" means, and c) actually read the page and look at the examples before rushing to type "Strong Oppose". thx, —Turangalila talk 00:45, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Fine. I think most of us understood all that - and once again I think you've put a remarkable amount of effort into this. How about Centy's proposal - which I noted - about putting infoboxes in a separate place unconnected with the articles? Would that be an acceptable compromise? -- Kleinzach 01:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Well it actually doesn't seem as if most of us did "understand all that," as quite a few of the complaints above raise points emphatically dealt with on the "doc" page, as well as in previous discussions here, and evince neither any willingness to actually read the proposal nor, again, a basic understanding that you. don't. have. to. use. every. parameter...Please forgive me if I get overwrought but I did put alot of thought into trying to address people's concerns; if I addressed them inadequately, fine, but they're brought up again and again as though I didn't address them at all, and that's a bit grating; plus being accused of treating artists I've spent my life idolizing and studying as if they were cheap children's collectables also chafes a bit.

Thanks very much for the compliments -- as a descendant of Fenians I liked your metaphor, though I think the good Rev. Paisley might raise an eyebrow at your calling Sinn Féin "reasonable" (or were you being ironic?). To answer your question, the infobox-ghetto idea doesn't interest me. As I think I may have said before (ahem), I think infoboxes can usefully supplement articles, not replace them -- like WP as a whole, how useful (or harmful) they are depends on the editors of each article. Anyway Infoboxipedia sounds like a huge project I'm just not up for. Actually the reason I mocked up this template at all was to offer it as a "compromise" -- insofar as I see this as a negotiation at all, I'm not trying to be either Gerry Adams or Ian Paisley, but rather a kind of poor man's George Mitchell. Apparently, though, as Stephen Colbert might say, we're at war and I'm supposed to pick a side. Sigh, —Turangalila talk 05:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

List of composers by name – How long is it going to take to populate all these composers with an infobox? Because if we're having infoboxes, we better have a uniform policy of putting an infobox on every composer's page. Also, with some of these lesser known composers, what's the point of even having an article when we're just going to put all the the information in an infobox? Take Anatol Vieru, a student of Aram Khachaturian for example. Once we give him an infobox, either the lead becomes even shorter or we have massive duplication. Centy 10:18, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Not as long as it would have taken for a bot to upgrade the existing inofoboxes, before they were summarily removed. Andy Mabbett 10:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

"How about Centy's proposal [...] about putting infoboxes in a separate place unconnected with the articles?" - I've read a few asinine things on Wikipedia lately, but that one outdoes them all, combined.

From Help:Infobox (my emphasis) - "An infobox on Wikipedia is a consistently-formatted table which is present in articles with a common subject to provide summary information consistently between articles or improve navigation to closely related articles in that subject.".

Andy Mabbett 10:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

SupportI think it makes a lot of information visible quickly. Being able to navigate easilly backwards and forwards between pupils of Schoenberg or whoever sounds a good idea --Peter cohen 09:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

'couple o' quick responses:

Peter: well actually if navigation among Schoenbergians or the Bach family or whatever is the goal, that may be better served by a "navbox"—as for example {{BeethovenStringQuartets}}, or just a list page. In my mind anyway a Schoenberg infobox might link Berg & Webern but that would be it.
Centy: I don't see any pressing need for absolute uniformity; I'm trying to offer an option for editors of each article to use or not use as common sense dictates. Obviously on a stub or stubbish article an infobox is superfluous. I'm not familiar with Mr. Vieru but I doubt he would even make it into a Khachaturian infobox (though maybe in the article proper); however Rimsky-Korsakov and Stravinsky probably would merit inclusion in each other's infoboxes (if each article's editors decided to include one), so the option is there. I suppose on the "doc" page after saying "DELETE any parameters that are not applicable, oversimple, etc." we could add "if most or all parameters merit deletion, just don't use the box."
Andy: please chill out a bit and try to keep it civil.

FWIW one change I'll make based on this discussion is to kill the "Nationality" parameter entirely, since one can always add whatever adjective one wants to the "Title" field. I'll probably do that & some other futzing in a day or two. Gotta go work now, though. Shalom, —Turangalila talk 15:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

"Andy: please chill out a bit and try to keep it civil." - I'm perfectly "chilled", and civil, thank you. Andy Mabbett 15:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Clarification: AFAIK none of us are against navigation boxes, especially when they are well-designed, colour-coded or whatever. Infoboxes are a different matter. Instead of encouraging the reader to go further, they give the reader a means of avoiding even glancing at the article. From the editorial point of view they are a liability because they can also be set up without reading the text. That's what has happened in the past. For every one thoughtful Turangalila there are a dozen disinterested box makers working their way through AWB-compiled lists of popular artists with the odd classical music biography, with appalling results (Gluck: occupation pianist, Brahms: favourite instrument orchestra, Wagner: genre Classical, Puccini: genre Romantic etc etc.)

Ancillary material is always difficult to manage and coordinate with main content. If we were working on a print encyclopedia we could make Turangalila infobox-editor-in-chief to supervise the whole operation. On WP we can't do that, another reason why his proposal is impractical and should be rejected. -- Kleinzach 00:12, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new infobox continued

Basically, a nice portrait or picture and place and date of birth and death (where applicable) is about all the boilerplate info that is going to work across all composers. The rest (important students, teachers, predominant style, etc...) will likely result in fitting square pegs into round holes. If a very barebones infobox listing the core bio details of composers is considered useful, sobeit. But such information is inevitably provided in the lead paragraph so it is probably redundant. Beyond that and we get into the task of categorising what is, too often, the uncategorisable. I suggest we abandon the idea of infoboxes for composers in general. Eusebeus 00:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Comment 1 of 2 Infoboxes and accuracy - I'd like to make a comment relevant to concerns raised in the previous discussion on infoboxes; the contention that biographical infoboxes are by nature inaccurate, and therefore in violation of Wikipedia policy. The reasoning as I understood it, was that because an infobox requires summarization, it is by nature inaccurate. What I'd like to point out is that all components of Wikipedia require summarization and possibly simplification to some degree: any biographical article is a summarization of the full story of the person's life; a lede section is a summarization and possibly a simplification; the entries on a list (take List of major opera composers, as an example, are summarizations, (also the organization of the composers into timeframes by birthdate on the opera composers list could potentially include simplifications of some nuanced information); the placement of composer articles into categories may require a simplification of nuanced information. My point is that infoboxes are not unique within Wikipedia in offering challenges in presenting possibly nuanced information accurately in a summarized or simplified representation. In each of the cases mentioned above, we do depend on the discernment of the user to understand the level of detail reasonably provided by the form of presentation, and to realize that "the complete story" may be more subtle and nuanced, and we assume that the user has the responsibility to use utilize the options made available to find out more, if needed (e.g. read the whole article instead of just the lede or the infobox; read one of the references cited instead of just the Wikipedia article). Respectfully, Lini 04:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Comment 2 of 2 - Turangalila's infobox, and what to do about it - Very nice, Turangalila. I appreciate the amount of work put into it, including the time spent to learn how to do it, all of the documentation, and the examples. Following is my personal opinion of what I'd like to see happen. Once Turangalila thinks the infobox is in a finished condition (taking into account any constructive feedback from this discussion), it would be made available on the list of biographical infoboxes at WP Biography. Then we would open up a new discussion here for a consensus on the Composers project page regarding infoboxes. The part about "currently available" biographical infoboxes would no longer be relevant. It would be up to the group consensus to determine if it is still a stylistic preference, in general, not to use biographical infoboxes on Composers articles, even though a better-designed infobox is now available. This time around, once it is determined that no new productive discussion is occurring (merely repetition of the same arguments), or after a reasonable time interval, then it would be helpful to announce in advance that the discussion will be concluding; to post a draft consensus statement (which is intended to go on the project page), and to allow a little time for any good-faith, non-disruptive feedback regarding the proposed consensus.

Regarding my motivation for the above point of view: I personally do not intend to add any infoboxes to articles on composers, as long as I am aware of any significant amount of ill-feelings toward the biographical infoboxes among editors active in the Composers project; that is simply my personal preference for how I work on Wikipedia. However, a couple principles that I wish we could see this project embrace more are: a) Improve articles by building upon what is there (taken from "Seven Suggestions" on Sam's user page and b) Different Wikipedians are good at different things. I would not be happy about editors just slapping on poorly designed or poorly utilized infoboxes just because of a mistaken assumption that all articles need to have an infobox ( a misunderstanding that I at one time was involved in, which I regret); however, there may be editors (Turangalila for one), who are knowledgable, responsible, and skilled, at usage of biographical infoboxes, and I would prefer that the project assimilate their work on the articles where they choose to add an infobox, rather than prohibit or automatically delete the boxes. --Cheers, Lini 04:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Still oppose I appreciate the work Turangalila has put into this (and AFAIK T is the only pro-box editor to have made such an effort) but I still can't see it flying per all the concerns raised above. --Folantin 09:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Turangalila, I do appreciate your efforts in making the infobox and your constructive reasoning as to why we should have infoboxes, but I just feel having an infobox kills the need for a lead. It's hard enough writing a lead paragraph for Wikipedia, but when most of your information is duplicated in an infobox, it makes it so much harder. If you want easy navigation between composers, navigational boxes should be used. It seems to me that the easiest compromise to all this will eventually be an infobox that says nothing more than the obvious (Mozart - Austrian composer, born 27 January 1756, Died 5 December 1791). Centy – reply• contribs – 10:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

"I just feel having an infobox kills the need for a lead. It's hard enough writing a lead paragraph for Wikipedia, but when most of your information is duplicated in an infobox, it makes it so much harder." - The rest of Wikipedia seems to manage that OK. How do you feel composers are different, in that regard? Andy Mabbett 11:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Huge support of Turangalila and T's work but Oppose reintroducing infoboxes: The great thing about this infobox (and not the other ones) is that it summarizes much of the most important information for contexts where a prose summary/discussion/nuance/citation list of the subject wouldn't fit or be appropriate -- but the encyclopedia articles are exactly the right place for these types of prose expositions, and the lede can organize the information from most to least important in a way that boxes can't. I think there are places for non-prose additions: timelines would be really useful for certain (not all) composers; in a section of "Biography 1810-1820" a sidebar could list the important works of this period, since they're unlikely to all be biographically significant. Etc. So I think having talented and creative people working on the templates will be a boon to Composers and other classical music projects; but I'm still against this particular template. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 16:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Update: Per comments here, I've made a couple of revisions: Most importantly, I've axed the "Nationality" parameter entirely, and changed the name of the "Title" parameter to "Description", which I think is more, er, descriptive. I've also revised the instructions a bit; and I futzed the hCard stuff some per Andy's suggestions (Andy, you may want to check the code, since I really don't understand the markup).

Obviously the majority opinion of the project seems to be categorically against the use of infoboxes, so I'll just leave this version in my sandbox for now (here's the link again). If anyone wants to use it on a particular article (subject to consensus of that article's editors of course), drop me a line on my talk page or an email; we can always move it over to the template namespace whenever.

Thanks for all the feedback (pos & neg). Tchuss, —Turangalila talk 16:19, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

"Andy, you may want to check the code" - done, thank you.

"the majority opinion of the project seems to be categorically against the use of infoboxes" - perhaps, but there's clearly no consensus; and clearly no intention to work towards one.

Andy Mabbett 19:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I support infoboxes, but they should also be as accurate as possible. My main grudge with this whole argument is that in Wikipedia nobody can claim ownership of an article. But unfortunately there seems to be a loophole: Wikiprojects. As soon as you have created an article, sobebody tags it with the appropriate wikiproject tag, and soon the article's style will be subject to the project's "we do it this way because we say so"-rules. "Don't try to argue, we have reached consensus!!" It's funny how the Classical composers wikiproject says that "current consensus is to do this and this". What use is a current consensus when a project is growing in a multitude of directions all the time and members leave and join all the time? It's impossible to keep a consensus that way. And WHY are those few people who have joined the project the only people allowed to discuss the style and contents of articles - articles should belong to all wikipedia editors, not just a few who have chosen themselves!

It is very strange that of the 100 or so people who will edit an article, 12 have decided that they are more important than the others and decide to subject the article to their own rules. In effect, they "own" the article, even though they claim they are just working according to an abstract "project consensus", which is actually just their own decision, they just don't want it to sound like that, because "project consensus" sounds much more authoritative than "I wanna".

If an infobox contains badly misleading information, the information should be removed, not the box. If not, the box, and the information, should be kept. Just like with anything else in Wikipedia.--Wormsie 23:15, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Quite, there is, still, clearly no consensus on this issue. The claim on the project page is bogus. Andy Mabbett 08:29, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Forum-shopping again, Mabbett [1]? This really isn't on. --Folantin 08:45, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

No, not forum shopping, and you don't get to tell me what I may or may not discuss, or where. I note that you're unable to refute my pointing out that there's clearly no consensus on the issue of infoboxes. Andy Mabbett 09:38, 16 June 2007 (UTC)