Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music/Archive 1

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Archive 1
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Piped year in music links are evil

Hey there Mav,
Regarding your disapproval about linking '1968 in music' to '1968', I have to disagree. The links that go to the year in music pages and the sentences containing them are actually about that year in music. To direct to the more broad year page is to widen the scope of the page relationship unnecessarily. Furthermore, many of the links that go to the 'in music' pages are in lists such as discographies, and as such would make much less sense to take the user to the broader page, where the discography entry is not reciprocated; in a perfect 'pedia, the 'in music' pages would reciprocate with each other musical entry. Conversely, it would be confusing to shape each discography entry with something like "1973 in music - Dark Side of the Moon". These arguments I can make in support only of the link changes that I have made. Others, many others, are continuing the trend, and I hope they continue to do so.
Users only have to hover over the link or look at a different part of the screen to learn the destination of that link. Furthermore, every 'in music' page has an immediate link to the original 'year' page.
Thanks for the input.
-Tubby

We already have a very well-established naming convention for years where linking pure numbers goes directly to the year pages. Mixing in other things only confuses the matter. A user should not have to place their cursor over what looks like a year link just to see if in fact it is a daughter page of a year page and not the year page itself. The link that I reverted was the birth year of an artist! These links need to go where they indicate to the user where they are going. What you propose is that we have blind links taking the user to a place they did not expect to go. What is worse is that there are thousands of artist pages that already link to the year pages. But now there are a handfull that link to something else. This is inconsistent and misleading and needs to stop. There is nothing wrong with linking directly to the daughter year pages within discography lists for example so long as the links are explicit and not hidden so that they look like a regular year link. I'm going to go ahead and fix all these links I can find. --mav
Mav, don't you think the fact that the (year in music|year) convention was adopted by virtually everyone who contributes to music articles proves that readers of music pages do expect to be taken to a year in music page when the click on a year link in a music page? I'd say the overriding policy here is the one about providing relevant links - which frequently demands piped links. If indeed, as you say, hiding where a link goes is against some carved-in-stone policy I've never seen, then why is the | syntax for links provided at all? Mkweise 07:06 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
The only convention here is in Wikipedia:naming conventions. WikiProject can not violate project-wide conventions. See my message to Tubby above. --mav
I just reead Wikipedia:naming conventions, and found nothing relevant to this matter. Could you please spell out the convention you refer to? Mkweise 07:06 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
"Use plain numbers only for years ..... . So call it Form 1040, not 1040, and Intel 386, not 386." Contributors and readers are two separate sets of people. When a person sees a link that reads 1977 they should be able to always expect to be taken to a page called 1977 that is about the year 1977. Mixing in other links confuses the matter and is not at all user-friendly. The pipe was originally designed mainly to hide ugly / page titles. There are many other valid uses but it is bad form to use the pipe in order to make links to two different pages look the same. Every page I've fixed so far has standard year links mixed in with piped year in music links -- the user when presented with this does not know what to expect which clicking on a link. That is very bad design. --mav
Ummm....it says "the use of number-only page names should only be used for Year in Review entries" (my emphasis).
BTW, if this really is the official position, you could save yourself a lot of work by just replacing the string " in music|" with "|" globally across the entire database. You'll also want to do the same with " language|" next, because there are tons of links such as English that would also have to be considered misleading, according to your rationale.

Mkweise 07:41 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)

No English links are not misleading. If you are talking about a person or thing being English then you sublink to England. If you are talking about the language then you sublink to English language. The context clearly states which one should be sublinked. It is, however, not at all clear if you should directly to a year page or bypass it for one of its daughter pages. Context here is not nearly as clear. The result is a mismatch of links to year pages mixed in with links to daughter pages. And when the links are not explicit this leads to confusion and doubt in the reader - they soon begin to loose confidence that when they click on a year link that that link will take them to the year page. I'm also puzzled why the year pages are being excluded like this. Are people who are into music really off onto their own planet that other events that happened in the same year are not important at all? The whole purpose of the year pages is to give a summary of events that happened during a single year - narrowing that focus too much is a bad idea. There is no reason to fork the year pages - both links can live side-by-side if and when needed. See also: wikipedia:principle of least astonishment --mav

Personally, I don't think I've ever used a year page to look at same-year events, however I do use the century pages alot. The 20th century is pretty well organized in my head, but it gets fuzzier as you go back in time. Decades are useful back to about 1700; from there on back I find I need to look at a whole century to get a good perspective.
As for music lovers being on their own planet, well...when you're researching musich you're researching music. When you sit down in a restaurant, you're probably hungry and expect to be handed a menu - not an encyclopedia opened to a page that lists people who were born the same year pizza was invented. Right? Mkweise 08:33 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
You are talking about forking the encyclopedia into specialized areas. That is counter to what an encyclopedia is. Besides each of the daughter pages are links from their year page parents. Let the reader decide just what is relevant. Having some links that look like years going to year pages and having others going to music-specific pages is really bad design. --mav
Letting the reader decide what is relevant is exactly my aim! Since it is always easier to "zoom out" in focus than to "zoom in", I feel it makes sense to link to as narrow a focus as reasonable based on the context, with a link to "zoom out" focus at the top of the page. I find the year in music pages quite well designed in that regard. Mkweise 08:51 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
But it still is inconsistent. A link that looks like 1977 in one article goes to a different place than a link that looks the same in another article. This is a lack of internal consistency within Wikipedia. And that harms the project as a whole. Please understand the big picture. However, I am still keeping most of the direct links to the daughter articles even though they are already linked on the year pages. --mav

I don't understand your bad form to hide links edit to the The Who article. Please elaborate what was bad about the way it was. Mkweise 06:17 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)

Links that look like they go to a year page but instead go to a year in music page. --mav
I thought the Wikipedia convention was that years in articles about music *always* link to year in music pages, never year pages. That has been the consistent practice, anyway. I'd say you've got a hell of a lot of editing ahead of you if you plan on changing every single music page. Mkweise 06:28 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
Mav is correct; links should not point you to a surprising location. When you have year links in a navigation bar on a year in music page, you expect them to take you to another year in music page. However, when you have year links on a page about an artist, you don't have this intuitive expectation. Therefore, it's better not to hide the "in music" part. --Eloquence 10:10 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)

wikipedia:principle of least astonishment. Koyaanis Qatsi

Well...if user:tubby and I are the only ones who felt strongly enough on the matter to discuss it here, I guess it's not as big a deal as I thought it was. I can live with linking to the plain year, although I hope this won't affect my freedom to link a article from a completely different word. I frequently do this, as I hate to mutilate (fnord) a perfectly (fnord) good sentence with (fnord) parentheses (and footnotes) just (fnord) to hyperlink things (and stuff). Mkweise 10:46 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
It's only been an issue for a few hours. At least a full day or two is needed to allow for others to comment. Tokerboy
On second thought, why not instead provide a new user setting that allows each user to choose for himself whether wikilinks are displayed as intended by the author or literally as linked? That should be trivial to add to the code, and everyone would be happy. Mkweise 07:44 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
Many piped links are in fact ugly so nobody would select that option. --mav

I don't think there are that many piped links right now -- I think I've made most of them, and only in the articles I've made in the last week and a half or so. The issue first came up at Talk:1972 in music, and it was decided to not use piped links. It came up again at Talk:Bad Religion, and others convinced me to do otherwise (I wonder if wikipedia is going to evolve a precendent-based system of government...). I don't much care either way, as long as there is a standard. Both methods have positive (direct link to more useful information vs transparency in linking) and negative effects (hidden links vs ugly parentheses). Whatever is decided, this page needs to reflect it, as it currently claims the standard is to use piped links except in the opening birth and death dates -- I wrote that, and I was describing what was being done, and I'm not arguing in favor of anything, because I don't care. I don't like either solution, but there is nothing better that I can think of. Tokerboy

Although consistency and formula have their place in an encyclopedia, it is my opinion that they shouldn't interfere with the most efficient communication of information. Pages that link to 'year in music' pages are about music. People browsing our music pages want to keep browsing our music pages, and not be taken to a much broader index. I've never found the parent 'year' pages to be gripping. And even though the link may be slightly 'astonishing', I think we should give our readers a little credit and assume they will be able to discern the difference between the two 'year' pages, and can navigate between them.
Mav, I think you have identified the larger problem here: the idea of forking the encyclopedia into specialized areas. This is something that we should definately have some discussion on, and already it has become a bit of a dividing issue.
-Tubby


I just looked at some of the pages that Mav has "corrected". They are now less attractive, having parenthesis all over the place and repetitive phrases. Furthermore, some of the actual content has been rendered inaccurate, or at the very least more confusing. Your argument, Mav, would be much more effective if your vision was not so disruptive.
-Tubby

Would an acceptable compromise be to include a disclaimer at the top informing readers that clicking on a year will bring you to a capsule summary of musical events from that year? Tokerboy

I wrote some of those links that have now been corrected by Mav and now I'm of two minds.

  1. mind -- a year is a year. Every biographical article includes a birth and death, and it is counter-intuitive to think that Einstein's birthdate would link to the year in physics and Little Brother Montgomery's birthdate would link to the year in music and Nureyev's birthdate would link to the year in dance. It is part of the information of the encyclopedia to tell what else was going on the year that something happened.
  2. mind -- music is music. It is also counter-intuitive to think that the date "Wild Thing" was released is going to link to the same page that shows, I don't know, the Tet Offensive and Martin Luther King's March on Washington. It is also part of the encyclopedia to tell what else was going on in the world of music the year something musical happened.

This is really insoluble, and it seems to me that a simple note on the page wouldn't fix it, because because of the conflicting significance of dates even within a music article. I think the best thing, and not too good at that, is to add a link the year in music at the bottom of every year page that has a corresponding year in music page and have both kinds of dates in music articles, regular years and musical years, clumsy as that would be. Ortolan88

But each 'year in x' page is already linked from the corresponding year page. Thus if all links were just to the parent year page then at most people are one link away from the 'year in x' page. Directly linking to the 'year in x' pages makes as much sense as linking to History of the United States instead of just United States (and a piped link that looks like it goes to the United States article but instead goes to the History of the United States is evil). Daughter articles are supposed to be rarely linked to directly and 'year in x' pages are daughter articles. I will therefore reduce the ugliness that Tubby is talking about by only linking to the parent year pages except when the year is already in parenthesis or is in a list. For example, many albums when they are first stated have the year in parenthesis right behind it. In that cases it is OK to have an explicit link to a 'year in music' page in parenthesis right after the name of the album. But all cases where a year is listed should have a link to the parent year article only. BTW I corrected about a dozen articles where the 'year in music' page was pipe-linked in for the birth/death years! Most other cases had a mix of pipe links to the 'year in music' articles and direct links to the parent year articles. Also what about people who are involved in music, and film? From a usability perspective that is horrible. --mav

Just wanted to note that I wrote three prose paragraphs at 1977 in music. I'm not sure if it would be desirable or possible to do something similar at every year, but I think it could be useful at least for some (1969, 1992, 1983 spring to mind, if none other). Comments are welcome. Tokerboy

It looks good to me. While we are on the subject why are the list of events at the bottom of the 'year in music' pages? Events are more important than album releases, no? --mav
Good point. Inertia, I suppose -- I'll wait a little while for someone to point out some sillily obvious reason why not, then start moving them to the top as I come across them. Maybe this would be a good time to discuss any other changes others want to propose to the year in music articles. I could've sworn someone said something on some talk page somewhere that seemed like a good idea but wasn't worth the effort to change them all... anybody know what I'm talking about? It's easiest to do these things at once. Tokerboy
I'm inclined to say:
Prose paragraphs intro
Events
Top hits
Albums released
Awards (which some pages, such as 1977 in music, don't currently have a section for)
Births
Deaths

Maybe switching around Top hits and albums, but really it's a timeframe thing -- songs were much more important befoe 1962 or so, then albums afterwards, but I'd like it to be uniform. Since the hits list will probably be shorter (at least after the early 60s), it would be less intrusive to put them first. That's my thoughts, but I could go either way on it if someone else knows something I don't. Tokerboy

While we do our various things on the years in music page, I recommend fixing up the "XXX's musical career begins". That made sense when they were at List of musical events because, depending on the artist in question, it sometimes means a band formed, began performing, settled into the line-up/format they eventually became famous for, began recording, began recording for a major label... we have the space to be specific, so we should. I think if it's referring to beginning recording, that should be noted under albums released as, many already do (with the word "debut", or "solo debut" or "major label debut" in parentheses after the artist name). Tokerboy


Yeah I agree "musical career begins" is vague. Debut recording is a worthy mention, as is "band forms", in my opinion. Regarding the order, I think your outline is fine, although I don't really know what ideals to point to. I do think though that we should try to include your work on some of the genres, like the three punk pages.
-Tubby

Well, I didn't have anything to do with that aside from moving them to their present location... I'm not sure what you mean by "ideals", but if I read you write -- I was thinking it might be a good idea to discuss here what will be on the "year in music" pages in prose form -- the two I've done so far (1992, 1977) are pretty clear in the most influential developments, but a lot of the rest is going to be more ambiguous. In heavy metal, for example, I'd say 1983, definitely, and maybe 1987, 1996 or so, 1972ish -- I don't know if I feel comfortable making such a unilateral decision. If we discuss here, for example, that the Grateful Dead deserve a mention, we can decide that 1971 is the place to do it, and summarily delete anyone adding them somewhere else without feeling like a tyrant. Doing so may deter weirdos like the anonymous user who is apparently a full-time publicist for the Ataris and has added them anywhere they are even remotely tangentially related. (what's next: adding "lead singer for the Ataris went on a vacation to Disneyworld" at 1981?) Tokerboy

Some problems I noted at Talk:List of musical events include the former slew of inconsistant or just wrong "musical career begins" atributions-- again, where did these come from? Other problems in the "Hits" sections of years; in the late 20th century the "by (name)" usually indicates the most prominent singer or band to record it, while in the early 20th century the "by (name)" usually indicates the composer. Even worse, many of these "by (name)"s list only the lyricist, not the composer of the lyric... Did someone import these lists from some source but only decide to list only one of the names on each given song? -- Infrogmation 07:07 Feb 7, 2003 (UTC)

I don't know where the early 20th century stuff comes from... I only added a few of the biggies, and I always assumed that the "by" line lists the performer, with the details of the writer mentioned elsewhere, such as in the article on the song (which, in that time frame, should be a lot more common in an ideal Wikipedia). I totally agree on the "musical career begins" thing -- most of them are correct in one way or another, it just isn't clear in what sense it is meant. These can be easily changed to be more specific, as it takes only a few moments for each with cdnow or allmusic even a quick google search to find out of the year listed is when the band formed or began recording or whatever... some are strangely way off, like 1976 in music, which must have been a trascription error from List of musical events, cuz they were all wrong.Tokerboy
I think I added some of those early hits. I noticed the same thing as I was adding them. the source I was using had performers listed part of the time and only composers listed the rest of the time. I have no idea why. I corrected them where I could, but in many cases I've never heard of these songs. (I'm a wee bit too young I guess) It seems pretty hard to find a good source for "hits" of the early 1900s. - Jazz77
Hm. To some extent this reflects changes in the way the music industry works in different decades. In some ways it makes sense to list the composers early in the 20th century, as they were more associated with the tunes, and hits were compositions that were commonly covered by most of the popular artists of the day; as opposed to late 20th century where who performed it on a record became more associated with the song. Still, having "by (name)" mean one thing in some years and another thing elsewhere is inconsistant. Perhaps to avoid confusion we should always distinguish between the two, never simply saying "by" but rather "composed by" or "performed by" or "recorded by" as appropriate. -- Infrogmation P.S.: Jazz77, what was the source you were using?

Okay, on checking, it seems that for years 1935 in music and before, the "by" consistantly lists composers; from 1936 in music on it lists the best known recording artists. -- Infrogmation 23:39 Feb 12, 2003 (UTC)

Possible misuse of talk page to communicate with music purchasers. To participate in the music industry rebate for overcharging for music, go to https://webform.musiccdsettlement.com/english/forms/. If you bought any kind of recorded music between January 1, 1995 and December 22, 2000, you are eligible under the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation Settlement. Ortolan88 05:39 Feb 8, 2003 (UTC)

Weird... I just did this like ten minutes before you posted it... or did you look at the bartcop page I made right after and found the link there? I'm no democrat, but anyone that drinks that much tequila is cool by me. Tokerboy

No, we had been rummaging through last week's stack of papers looking for the Wall Street Journal with the article in it, but couldn't find it. Then I tried googling on "CD rebate" and got about 40 million hits, none about this settlement. Then one of the mailing lists I'm on sent it out, I forwarded it to all my buddies, then thought, what about my Wikipedia music buddies, and posted it here. Bartcop is new to me, but I like the looks of it. I am a seventh-generation Democrat, if not a very good one. Ortolan88


I have a burning question. Which of these should be used: Tokerboy

The words "The" and "A" are part of the name of the band. The first letter in the first word of a band's name is always capitalized, even if it's "the" or "a" or whatever (or if they're one of those arty bands who shuns capitalization). So your answer is "Joe Blow loves The Beatles and A Tribe Called Quest". -- Goatasaur 23:48 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)
If the words "The" and "A" or "An" are part of the name of the band, they should be capitalized. Figuring out if that is the case is the tricky business here. Why do I think that it is The Drifters, but the Incredible String Band? I guess the name of the article about the band is the place to make the decision. (You wouldn't say "the The", would you? Ortolan88
OK, have added this to the standards.

Is there a consensus against using piped links for self-titled albums, as in "The New York Dolls released their self-titled debut in 1978"? I don't like it and think it should be spelled out. Tokerboy

Well, you could say, "The New York Dolls released their [[eponym]]ic ''[[New York Dolls (album)|New York Dolls]]'' album" to end up with "The New York Dolls released their eponymic New York Dolls album." Ortolan88
I'll add it as a standard tomorrow or so unless someone wants to discuss it further. Tokerboy
Quicker is "The New York Dolls released their [[eponym]]ic ''[[New York Dolls (album)|]]'' album". Koyaanis Qatsi 02:02 Feb 16, 2003 (UTC)