Template talk:German Lutheran hymns

The two extra hymns

I agree they are Lutheran by their widespread use. Or should we put (Moravian) next to them?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 19:49, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Or maybe change the name to German Protestant hymns?--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 02:46, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

Improving formatting

I notice that all the hymns are simply listed alphabetically without any kind of sectioning or other useful categorization. I'm not particularly adept with templates so I'm not sure what exactly should be done, but I'd suggest adding at least a section for "Hymns by Martin Luther" and putting the relevant items there. The rest could maybe be grouped by century? RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 15:54, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Note that {{Martin Luther}} also already contains some hymns by Martin Luther (in its first section). I think a separate template with e.g. {{Works by Martin Luther}}, containing "hymns" and "prose writings" in different sections (and other sections, e.g. "translations") would maybe make more sense than sectioning them off in this template.

Over-all one of my concerns has been that many of these templates easily develop uncontrollably large sizes (e.g. un-hide the three templates at the bottom of List of hymns by Martin Luther and you get an inkling of what I mean (there's more template than page content in that article!). Unfortunately, some of my endeavours to get templates with manageable sizes have backfired, in that I, e.g., initiated {{Hymns and songs based on Psalms}}, which soon proved to be yet another uncontrollable-size template.

Yeah, help is welcome. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:17, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: In that case maybe this should just be deleted as mostly redundant (i.e. a duplicate) to Template:Lutheran hymns (I think that every hymn here is there, and the other one has much better organisation). RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 16:33, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, the other has a completely uncontrollable size, so I'd rather delete the other. Also, not all hymns have a definite "belongs to XYZ liturgical season" qualification, so the other surely somewhat fails WP:NPOV, and should probably be deleted for that reason too. --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:43, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

None of the templates is particularly much used. This one is on only 27 pages; The other one has 50; and an unambiguous duplicate (which contains only of the subset that have "English texts") of that one also appears at 17 pages. RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 16:37, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

...which illustrates the current rather unsatisfactory situation. If I could imagine the perfect end result, I'd probably have taken steps to implement it, but probably this needs somewhat more thought, that is, before drastic action. All proposals that might improve the situation are welcome! --Francis Schonken (talk) 16:43, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

As I've said, I redirected Template:Lutheran hymns with English texts to Template:Lutheran hymns (there doesn't appear to be any duplicate use of the two templates in one article) because the former is a duplicate of the latter and I don't think it's particularly helpful to just have the subset "in English". If you disagree feel free to undo but I'm quite sure at least one of the templates we've been discussing should soon be headed towards WP:TFD. RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 16:55, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I suppose something like {{English-language Lutheran hymns}} (all-alphabetic like this German one) would be welcome, after which the uncontrollably large {{Lutheran hymns}} can be deleted, or split in multiple ones by occasions, such as the {{Hymns and songs for Easter}}. --Francis Schonken (talk) 17:07, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

I would object to adding a simply alphabetic one. The grouping by occasion seems right; and then maybe (or maybe not) a further template like {{Hymns by occasion}} which would link (and should only be present on...) to list articles (such as List of Easter hymns - since there's not/wouldn't be many of those I don't think it would be too much clutter). I don't think the language distinction is particularly important; most if not all of the old Lutheran hymns have been translated in some way to English. RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 17:19, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

As said, for many of the hymns currently in the {{Lutheran hymns}} template, the grouping is a POV (i.e. not acceptable per the WP:NPOV core content policy), thus, as such, that template has to go. Example: "An Wasserflüssen Babylon" is currently included in the template's "Lent and Passion" section – the elaborate article on that hymn, with hundreds of references, *nowhere* says it is a Passion hymn, so that's a deplorable POV, which should go anyway. Templates can not be used for pushing a POV, and that's what going on with that template, aside from its uncontrollable size, which is another problem. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:16, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

You meant WP:OR, right? Regarding An Wasserfluessen...; the Netherlands Bach Society lists it as "describ[ing] the desperate situation of the Israelites in exile." [i.e. the link with Lent is rather clear]; so that seems fine. Listings in hymnals of the English translation of the alternative text "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld" (which is unambiguously about the Passion) have either "Passion" or "Passiontide"., so that also seems fine. If you insist maybe you can split the "Passion and Lent" section into its two separate components. If you have particular problems with some hymns maybe bring up the issue on the other template so it can be looked up. I still think it would be far superior to a simple alphabetic listing. Most of the categorisation is non-controversial... RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 18:37, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Re. "You meant WP:OR, right?" – No, I meant WP:NPOV

Re. "describ[ing] the desperate situation of the Israelites in exile" – that's a description of the content of Psalm 137. Afaics, in Lutheranism the text (hymn and/or psalm) was not associated with Lent but with the 10th Sunday after Trinity. (in Vopelius's Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch; in Weimar; etc.) In Eastern Christianity, and in post-Vatican II Catholicism there seems to be some association of the Psalm with Lent – none of which is evident in Lutheranism (and your WP:OR on what the Dutch Bachvereniging says is somewhat appalling). The main issue is POV: the template is about Lutheran hymns, and it should not present a non-Lutheran POV. --Francis Schonken (talk) 02:24, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Well if you have an issue with the hymn then I suggest you fix it, but I don't know where else you would have it (especially given that the other text associated with the tune fits very squarely into the "Passion and Lent" category). Did you find any modern Lutheran source on Ps 137/this chorale? Anyway this is relatively off-topic to the discussion, which was what to do with the multiple redundant templates; not what to do with the categorization of An Wasser... in another template; if you're unhappy with it go the Template:Lutheran hymns and remove it or move it to some other category. Do you have another solution? You propose "simple alphabetical listing" but as I said that is not helpful to the reader (the point of a navbox being facilitating navigation by linking related content, see WP:NAV - linking all Lutheran chorales without any justification or categorisation would be useless, "the goal is not to cram as many related articles as possible into one space."). Separating by century (my initial idea) is obviously too vague and not particularly helpful; which is why "by occasion" seems the most reasonable choice. As I also said, the variant templates by language should go as that is not a meaningful category (we don't have separate articles for "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" and "A mighty fortress is our God"; neither should we have separate templates...). I suggest, as a beginning, that this template be redirected to template:Lutheran hymns. RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 03:18, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

References

I have gone ahead and removed the near-duplicate English-language/German Lutheran hymns templates as, as I said, we don't have different articles for hymns in different languages so we shouldn't have different templates. Hopefully this is a good step to reduce clutter. RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 03:12, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Epiphyllumlover: I see you are the one who created both of the language-specific templates. Do you have objections with what I am suggesting? As discussed, multiple templates with near-identical content are not particularly helpful (especially if, as in this case, it should be relatively straightforward to include information in a single one). Cheers, RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 03:26, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, a perfect WP:IDHT if I ever saw one. --Francis Schonken (talk) 03:56, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: You haven't addressed that even once, so instead of throwing IDHT around please explain why you disagree. This template (and it's English equivalent) are not an improvement over the single template {{Lutheran hymns}}. If you wish to split that one into smaller ones no problem, but there's no reason to keep the duplicates. "see talk: it is the other over-large template that is on its way out" is unhelpful if you don't actually go to talk (and you've not commented here nor at the TP of the affected template so I don't see which other talk it would be). Despite what I said earlier (that it might be helpful dividing this into smaller templates, for some of the more populated categories), I don't think this is particularly excessive in size: if you remove the duplicate English translations then this is just over 4 kB, which is not that large (see, for eg. Template:National Register of Historic Places which is about 5.5kB). And it provides a useful overview on the subject; and if we avoid duplicates (as with what I did), then it's not as uncontrollably large as you suggest. RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 04:06, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

As said, navigational templates that have become unwieldy by their sheer size need to be split in more manageable ones. Thanks for no longer ignoring that point. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:17, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Could you now address what I said about languages? AFAICS, {{German Lutheran hymns}} and {{English-language Lutheran hymns}} are not much smaller in terms of linked pages than {{Lutheran hymns}}. Thanks, RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 04:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not talking about number of linked pages (which has little to do with size, see e.g. {{Bach cantatas}}, which has around 300 links but no size problem). So I see little use in responding to your straw man argument. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:28, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I removed {{English-language Lutheran hymns}} and {{German Lutheran hymns}} from pages where they both appeared and replaced it with the single {{Lutheran hymns}} (since both language-specific templates are effectively unhelpful duplicates), in an attempt to reduce clutter. Obviously, if you claim that it is "disruptive" to remove duplicate templates, I'd like to hear why, not just an ad lapidem statement to that effect. Thanks, RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 04:37, 19 May 2020 (UTC) @Francis Schonken: RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 04:38, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I know. I reverted. I explained why I reverted. Just repeating your stance is not very helpful at this point. --Francis Schonken (talk) 04:40, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: The only explanation I have is "too large templates need to be split"; which is not particularly helpful as that is something we already agreed on (and it has strictly nothing to do with removing duplicate templates). Can I ask a simple, yes/no style question (since hopefully this will clarify things): As of right now (where we don't have smaller templates), is it better having {{Lutheran hymns}} or is it better having both {{English-language Lutheran hymns}} and {{German Lutheran hymns}}? Thanks, RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 04:45, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I am repeating myself, while that is what I have been saying all along, the latter of course (both of which are smaller than the {{Lutheran hymns}} template, which is also repeating myself, while, repeating myself again, size has nothing to do with number of links). On most pages best in combination with a third, of the type {{Hymns and songs for Easter}}, {{Hymns and songs for Lent and Passiontide}}, etc. (still a few need to be initiated before the {{Lutheran hymns}} template can disappear). --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:08, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

So you are saying that two separate templates which link to the same pages and have no categorisation are better than one which includes the same information and more as at the price of being a bit larger. This seems inconsequent with the worry about "navigational templates that have become unwieldy by their sheer size" (two near-identical but separate templates are more unwieldy than one which groups the information in an effective manner). If we get rid of {{Lutheran hymns}} we should, by the same standard, get rid of both the two others as they have nothing superior or very much different (they merely separate the information which is already in {{Lutheran hymns}} into two separate places - imho not helpful to anybody). RandomCanadian (talk | contribs) 05:16, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

There is no contradiction. Navigational templates are for navigation, not for stacking a maximum of information. A good purpose for the current too extended form of {{Lutheran hymns}} would be to convert it into a list page in article space. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:21, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

RandomCanadian, there are two main groups of people reading the hymns and using the templates. I am of the understanding that the first group is larger:

1. Christians of ethnically Lutheran heritage [not always necessarily Lutheran, but northern-European heritage Protestants or ethnically German Catholics] who sing these hymns and are looking for a hymnal handbook. These people are most interested in getting to the hymns (which they know only by the English name) or authors that they know about. This interest is especially seasonal judging from the page view statistics. As a side notes, the website hymnary.org links to the wikipedia articles of a great deal of hymnwriters and I think actual hymn articles as well. So I suspect some of these people come to Wikipedia from hymnary.org and then might find the template useful to find related hymns. Hymnary.org organizes the hymns, but the number is staggeringly overwhelming that sometimes having a smaller selection is nice.

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2. People interested in music of artistic merit, especially as many of the hymns have been used as part of extended compositions by famous composers. These compositions are still played today in upper-class secular environments. This group is only interested in the original titles because that is what the famous composers used. They could care less that there is an English translation still sung in the church down the road--what they care is that it was originally written in 1623 by so-and-so, etc.

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Gerda and Francis are different than both groups of readers in that they are Germans who speak English only as a second language and are interested in both the religious and secular artistic merit of the hymns. They prefer to have German language titles listed in the template. As long as they are the ones who continue to do the work, I think it is best to defer to their wishes, at least when they both think the same way on this topic. So I encourage you to ask Gerda about this and see what she says. (If you look at the edit histories, maybe you can see how I have deferred at times to both of them, at least half-way.)

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As a side note, there are large table style articles listing out hymns and composers on a number of the foreign language Wikipedias. Catholic hymns on Wikipedia already have this sort of massive setup. I think Gerda wants me to someday make one of these for Lutheran hymns on the English Wikipedia. (She has already made one herself geared towards art music that also includes many BVW entries along with some of the hymn articles). I notice that Francis has the same idea at 05:21, 19 May 2020. I personally don't think it is worth the time to make a hymnal-handbook geared list article of the type found on the German and Swedish wikipedias until we have maybe 2x or 3x the number of hymn articles we currently have. Table type templates are time consuming to add to individually, as they can have all sorts of entries like date, author, number in various hymnals, etc. All of this is best done once by a single user in a program like Excel and then converted to wiki format. A template, even if it is a bit too large, is much quicker for adding individual hymn articles as they are still being written. Eventually, we may run out of new Lutheran hymn articles as there are finite number of them. But we aren't there yet, and we won't be close to it for the immediately foreseeable future. Through my own searching and combing through wikipedia, it seems to me that people can't be bothered to always even add their new hymn article to a navbox template--expecting them to flesh out a table article is inappropriate.

So the templates being inconsistent in style and size is sort of a growing pains that can be expected to persist for the immediate future as work-in-progress continues.

But if you, RandomCanadian, feel like ending this feud maybe you could bite the bullet and make the fancy sortable table yourself. Even better you could periodically look for new hymn articles and maintain it, too! It seems like a lot of work to me. Then it could matter less what hymns are in English on the template, or if their even is an English language template.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 05:34, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

@Gerda Arendt: see above, e.g. "... These people are most interested in getting to the hymns (which they know only by the English name) ..." (emphasis added) for why a template with English names of hymns (whatever their origin) makes sense, in answer to your question "... any hymn in English, no matter if originally in English or not ... I doubt that it makes sense". --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:11, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

I was pinged here, where my answer will not belong, but well: Example Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag, that is known under which English name? I see one in the template, a different one in an external link, the literal translation in the lead, the Dellal translation in the lyrics. Simply to find the article you know under whatever name, there should be a redirect to that name. Navboxes are there to find other connected things, no? - I appreciate conversion to a list, but why not sortable, by occasion, hymnist, composer, dates of text and melody? - Completely different question: we have Christmas carols, and Easter hymns, - how should we call those for Pentecost/Whitsun? They deserve a list as well, and I'm willing to begin it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:41, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah, seems I picked a non-established, non-singable English version of the Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag hymn. Sorted – I hope. Possibly not the only error in that vein: please correct if you see others. Re. Pentecost/Whitsun: I'd suggest Hymns for Pentecost, but suppose other variants are possible. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:15, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Anyhow, I'm not German, and I started the conversion to list --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:36, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Gerda, the incipit I put in the template is the one for the translation by Kelly[1] who is well known. It may be a less literal translation though.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 16:07, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

If you want to see a list of Lutheran hymns in table format (this one however geared on a single hymnal), I can recommend the one found at Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch, which I built. --Francis Schonken (talk) 05:44, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for correcting me on this. Have you noticed how many Christian related lists are targets for the usual suspects at AfD? There is still some reluctance to go after Catholic and Anglican articles on AfD, but recently a list of each was deleted. Basically there aren't enough people on WP ready to defend Lutheran related articles from deletion, so it is important to be judicious about such things.

Lists without references for each hymn, dates, authors, etc. are sadly sitting ducks. But even a fleshed-out list isn't safe. They demand that the exact list itself is notable and not just the general topic--which is an impossibly high bar. Templates have a lower standard thankfully.--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 05:52, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Re. "Templates have a lower standard ... " – You may think so, but no: neither according to guidance, nor in practice. Where templates are used to dodge policies and guidelines, e.g. for harbouring content that otherwise wouldn't pass, you may soon find that the standard is higher for them than for lists and articles. Well, that seems to be what was going on thus far with some of the Lutheranism-related templates... do you really think WP:TfD is a more comfortable place than WP:AfD? That does not agree with my experience. So I'd try to get rid of such self-delusions ASAP, and start cleaning up bloated templates. --Francis Schonken (talk) 14:01, 19 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I have dealt with TfD as well and found it to be friendlier to Christian topics than AfD. Basically there is some vagueness in the rules regarding lists that allows people to get nearly whatever list they want deleted [potentially--the deficit in the rules turns list deletions into popularity contests]. Christian oriented lists (especially those not Catholic or Anglican [which still get may get deleted; just expect a harder fight against it]) appear to be especially vulnerable given the recent track record there. The rules for templates are less vague and there is considerably less traffic at TfD. As a result there is less trouble at TfD. Maybe now you can see why I've been content to do a lot of work on templates, but not lists. I don't want to spend time "watching my back" afterwards to make sure that it "sticks".--Epiphyllumlover (talk) 15:59, 19 May 2020 (UTC)