Template talk:Infobox musical artist/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Infobox musical artist. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

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Archive 5

Age parameter

Using parameters

Born = [[February 21]], [[1986]]
Age = {{age|1986|2|21}}

is cumbersome, parameters 1986, 2, and 21 could be supplied once and used for both, compare Template:bha (backlinks edit). --Patrick (talk) 12:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed the "age" parameter, because it is hardly neccessary. If you can't do the simple arithmetic to calculate someone's age based upon a given birth date, then you may have a problem. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 03:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

URL / Infobox 2?

Why was the URL type changed? By de-wikifying it, not only did it corrupt many of the pages that used that field, but it gives less control over how it actually appears on the page. Right now it forces the address into a external reference (i.e. [1]). By allowing wiki control, you could choose it to appear which way you wanted (depending on the length of the actual URL name).

Also, is this the "official" Infobox musical artist template now? All of the references to IMA 2 should probably be removed then. --SevereTireDamage (talk) 04:18, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Returning to the template, I agree, so have restored the URL setup. Thanks for the alert and apologies for inconvenience. Regards, David Kernow (talk) 11:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for returning it to its previous state. --SevereTireDamage (talk) 05:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Country?

Any thoughts on a "country" parameter? This might be obvious in most cases where "origin" is provided, but I can think of a few examples where a distinction might be needed. (For example, Apsci was formed in New York City but considers both the US and Australia as home turf.) Or is this too redundant in most cases to be worth the trouble? -- H•G (^words/_works) 04:03, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

If a performer or group has two or more established "turfs", list them all in the "Origin" section by city. Seperate with a break (<br />) --FuriousFreddy (talk) 05:04, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

band members

What about a color for performing members of non-classical music ensembles?

Like this

performing_personnel

Performing members of non-classical music ensembles

--Miketm (talk) 21:25, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Performing members of non-classical ensembles is covered in the group/band field isn't it? --NeilEvans (talk) 23:04, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I think group_or_band is for the whole band not the individual members. --Miketm (talk) 02:04, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Individual members of a band who have performed on their own is covered under solo singer. --NeilEvans (talk) 19:41, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

How about DJ/producers

Given the popularity for DJ/producers like Tiësto and Ferry Corsten, how would they fit in in this infobox? And how about the people that only DJ and don't produce tracks at all, or people that produce tracks and perform live but not in the traditional DJ way but with a laptop (like Brian Transeau does with an Apple and Ableton Live)? --Rafert (talk) 00:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I assume you'd put something like "Producer / DJ" or "DJ" alone under Occupation, for the first two respectively. As for the last... just use different terms, perhaps? But some people mix with both turntables and computers, surely. Is there that big of a divide that you need different terms? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Unint (talk • contribs) 03:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Error in name field

I was browsing the Ramones page, which uses this infobox, and I noticed that the infobox displayed "{{{name}}}" instead of the actual name, "The Ramones". I notice the same error on this infobox template page and in several other uses of the infobox. I don't know how to change it, but I hoped posting about it here would bring it to the attention of someone who could fix it. --Zaukul (talk) 18:11, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok somebody has messed with the template, I yried to change it back but I don't know how to --NeilEvans (talk) 18:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Well it seems to be fixed now. --Zaukul (talk) 21:53, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Template:Infobox idol

Has this infobox been made obsolete by the musical artist infobox? My inclination is to say yes. It would be nice to have a seperate color for idols in a singing group, though. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.162.130.209 (talk • contribs) 02:06, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Notable equipment

If a "Notable equipment" field (or something similar) were added to this, then it could be used as a replacement for {{Guitarist infobox}} (which has a "Notable guitars" field) This would be very nice, as it would allow articles adopted by WikiProject Guitarists to use this infobox. It would be particularly handy for guitarists who are members of a band where the band and the other members all use this template already.) It would also allow listing notable equipment for musicians who aren't guitarists. Guitarists aren't the only ones who obsess over their equipment. I can think of a couple of keyboard players whose articles could use this. :) --Xtifr _tälk 15:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Follow-up: perhaps "notable instruments" would be a better name. --Xtifr _tälk 07:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

There is already an instrument field so the infobox can already be used for guitarists. --NeilEvans (talk) 11:50, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Completely different. The instrument field is where you put "guitar" (or "violin" or "piano" or whatever). That would be a redundant field for the guitarist infobox, since a guitarist's instrument is always guitar. The "Notable guitars" field in the guitarist infobox is used for specific models or custom instruments associated a guitarist. See, for example, Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix. Without a "Notable instrument(s)" field, this infobox is not a viable replacement for the guitarist infobox. --Xtifr _tälk 15:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

There is no reason why one cannot link to a certain model of guitar in the instrument field. Instead of linking to guitar, you just link to Fender etc. --NeilEvans (talk) 17:57, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Sure, you could do that, but it would be inaccurate and potentially confusing. "Notable instrument(s) owned" is simply not the same as "instrument played". (Usually, it's a subset.) And whatever you or I might think about the need for a "Notable instruments owned" field, the Guitarists WikiProject is using that field, and this infobox is not an adequate and complete replacement for their infobox without it. No matter how much we try to pretend. Plus, it's easy to add the field (I could do it). And it wouldn't have any effect on anyone not using it. I'm not seeing the downside. --Xtifr _tälk 19:36, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok if you feel it has relevance then go ahead and change it. I have no problem with that although I would simply do as I said before, but go for it. --NeilEvans (talk) 22:37, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll leave it as-is for a day or two, in case anyone else wants to comment. In the meantime, I made a ~~sandbox~~ prototype, and you can see it in action (for now) on my talk page. --Xtifr _tälk 07:10, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. --NeilEvans (talk) 21:31, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, new field added to the template, along with some documentation. The example on my talk page is now "live", rather than coming from a sandbox. I'm going to go try to persuade the guitarist workgroup to accept this as a viable alternative. --Xtifr _tälk 02:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

re: Template:Infobox musical artist 2

Let me respond to this here:

For a group act that is no longer active, all members are to be listed in the "past members" field, reguardless of who was in the group when the group broke up. If it is desired to show the various lineups of the group, do such in a section of the article body, or create a subarticle such as Temptations chronology. Thank you. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 14:46, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

This method is completely counter-intuitive. And, if you don't believe me, look at how the template is being used. People aren't utilizing it in the way you've expected because people instinctively think of the last lineup as being "the band". (Examples: Nirvana (band), Letters to Cleo, Minutemen (band), Soundgarden.) Most band pages already have sections called "Former members" or "Past members" in their articles, which include people who were in the band and left while it was still active. So using the same descriptor to describe the last lineup of the band is confusing.

The other problem is that many bands don't officially break up. They simply deactivate. (Pink Floyd, for example.) So do we leave them as "current" or switch them to "former"?

There is no reason that the template has to say "Current members". "Members" says exactly the same thing and implies "current" since there's a "former" element already included. Furthermore, the existing musical artist templates use "members" in the same manner.

If you want to be to the one responsible for fixing all of the broken ones, so be it. But I think this is a very short-sighted and confusing way to organize the template. --ChrisB (talk) 20:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I can think of one contrary example: Genesis (band). Here people have simply listed "current" members under "Members" (that is, the last two people who haven't left the band, not a full lineup) and all members who have left under "Past members", because there simply isn't a "definitive" lineup, and the last lineup happens to be the least popular.

On the one hand, I do think "Current members" is unnecessarily prohibitive. On the other hand, the field name in the old Infobox Band is current_members, is it not?

On the one hand, I do think the infobox should try to show a reasonably iconic lineup; on the other hand, that opens up the gates to all kinds of POV issues again for bands that may have multiple "iconic" lineups.

I don't know which way to go about this yet, but there's something to think about. --Unint (talk) 00:26, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Responses:

The template is organized into "current" and "former members" for the specific reasons of preventing POV battles over which lineup of a certain group was the "most important" or "definative" lineup. There's no arging (in most cases, I think) over who is or isn't in a band anymore. The members section is not a place to list your (or anyone else's) favorite lineup of the group. Furthermore, "last lineup" doesn't work either, because with many groups, it's the first, second, or nineteenth lineup that is the "definitive" or "iconic" one. Then, you have the problem of groups with two or more lineups of equal or near-equal importance (Destiny's Child, The Temptations, The Isley Brothers, The Spinners, etc....I could go on for days). This method allows facts to be the determining factor, and eliminates people arguing over who to put in the infobox where. Mention the "iconic lineup(s)" in the lead section of the article; that way, it can be worded as is required for a particular article.
If a group is no longer making music, they are considered "inactive", "broken up", "on extended hiatus", etc. Whatever you want to call it, they have no more "current members" if they aren't currently performing or recording.

--FuriousFreddy (talk) 01:39, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I absolutely disagree with this opinion, and will happily remove this template from any article I edit where this issue comes up. The POV nature of which lineup is "most significant" (when you added that text yourself to one of the articles I work on) should be left to the editors of that article, not to the creator of the template. The blistering stupidity of giving equal status to all of the members of a band, including those who only pariticipated for a very brief period of time, is mind-numbing. This is not a fair or reasonable solution. You may not believe this to be that big a deal, but I do. There is no legitimate reason that the new template shouldn't match the original template, beyond your own (in my view, errant) opinion.

Considering that more than one person has already made it clear that they disagree with your view, I believe you should at least consider an alternate solution. --ChrisB (talk) 03:54, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

So what you want is to start a childish edit war over your singular personal preference? You're not going to get your way by calling names. Here is my favorite quote: "The blistering stupidity of giving equal status to all of the members of a band, including those who only pariticipated for a very brief period of time, is mind-numbing.". Whatever happened to Wikipedia:Neutral point of view?

I did indeed consider your opinion, but do you understand the cans of worms and disputes just that simple change would create? The main goals in designing these infoboxes are consistency and flexibility, not just one or the other. The box has to work the same for all articles that require its use. This is the reason why we removed the "notable songs" and "notable albums" fields early on -- POV problems over which three albums/singles to add. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 08:09, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

In terms of underlying code, the two templates do match each other: both have current_members and past_members. Only usage varies, because Infobox Band displays "members" in actual usage; however, with no usage guidelines provided at the template in the first place, what do you think people will do when they see a field called current_members? (My point was that Genesis (band) follows FuriousFreddy's method, despite still using Infobox Band.)

I am nervous regarding the idea of a policy, in a place as contested as Wikipedia, leaving details open to judgment. Surely policy should attempt to eliminate potential disputes?

(An RfC already? Just goes to illustrate that point further.) --Unint (talk) 16:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Policy (or, at the very least, consensus) should hopefully prevent arguments and disagreements (and language) like that above. You'd think most people would, when they see a "current_members", put, well, current members, and that a defunct/inactive group wouldn't have any current members. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 16:41, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

For starters, I take exception at how you've handled this from the beginning. I tried to make a simple change, you reverted it. I conceded and entered discussion. Then you disappeared for nearly a month until you decided it was time to make this template "the" template for musical artists. That's not the way templates should be designed.

And I don't think removing this template in favor of one that I feel works appropriately isn't a childish edit war. I have no problem with this template being used for current bands. But I do not believe that it's fair to defunct bands and the editors of their articles.

But I'll leave that alone to address the major problems of your viewpoint:

Equal billing to all of the artists who have at one point been a member of the band doesn't make sense in any way. When people say "The Beatles", they think of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. This template gives equal billing as "former members" to Pete Best and Stu Sutcliffe, whose contributions to the band were extremely minor in the band's history. That's factually deceptive, and, furthermore, there's no reason that it has to be that way.
Having a "current members" and a "former members" guarantees that the template will be misused. As I pointed out already, having two separate exclusive terms is confusing, and forces people to do exactly what they've done: place the last lineup of the band as "current members" and the former members under "former members". This has happened numerous times already, and will continue to happen. It's unclear in the template how it should be used, and the error has caused disputes on several articles already - the most common result being people editing the variable "current_members" into "members" and breaking the template in the article. People do consider defunct bands in particular lineups. When people think of Soundgarden, they think of Cornell, Thayil, Cameron, and Shepherd. If those four guys happen to end up in a room together, they're Soundgarden, even if the band is officially defunct.
You're talking about "consistency" and "flexibility", yet this move removes flexibility and damages "consistency" given what I mentioned above. There is no consistency, as people won't use the template properly to provide it. You're taking the power away from editors to be able to have their own discussion to solve how to work the template to fit their article. What works for Nirvana might not work for Genesis, Destiny's Child, or A Tribe Called Quest. Making a unilateral decision on all of those editors' behalf isn't fair to them.
Furthermore, we end up with the POV issue as to when to push a band's "current" members into former members. In the modern era, publicists, labels, and managers have done everything imaginable to avoid confirming that a band is defunct. Blink 182 has disbanded, yet their team keeps contradicting that and saying that the band will eventually get back together. So who's right? Are they current or former? And what do the editors of that article do? Delonge, Hoppus, and Barker are members; their status as "current" or "former" is irrelevant.

That's what needs to be addressed, and I don't think it has been. --ChrisB 17:00, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: You'd think most people would, when they see a "current_members", put, well, current members, and that a defunct/inactive group wouldn't have any current members.

Except that hasn't proved to be the case. I provided four examples above where people placed the main lineup as "current" and former members as "former" (though you'll have to poke through histories to see them). --ChrisB (talk) 17:03, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Alright, maybe the best option here is to make a list of some articles with varying needs, and outline what their needs, specifically, are. (Right now, I can't keep most of these straight.) Also, possibly get feedback from different articles' communities of editors to see what they want, individually.

I'm making a table here. Fill in articles and additional situations as needed. --Unint (talk) 19:10, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

	Active groups	Inactive groups	On hiatus groups
Current/most recent lineup is best-known	112, Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu Tang Clan, The Fugees	The Beatles, Honey Cone	Jodeci
One past lineup is best-known	Boyz II Men, SOS Band, Dru Hill, TLC, Four Tops, The Contours, The Delfonics, 3LW	Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, The Miracles, Sly & the Family Stone, Nirvana, Lucy Pearl, Gladys Knight & the Pips
Multiple past lineups are similarly well-known	Destiny's Child (who are "in the process" of calling it quits), The Temptations, The Spinners, BLACKstreet, New Edition, The Funk Brothers, The Isley Brothers, The Chi-Lites, Kool & the Gang	Martha & the Vandellas, The Marvelettes, The Supremes
No lineup is best-known	Menudo	Labelle

I've placed several groups I know of in each box as they should go. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 22:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Chris, you made a unneccssary change to the infobox without even attempting to suggest or propose such at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians. Why did you automatically think your change wouldn't be questioned? I at no time called you "stupid", though you saw fit to do the same to me. Now, in response to your points:

Yes, when "people think of the Beatles", they think of those four, but the other two were indeed members, were they not? THe whole purpose of the infobox is to present quick, simple facts on a group without having to go into detail; there's not really an acceptable way to identify in a list who in a group was important without (a) having to mention why or (b) creating problems on other articles. Even adding a "significant members" field would be problematic, because you'll have people arguing over "who's significant" and "who's not", with everyone trying to argue in favor of their favorites. All of it opportunities to start POV edit wars over one or two names in a little box. What makes the two minor Beatles "past members" of the group that doesn't make the "Fab Four" past members?
If people can't understand "current" versus "former" in reguards to a group that is itself "formerly" a group, then I don't know what to say. It's hardly confusing. When I did The Supremes, I did not place Mary Wilson, Susaye Greene, and Sherrie Payne (that group's last lineup) in a "current members" section: the group doesn't exist anymore, so all of their members are now "former members" of that group. If the people who were in the group are no longer performing with/in the group, then how are they current members of the group? My only suggestion to this problem of people being confused that is to kill both fields and make one large "Members" list, a suggestion I don't see as being reasonable. The template page specifically states how these fields should be used; if people need examples, more examples can be added to the main page. I really don't see the confusion, at all. If the four people from Soundgarden wind up in a room together, and the group is no longer active, they're Soundgarden having some sort of a reunion or "the former members of Soundgarden"; they're not "Soundgarden' because that entity no longer exists. If a divorced or annulled couple are present in the same room, they are not still "a couple". So, if a group's members aren't actually perfoming together, then how are they still actually members of the group? If Kid saw Play on 19th street, and talked to him for three minutes, does that make them current members of Kid 'n Play? Encyclopedias shouldn't be, in the slightest bit, concerned with what some people consider or suppose when attempting to state fact. Who are these "some people"? And why are they allowed to establish a biased hierarchy of people? The purpose of the two lists in the infobox are to list people, not to go "these are my favorites" or "these are me & some other peoples' favorites", or even "these are the worlds' favorites and the most famous ones". The question is "who were the members of this group", and the answer that goes in the field are the names of those people, with no other order or annotation other than chronolgical order (because you can argue whether Dennis Edwards is more important than David Ruffin, but you can't argue who was a member of The Temptations at what time).
"Flexibility" means "able to adapt to a variety of different situations and uses". A "varity of", not "all". There has to be compromise somewhere, for reasons already stated. Why wouldn't what works best for Nirvana work for the other groups? What's so difficult about "all of the people in the group right now go in here", and "all the people who aren't in the group go in here"? "And if the group is permanently inactive, then how could someone possibly still be in the group?" As far as other editors, that's what asking for an RfC is all about: the opinions of other editors.
You really just have to use available resources to determine whether a group is active or not. When it is known for certain that a band no longer exits, and will not be rebanding anytime in the foreseeable future, and they have completed all touring, promotion, etc. for their final project, then you make the change. If it's uncertain, leave it alone. If you don't know whether or not Blink 182 is still making records, leave their infobox alone.

I just don't get it. I've never run across this problem at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics, and comic book superhero team break ups are a lot less definite than music group ones. Also, perhaps adding a "Status" field (like the one at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics' Template:Superherobox) would be beneficial. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 22:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Re: I provided four examples above where people placed the main lineup as "current" and former members as "former"

But, again, not all groups have one "main lineup", if they have a main lineup at all. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 22:14, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

If "current members" is changed to "members", I think it would work in everybody's favor as the editors of each article can decide how to display the members without the unnecessary word "current" creating confusion. It would work in every situation. Members of defunct bands with NPOV iconic lineups (The Beatles) could be separated from minor members. Members of defunct bands where there may not be one obvious iconic lineup can all be placed into "Past members". For active groups, "members" would mean the same thing as "current members", so that would cause no problems either. This would allow editors of each page to come to a consensus on how to display the members (if there are issues) depending on the specific case rather than coming to an overall consensus for EVERY group with an article at Wikipedia. --Musicpvm (talk) 23:37, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

←Re: I've never run across this problem at Wikipedia:WikiProject Comics, and comic book superhero team break ups are a lot less definite than music group ones.

Of course! When in doubt, look to the comics...

Avengers (comics): the current "New Avengers" lineup has been in existence for less than two years, and hardly the best-known by a long shot, but that's what's in the box.

Justice League: there is no current lineup as the book is currently canceled — for just a few months, mind you — and, again, that's what the box says. In fact, there's nobody in there right now (even though teaser images have come out already).

I assume those articles are getting along fine. --Unint (talk) 02:02, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

OTOH, see Alpha Flight, a currently inactive group that still lists the last known members. Personally, I don't see the problem with just having Current Members (or better as is, just Members) list the last existing chronological roster of the group. Sure it's not technically "correct", but I think anyone reading it, seeing the group is inactive, will intuit that that was the final incarnation. I'm of the opinion that lumping all the members of a dead group under Past Members simply doesn't read well, and has the potential to get very unwieldy. --SevereTireDamage (talk) 02:50, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Unint: I said that I never ran across the problem, meaning that when I looked at an article on a comic book team, if there were no current members, no one was listed in the box. No one knows for sure who's going to be in the Justice League, so why specuilate off of teaser images. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 07:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

SevereTireDamage: Why not? Because it doesn't apply to all groups, and the methodology should apply to all groups. As mentioned before, what sort of common sense would it make to pull up a Supremes article that lists Mary Wilson, Susaye Greene, and Sherrie Payne as "members" and lumps Diana Ross and whoever else as "former members". And what to do with Sly & the Family Stone? The last incarnation of every group is not always "the most important one", so trying to discenr "importance" should be dropped altogether for factuality. Readers should have to "intuit" anything; this is an encyclopedia! People are supposed to be given undeniable fact, not be goaded into supposition by poor use of an infobox template with clearly deliniated standards for use agreed upo nby the WikiProject it falls upunder. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 07:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Musicpvm: I guess that standardization, clarity of presentation, and the prevention of POV battles isn't quite as important as trying to please the rockist mindset. Have it your way. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 07:22, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Wait, what? I was advocating that approach. Presenting the actual situation and whatnot. --Unint (talk) 15:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

After some consideration, I will now address how to let each individual article's editors all get what they want.

Use a band navigational box.

We currently have 244 such templates and rising, so clearly they're here to stay. A kind of informal guideline has also emerged, amongst editors, as to how to present members: one row of big names on top, a second row of small names on the bottom. There is no hard-and-fast current/former member divide, as it is optional to restrict the second row to only former members. There is only the unspoken awareness that the second row of people is less important than the first row, but since there's no printed policy anywhere, everyone can do whatever they want.

As for the infobox, we keep all matters of opinion out of it. Otherwise we become the laughingstock of better-regulated infoboxes. --Unint (talk) 17:10, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

I Agree on the "Status" thing, could help alot. Also, in extreme cases where there are two completely different "classic lineups", maybe something like infobox album does with alternate covers and double chronolgies could be in order. I.e. "Members 19##-19##", "Members 19##-200#" and "Current Members". Could be problematic as far as length/complexity though. --Oldsage36 (talk) 01:52, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Guitarist Infobox

Should this infobox be used to replace infobox guitarist? As this covers all the information that the guitarist one does and it looks nicer as well to boot. I've replaced it before but only had it immedialy changed. --Andrzejbanas (talk) 01:15, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The future goal is for the Guitarist Wikiproject to adopt this template as theirs as well. The idea behind adding the notable instruments section was to be able to use this template in place of the {{Infobox Guitarist}}. The answer to your question though is yes, it is meant to be used as a replacement. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 02:36, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

The guitarist project will get very snippy if you go blindly replacing their template however. Thre seems to be some lingering paranoia based on whatever happened to the first incarnation of the musicians project (I don't know the details, since I wasn't around then). I'm trying to negotiate some sort of common-sense common ground with them, but I'm having to be extremely diplomatic, and it's still tough going. My advice is to not do any replacement at this point unless you discuss it on the talk page of a given article first. --Xtifr _tälk 07:37, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I replied at the guitarist infobox discussion as well, but let's bring this to a close. I'll step up and say, "sorry for being snippy" and "sorry for being paranoid". Xtifr, your advice is good advice, guitarist article or not. Good grief, Heaven's Wrath. When you started this project up again, I approached you and requested communication and collaboration. You blew me off, and instead you are in here telling your membership to replace our work with yours. That's not helping matters, because it looks to us like you're going to do whatever you want despite the discussions we are trying to have. Xtifr has done a great job communicating with us, even though I don't sometimes see the point of something right away.

What is the overall point of swapping out infoboxes? Since they have the same content, is it purely aesthetics? If so, I am agreeable to that, but I request the pink color be changed. I do think we need to communicate openly and not post things like "it is meant to be used as a replacement" when that has not been widely agreed to. I have even talked to Andrzejbanas about discussing changes on article talk pages, and you decided to ignore that as well. Let's clear the air here and improve some articles, shall we? --Aguerriero (talk) 14:45, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Just for the record, I'd like to say that Aguerriero is not who I meant when I said "snippy". He has, in fact, been very helpful at expressing the guitarists project's concerns to me, and has definitely influenced my thinking on the whole matter. And, for what it's worth, I agree with him about the pink (or red or whatever you want to call it). Definitely a sub-optimal choice, IMO. :) --Xtifr _tälk 18:38, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

YES!

I'm very glad to see that we've made the move to deprecate the old music infoboxes and create this, single, unified one. Great work, wikipedians! --Anthony5429 (talk) 18:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I think that may have been a bit premature. I generally prefer this infobox myself (though I think it could use some work, especially with respect to colors and ease-of-use), but the notion of replacement was still fairly controversial not too long ago, and I don't see any real signs that a consensus for wholesale replacement was ever achieved. We seem to have gone from "this infobox was designed to replace" (a statement of intention) to "other templates should be replaced" (a statement of policy) without crossing some necessary middle ground first. On the other hand, I strongly support the use of this template (and have pledged to help maintain it even if the musician project folds again), so I can't complain too much. :) --Xtifr _tälk 20:21, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

(S)

Several field(s) of this template have these parenthesized plural(s). For example, "Genre(s)." After a couple of attempts, I don't see them working.

Left to their own devices, they freely line break just before the (s) (for example, Johnny Cash currently does this for me in Internet Explorer). And, it seems, although there are two possible HTML zero-width joiners, neither one works in all browsers we probably care about.

Besides, it occurs to me that constructions like "Genre(s)" are ugly anyway. I propose the template be changed to support either "Genre" or "Genres" (and similarly for other such fields) but not "Genre(s)." --Stellmach (talk) 23:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Disagree that the construction is ugly; it is quite standard. However, I'm not opposed to a change on technical grounds of browser limits, if an acceptable alternative can be found. I do have to wonder why the issue has never been raised before; I'm not seeing the mentioned problem, and I can't help but wonder if it's not due to some odd, non-standard settings on your system. If this is a widespread problem that all or many IE users experience though, then something should definitely be done. (I can't check because I have no access to IE nor any ability to run it.) I don't think the template can be made to select between "Genre" and "Genres" on-the-fly at present, though there are some features in the works that might allow it in the future. But I don't think they've been enabled on the current version of Wikipedia. I'll do some tests to confirm. But, barring that, I'm not sure what the best solution is. I'd like to hear feedback from others on whether they observe this phenomenon before doing anything drastic though. If a decision to change is made, I'd recommend the singular for "Genre" (too many people are abusing this field by listing dozens of sub-genres), but plural for the rest.

Technical side-note: zero-width joiners seem to have to do with ligatures, especially for languages like Arabic, where ligatures are much more widely used and standardized. I don't think they were ever intended to serve as "non-breaking non-spaces". So I think throwing them in is probably futile, and describing them as not working is probably incorrect. --Xtifr _tälk 21:53, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Someone recently changed the joiners, claiming that the were wrong, but now they seem to not work in Firefox or Internet Explorer. There is a little symbol, and in IE it breaks. Is anyone else having these problems? Should it be reverted?

And I do not mind the "(s)," as I find it common usuage. But, Xtifr, if you can make that work, I think it would be better if it could change on the fly. Otherwise, I have no problem with it. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 00:35, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow. If you're seeing funny characters in IE, and problems with Firefox on Windows, then I will simply ~~revert to the version with the Byte Order Mark for now, and talk to User:Smjg. And I may~~ revert to the version with nothing, depending on what he says. (None of these changes have had any visible effects for me.) Edit: I found Smjg's comment at User talk:Stellmach#Joiner; BOM fails on Mac.

As I suspected, the m:StringFunctions simply don't work on Wikipedia yet, so my on-the-fly idea is out, for now. Our remaining options are: 1) find a glue character that works for most people (may not exist), 2) give up on glue characters (no other infoxes have them), or 3) arbitrarily choose singular or plural for each field. Option 1 would be ideal, but it may not be possible. Option 2 is ugly in proportion to how many users suffer Stellmach's complaint (unknown, worth investigating), and option 3 is just ugly. I did some mock-ups of option 3, both ways, and I'm simply not happy with it. --Xtifr _tälk 14:06, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

ensuring clean supercession from replaced templates

Many articles (controversially at least) use a band logo in their "title" field rather than including it as a separate image further down the page. I presume it might be a UK-based trend based on my experiences of its use - Coldplay; The Kooks; Kaiser Chiefs; Ash (band); Franz Ferdinand (band) etc. etc. etc. being examples I can think of. The majority of these pages still use the {{Infobox band}} template and therefore don't have an issue, but the problem is that if they are converted to this new "standard", the coloured background for the title field would look pretty awful (as per Arctic Monkeys. Given that the old template has no colours in it, I feel the need to question the usefulness of having a coloured background in the title field. Converting many pages to this template would involve a lot less aggrevation if small differences between orignal templates and those they are meant to be replacing are addressed. --DJR (T) 11:29, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

What about the possibility of converting the images to png format and making them translucent? As per The Kook's logo (or Coldplay's). Although I would think that it would be a large job to convert any images that need it. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 20:56, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

In many cases, I think a translucent/transparent background might be worse, as the background color might clash even more noticably if it bleeds through like that. Probably not a big problem with black-and-white logos, but there may be colored logos out there. That said, the more I consider this notion, the more I think it's a bad idea in general, for any infobox, not just this one. Since my objections are general ones, not specific to this infobox, I've started a topic at the WikiProject talk page. However, if a concensus develops that we should allow or encourage this sort of thing, I can easily modify this template to allow a plain background only for logos without disrupting the thousands of articles that don't include logos, so I have no technical objections to the proposal. --Xtifr _tälk 21:14, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

After seeing this new template imported in Nightwish, I have to agree with DJR. It doesn't look good for transparent logos with black text and will most likely look horrible for the ones with non-black text. Using logos in the infobox is not a UK-based trend; see Beherit, Ensiferum, Korpiklaani, Children of Bodom, Moonsorrow, Sonata Arctica etc. As for having logos in the infobox, I think the informational purpose exceeds the possible unencyclopedic value. At least with metal bands, the logo is often more recognizable than the band itself, any of their members or any of their album covers. --Prolog (talk) 19:56, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I also notice The Beatles is using a logo. And they've got their own WikiProject. On the other hand, they don't seem to have a problem with black text on a blue background. Checking through the history of the article, they've tried several approaches, and they seem to be with the current one. Anyway, I'll agree that the practice is widespread enough to deserve better support. But I also don't want to encourage people to go crazy with the notion. So what I'll do is make a mockup, sometime in the next couple of days, and then notify some of the people on this thread, so they can try it out, and if everyone's happy, I'll merge it with the template and add some documentation on how to use it, and when not to. Unless Heaven's Wrath or someone else strongly objects. Cheers. --Xtifr _tälk 08:05, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Xtifr's suggestion. Although I think it might be better to just eliminate the background around the title altogether.

Another idea though, would be to include an additional box (or parameter) that would allow for a logo at the bottom (or top) of the infobox. Similar to the system for Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums (see here). (Where the {{Extra album cover}} template adds an alternate cover to the infobox.) In this case, it would add a logo for the band. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 20:52, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thanks HW. Yeah, putting the logo at the bottom is a good suggestion. In the meantime, it occurred to me that it's possible to do quite a lot without modifying the infobox. I went ahead and set a white background for the logo on the Nightwish page (you can see exactly what I did by checking this diff). But in the long run, I prefer the idea of putting the logo below, so I'll give that a try. Cheers. --Xtifr _tälk 22:00, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I've been going on about this all by myself at the project talk, having not noticed this section. I guess I haven't been paying much attention.

In fact, I agree that separating the logo (in another field, presumably) would be the best approach; articles like Daft Punk and Emerson, Lake & Palmer already approximate this. A few of my concerns, briefly:

Should we have guidelines as to what actually consitutes a logo?
Are we running into fair use issues regarding manually extracting a logo from some album cover, as some editors seem to be doing?

Also, I made a subpage on my user page last night to keep track of pages where this is an issue. Would it be helpful to have this around publicly for cleanup use, comparisons, etc? --Unint (talk) 23:45, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Those are good examples Unint. I think that adding another section (like the members header) titled "Logo" or similar under the members section would look good. That would ensure a white background for the actual logo, but still include it in the infobox. It think that it would also limit the number of articles with logos to those that had really distinctive/important ones.

I think the subpage you made would be very helpful. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 03:03, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Here it is: User:Unint/List of musicians and musicians' articles with logos. I decided to also keep track of all artists with legitimate, iconic logos, as well as some other sublists.

Since this seems to be largely an imitative affair, so at some point we should check every page with a template in Category:Band templates (doesn't really happen for solo musicians, I find). --Unint (talk) 03:46, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I've just looked at the subpage that Unint gave above, and it seems that the page for Gorillaz has a good compromise. It uses a picture of the band and also includes a logo in the image field of the infobox, that way the background is white and doesn't look strange. --NeilEvans (talk) 04:21, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

←Indeed, thanks for pointing that one out. Gorillaz actually has the logo in the caption field! That's clever and elegant. As for solo artists, I've seen at least one, Amy Grant. There's probably more. Unint, your page looks amazingly useful for this discussion, thanks! In answer to Unint's questions, yes, I think we should have some guidelines, but to make good guidelines, we have to study what people are doing already. Therefore, continuing to expand that list will be extremely valuable, in my opinion. And no, I don't think there's a problem with fair use as long as it really is an actual logo, and is only used on the band or artist's article. --Xtifr _tälk 05:33, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I have to correct myself on one thing. There may be a fair use issue after all! The new WP policy is that fair use images should not be used unless "no free equivalent is available or could be created that would adequately give the same information" (emphasis mine). That's Wikipedia policy, and WikiProject policy can't override it. Now for a logo, no fair use equivalent really can exist, but at the same time, the name of the band can easily be expressed in plain text. I can see arguments on both sides, so this may be something we want to take to a higher level before making any bold moves. --Xtifr _tälk 20:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

(Later) After making the previous post, I asked about possible fair-use issues on the Fair Use talk page, and the only response so far has been supportive. So I think we're fine to move ahead if we still want to. Do we still want to? We've found a number of options that don't involve modifying the infobox. Perhaps we could simply document those for people somewhere in Wikiprojectspace? I'm willing to help either way. --Xtifr _tälk 04:57, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Your comment at project talk addressed all the points that I couldn't get out the first time. Accessibility, encouragement of cruft, etc.

I'm still worried about the extremely minimal feedback. (But then, I've always had little luck soliciting feedback at the large-focus talk pages.) I'm thinking it might be sensible to pull in people from some places, somehow, but that would require knowing which articles are actively maintained by editors who are interested in Wikipedia-wide policy in the first place. And I have no idea how to deal with at the moment.

FWIW, I'm still in favor of a separate field for the logo, à la {{Infobox Company}}. (You did mention corporate logos...) --Unint (talk) 05:35, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

The old template didn't have a background color because it wans't designed for flexibility and use for all types of musical acts. This one is, and the color serves as an organizational tool similar to that used for the Albums WikiProject. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 05:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Deceased artists

Could somebody please add a colour for this to the background field? In the actor infobox, the colour grey is used to signify dead actors, but that's already taken here. I'd suggest changing 'temporary' to something less miserable and allowing grey for deceased artists. I tried fiddling with it but I got way out of my Wikipedian depth! --HamishMacBeth (talk) 00:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't find your infobox's guidelines. What are your projects' standards when it comes to using colours? --Unint (talk) 01:44, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not actually part of the project; I just noticed that dead actors had the silver background, and though something similar might not go amiss here. --HamishMacBeth (talk) 18:41, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem with this plan is that the colors are used to distinguish different classes of individual musicians (as well as ensembles). If a single color were used for dead musicians, then the existing color-coding information would be lost. However, if, say, a darker version of the appropriate color were used for dead folks, that might work. Eris only knows if anyone's brave enough to attempt to code that, though. --Xtifr _tälk 15:42, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

No need to have separate colors for living and dead persons. No professional work would make such a distinction, and neither should Wikipedia. Having gray for deceased musicians, actors, etc. is a poor idea, and somewhat in bad taste as well. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 05:54, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Classical Composers

If i was going to make an infobox for modern Classical composers, such as Philip Glass or Karlheinz Stockhausen, would I use the Classical ensemble color or should we use something else? help! --Andrzejbanas (talk) 10:43, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

If they play classical music or compose classical music then I guess so yeah. --NeilEvans (talk) 20:04, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

A classical composer would be considered a solo artist. A classical ensemble is for a group, such as an orchestra. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 05:56, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

Include a minor warning?

Maybe we should add a small note, saying "This infobox is an accepted standard of the Musicians workgroup, and is in use on thousands of Wikipedia articles, including many featured articles. Please do not make major changes without discussing them first on the talk page." Or words to that effect. --Xtifr _tälk 07:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea, I added a notice at the top of the page. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 20:50, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Perfect. Good job tracking down an appropriate box to use (the main reason I didn't simply do it myself). --Xtifr _tälk 21:17, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

A lot of band articles are still happily using the old template, the first that these editors will know of the project is this warning. On this basis I think a warning is a bad idea, and would only serve to alienate primary editors from the goals of the project. To be fair, most editors are just guys working on their own, and most don't know about this kind of back office stuff. The natural, human, reaction is to feel agrieved when such changes are imposed. Also, it's worth considering that a number of editors, including FA's, have reverted the infobox changes, and that there is a view that this project is acting unilaterly. I have to say that I came to this page with fire and brimstone in mind, but have since been impressed by the reasonable and toughtful editors working on it.

I'm objecting to this on the basis of erosion of credibility, also in the interest of consensus. --Coil00 (talk) 23:57, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

F***, just realised ye were talking about text in the template space rather than in the body of the infobox.

- sigh - to explain: that is how I felt when Sex Pistols infobox was changed, and I appreciate the large number of articles involved and that talk page consensus is very difficult, but it came from nowere (to me); just an 'on the ground' view.

Anyway, sorry for being so thick, and unnecessarly agressive. - climbing down from high horse --Coil00 (talk) 00:36, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Genre

Genre of an artist according to allmusic.com is generalised (Rock covers metal and R&B covers "urban"), with "Styles:" being used to specifiate the artist from the pack somewhat (Thrash Metal, Pop-Rock). Ergo I have decided to add "Style(s):" as this will allow us to source the information using allmusic.com. This will not damage the template as existing usages will remain in function. As i'm adding descriptive extras not removing existing info it's not a major change. Or at least it would be minor if the "styles" part displayed, which it doesn't so it's invisible not minor. lol. --I'll bring the food (talk) 16:16, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I see it now, it just takes time for the update to work its way into the system. Weird. --I'll bring the food (talk) 16:22, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I realize what you're trying to achieve but I don't agree with this change at all, and something like this definitely requires discussion and a consensus. 1. This is heavily biased against All Music Guide, which has been proven to be a bad source for at least metal music; mixing up subgenres, using neologisms and self-supported terms. 2. Per WP:NPOV we can't choose one source to use. We have to provide all the common views. 3. Style is factually inaccurate. For example, funeral doom metal is not a style. It's a subgenre of doom metal, which is a subgenre of heavy metal music, which is a subgenre of rock music. This is horribly mixing things up and will only add more fuel to the "genre wars" already going on in many articles. The template should just use Genre, which can hold all the genres separated with <br />. --Prolog (talk) 18:59, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Addition: Now that I visited AMG again, I see that you probably got the idea to separate genres from styles from there? On Wikipedia, music style redirects to music genre. This means that the template is no longer consistent with the genre information on WP. I haven't seen other external sources to list genres like this either, so WP shouldn't shouldn't adopt to one website's form of listing genres, even if the website is well-known and respected. --Prolog (talk) 19:18, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

It's a nice idea, but probably not necessary - a link to the genre is sufficent, in that that article will explain the parent style. The first thing I tought of when I saw the suggestion was metal too, can you imagine the chaos at Cradle of Filth (who currently have 'debated' as their genre!). I'm against labeling per ce, to be honest, esp. considering the amount of band that get crushed under the wheels of bandwagons. --Coil00 (talk) 20:26, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Very bad idea! AMG should not be considered a reliable source for anything except publication data! And genre/style tends to be a bit subjective, i.e. POV. POV debates do not belong in an infobox! (I think we should make that last into a WikiProject policy or guideline.) The proper way, IMO, to deal with these type of situation is to put a very general genre into te infobox, as the instructions say, and then, in the body of the article, deal with the matter of genre/style as per WP:NPOV: "all significant published points of view are to be presented", and "It should also not be asserted that the most popular view or some sort of intermediate view among the different views is the correct one" (that last is the biggest reason why "style" doesn't belong in the infobox). So, if AMG says a band's genre is "X" and their style is "Y", then, in the article, you write that as something that AMG says, not as a fact! The genre field is already being warred over in several articles (Slipknot (band) is another); a style field would simply spark more wars! --Xtifr _tälk 23:33, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

"Genre" is supposed to be brief and general for the purpose of keeping the infobox from listing 18 different types of rock one rock band plays. If a band does happen to play eighteen different types of rock, it's best to express and explain this in the body of the article, in prose. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 23:51, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like we've basically got concensus against this, so I reverted the new field out. Sorry, Food. --Xtifr _tälk 23:58, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

I saw this earlier, and now that I have come back home, I see that it was taken care of. I agree with the comments above. Maybe we should change the warning template to read, "Please do not make any changes without discussing them first on the talk page." As it still is being ingnored. ;-) – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 01:40, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Image size (2006)

Do people feel the size 220px is sufficient --Ashadeofgrey (talk) 20:49, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

For an encyclopedia? Probably. For a fan-site? Probably not. Now if only we could figure out which Wikipedia should be.... :) Ok, actually, I'd like to see what articles Chowbok had in mind before making a final judgement, but I'd also like to see more of a discussion before making such a wide-ranging change, so thanks for the rv. --Xtifr _tälk 21:46, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh wait. Maybe I screwed up. If I made the default 400px, I apologize--that wasn't my intent. I just don't think that the maximum should be 220px. Infoboxes shouldn't straitjacket the editors of individual articles. Is there a way to make it so that the default is 220px, unless otherwise specified (on either side)? --Chowbok (talk) 22:15, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Let's keep in mind that 400px is half the width of some people's screen! On the other hand, it seems like a minor increase over 220 would not cause any widening of the infobox on the vast majority of articles I've looked at. I'm torn between wanting standards and wanting freedom for article editors, so I'll vote neutral on the basic notion. (Not that we're voting here, I hasten to add.) I think the ideal solution would be to make the image size proportional to the user's thumbnail preference setting, but I'm not sure that's possible. But I'll investigate. --Xtifr _tälk 20:05, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that image size should be input by the article editor. If an image is smaller than 220px then the image will be stretched to fit that size and make the article look ugly. If a size parameter was included then the image can be made a suitable size so that resolution of the image is not affected. --NeilEvans (talk) 20:19, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

You should already be able to specify a size for images smaller than 220px. If that's not working, link me an example, and I'll try to fix it. --Xtifr _tälk 20:24, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Please see Bauhaus (band). That's a great picture, but you can barely see it at 220px. It really needs to be larger, but I can't make it so because the template is tying my hands. --Chowbok (talk) 16:33, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

That's possibly not the best picture to be placed into an infobox. Maybe that should be moved to another place in the article where it could be made bigger. --NeilEvans (talk) 21:34, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

One the one hand, I definitely sympathize, as I'm having similar issues with another article. On the other hand, I think maybe people think of the infobox too much as a picture frame, and not enough as an INFObox! The point of the box is to provide standardized information (more or less). If the picture doesn't work well inside the box, maybe it should go outside! I edited the Bauhaus article (and quickly reverted) just to show how this might work.

I will say, the infobox was clearly designed for portrait images, and does not work well for landscape images (most concert photos), and I'm definitely starting to think that this is something to address. But I'd rather address it with, say, a landscape option of some sort, rather than an "anything goes" option. And in the meantime, I've offered a not-terrible alternative you can use till we get this sorted out. --Xtifr _tälk 21:37, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

Update: Ok, first I want to say that I think we should increase the standard width to 240px. At least for me, that makes the image fill the infobox without stretching it, while 220px leaves some blank space. Does that sound reasonable?

Next, I've gotten a landscape option (as discussed above) working in my testbench, so we can add that if everyone approves. The question then becomes, what size(s) do we want to have as default/max with landscape images? We don't want people to abuse the feature, to make giant, monstrous infoboxes, so my suggestion is that we limit the height to 200px, and allow the width to go as high as, say, 360px. The aspect ratio will be preserved, so the 200px height will be the constraining limit for all but the widest and shortest of images. --Xtifr _tälk 04:32, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

I should have mentioned: if anyone wants to see my testbench (which currently also includes some experimental new colors as well as the landscape option), it's located at User:Xtifr/IMAtest, and includes examples. Please leave feedback here, rather than there. --Xtifr _tälk 00:56, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that looks great, and is a good compromise. Let us know if/when you add that to the template, and I'll add it to the Bauhaus (and Mike Love) articles. --Chowbok (talk) 01:44, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I'm probably going to tweak it a little bit first before I add it, but yes, I'll let you know. Thanks for the feedback. --Xtifr _tälk 01:53, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

←I also think it looks good, and suits some of the wider images better. (Some wide pictures can hardly show any members of the band.) Even with the increase in size, I do not think it intrudes too far into the article (At least on my screen size.) – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 02:05, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, the landscape option has now been added and documented. --Xtifr _tälk 23:30, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

360 is far too large. I suggest cutting down to 300. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 12:31, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Did you even look at the examples? In most cases, the bounding limit will be the heignt of 200; 360 (or whatever) won't even enter into it. But as for the default (non-landscape) size of 240, that was, as I said, chosen because it fits the infobox perfectly, without widening it, as you can see from my test-bench page. I'm really not sure why you have a problem with that. --Xtifr _tälk 20:46, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

I've set the default width back to 220px, which is what it's been since Aug 2 (i.e. for nearly half its active lifespan) while we discuss this. We don't want to convince people they've made a mistake by switching to this infobox and have them start reverting to infobox band! --Xtifr _tälk 21:10, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Documentation transclusion

Browsed Wikipedia:Template doc page pattern and it seems like an excellent idea, so I've implemented it on this template. I don't see any ill effects and it should reduce impact of doc changes. Apologized if I've missed anything, but looks like pages using it are still evaluating it properly. --*Spark* (talk) 23:10, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds fine. Would help if we need to protect the template in the future. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 00:17, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, I've seen this done on other templates, and had been thinking it might be a good idea, but hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it. We might even want to go a little further, and split it up a bit so that important pieces can be transcluded elsewhere (e.g. the docs on the background field, which a lot of people find tricky), but this is an excellent start. Kudos! --Xtifr _tälk 00:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Glad it worked smoothly. This is not a template I make a major edit to without more than a bit of hesitation. --*Spark* (talk) 01:29, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I redirected the talk page back here, as I think it makes more sense to have all the discussions in one place. I did add it to my watchlist, but I don't think that everyone who wants to keep track of discussions should have to do so. --Xtifr _tälk 01:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Field Names

It's too bad the fields in the solo and Band templates are not consistent with the field names here. Makes more work for a switch. Is there a tool that would automate switching solo and Band templates to this one? --*Spark* (talk) 03:35, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

You might want to talk to Kingbotk about that. He developed some plugins for AWB, available here. I have been replacing them by hand, so I would be interested if he could make one. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 00:14, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I have an idea for making it easier, but don't have the time to try it juuuuust yet. When I do I'll report back here on it. --*Spark* (talk) 01:25, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I ran a test and am awaiting some answers regarding template substitution. If you look at User:Sparkhead/TemplateTest and User:Sparkhead/BandTest (which was a copy of the infobox code on the Marillion page) when I edited it, I replaced {{Infobox_band with {{subst:User:Sparkhead/TemplateTest and nothing else, saved. It ran the subst, and it almost worked. There are some other issues. I'm no expert with template syntax, nor with AWB plugins. If someone else a little more knowledgeable about template subst wants to mess with it, feel free to do it right in my user space. --*Spark* (talk) 14:23, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I wrote a little utility that will convert templates. I'm using the "View Source With" plugin for Firefox to launch it. Which means I have to go to the page, hit edit, hotkey the "view source with" for my util, hit "show changes" to make certain all works correct, then hit save. Anyone know of a faster way to edit the wiki on a large number of pages? If I could go to the "what links here" page for the band template, and simply launch tabs for 20 links at a time, I could convert them all in a short time. I'm not familiar with AWB but will check it out to see if it can launch my utility. --*Spark* (talk) 20:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Centering Subsection Headers

If you check any usage of this template, the name of the artist is centered at the top of the template, but the subsection headings (Background info, Members, former members, etc.) are left justified. I believe they should all be centered (just looks better IMO). Comments? --*Spark* (talk) 23:01, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

They are all centred in my browser. --NeilEvans (talk) 23:06, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any explicit centering code in the template. Check Rush (band) for an example. The subsection headers are left justified in my browser (Firefox). --*Spark* (talk) 23:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

There lies the problem. I am using Internet Explorer. If I knew how to change the code I would. --NeilEvans (talk) 23:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm using Firefox, like Spark, and it's centered for me. Furthermore, the explicit centering code is the part where it says 'style="text-align: center;"', which it says before each of the headings. Spark, I don't know why it's not centered for you, but I strongly suspect that the problem is on your end, somehow. Does anyone else see the headings left-justified? --Xtifr _tälk 23:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Very very strange - I logged out and viewed the page. Everything is centered correctly. Logged back in, left justification. I have a few css/javascript changes, looks like something is mucking with the pages. --*Spark* (talk) 00:22, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Found it. My Preferences->Misc->Justify Paragaph was checked, and overriding the centering code. Don't know if there's a way to fix that, but that was the cause. --*Spark* (talk) 00:46, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Colors

Can someone pretty please change the pink color that gets assigned to instrumentalists? Of all the proposals above, I don't see that anyone is actually in favor of that color. It's killing me. --Aguerriero (talk) 18:15, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I have lately been involved in the Esperanza MfD, so discussion has died out. Hopefully we can get a vote going soon. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 21:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Request:The Template's code (for Arabic Wikipedia)

Hi. Listen, I'm currently expanding the article for Linkin Park in Arabic [2] and I'd like to know the code for the Arabic musical template asap. And if there is, can you add the Arabic interwiki? Thanks.

P.S. Here's one interwiki that needs to be added for this musical template: "fa:الگو:جعبه اطلاعات هنرمند موسیقی"

--Qasamaan (talk) 6:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I added the interwiki, but what do you mean by the code? It is all there on the template page. Just hit edit and you can look at it and copy it. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 00:01, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Name field problem

Did someone update the part of the infobox with the name? It looks fine for most artists, but for some (say, with Japanese names, like Ayumi Hamasaki for example) it's cutting the field off. Would someone mind looking into it? --Shiori (talk) 22:26, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Can you be more specific? I don't see any cutting off. The contents of the name field seem to render exactly the same for me whether it's inside or outside the name field. That is to say, I see "Ayumi Hamasaki (浜崎あゆみ)" displayed just fine, and it looks the same here as it does in the infobox. I don't know if that's how it's supposed to be rendered, since my Japanese is very limited, but if there's a problem, it doesn't seem to be related to the infobox. (And in answer to your first question, no, the name field has not been updated or changed in, well, ever.) --Xtifr _tälk 23:46, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like a system-specific problem. You could take a screenshot, upload the image to one of the free hosts (such as imageshack.us) and then link it here. --Prolog (talk) 23:52, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

The problem seems to only be happening in IE. Screenshot (Cropped to make it easier to see). It's fine in Firefox. --Shiori (talk) 22:39, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I tried with IE (6.0) now and the same thing happened, so it's definitely an IE-related bug and not just on your system. --Prolog (talk) 16:02, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I think I've tracked down the cause. IE doesn't seem to like Template:Nihongo, which adds the small question mark and wikilink to Help:Japanese after the Japanese spelling (as shown on Xtifr's post above). --Prolog (talk) 16:26, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for solving the puzzle, Prolog. I didn't think this infobox could possibly be doing anything complicated enough to confuse even IE—and sure enough, it's not. Has someone reported the problem on at Template talk:Nihongo? --Xtifr _tälk 05:20, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how to fix it, so I left a note at Template talk:Nihongo. --Prolog (talk) 18:09, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Reply to question from Template talk:Nihongo

It is caused by the fact that an HTML sup tag is used to create a superscript ?-mark. It is a peculiarity of the default IE stylesheet that this causes the line-height to be slightly larger. Since the designer of the infobox didn't account for that and tightened the line-spacing, text is cut off.

I would like to take this opportunity to ask you not to try to solve this problem, but to instead refrain from using the kanji spelling in the infobox. You see, the name in roman letters + the name in kanji is, for most artists, too long to fit in the caption. That, and I don't think that such information is needed more than once in an article. We would already have the kanji, and possibly Hepburn, in the lead, so why duplicate in the infobox title? --Shinobu (talk) 05:59, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that is a good point about not using Template:Nihongo in the infobox, especially when the template is already in use in the first sentence of the introduction. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 00:21, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Fully agree. I'll see if I can think of some appropriate brief comment to add to the docs to cover not just this, but other potentially problematic templates in the name field as well. --Xtifr _tälk 00:53, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

I must agree as well. There's already an overuse of kanji (along with excessive capitalization of English) in quite a few Japanese music-related articles, despite the last paragraph in WP:MOS-JP. Using the nihongo template within the infobox would just encourage this sort of overkill. --Cyrus XIII (talk) 00:15, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

New field: distinguishing genres and styles

As part of a proposal to try and end "genre edit wars", one of the things I requested was that a Style(s) field be added to this template.

To view this proposal, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians#Genre wars and the distinguishing of genres and styles.

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 00:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

This has already been discussed and rejected (see the archived discussion). --Xtifr _tälk 04:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

editprotect request

{{mprotected2}} has been updated to allow the name of the article with which the template is associated to be added as a parameter (i.e. {{mprotected2|Selena}}) will add this template to Category:Protected pages associated with Main Page articles. --Sandy (talk) 22:43, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it looks like Selena is no longer on the main page (backlogs are bad for business). If I understand correctly, that sort've renders this request moot. If I continue patrolling these things, I'll be happy to do this for you in the future. You may wish to contact the protecting admin to inquire about dropping the protection, as they didn't specify whether their protection was due to high-use or being frontpaged (or if they did, I missed wherever they specified it). Cheers! --Luna Santin (talk) 02:58, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Occupation field

Regarding the occupation field, should only musical occupations be listed? What if the artist has dabbled in a field, say, he was in a couple of movies but didn't really act a lot. Would it be fair to include "Actor"? --Sam (talk) 01:02, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

It's a judgement call. And no, it's not just for musical occupations. If the person is notable for another occupation (e.g. Ice Cube or Harry Connick Jr.), then absolutely that occupation should be listed. If it's more of a case of dabbling in another occupation, then I'd say it probably shouldn't be listed. But Willie Nelson (who I'd consider a borderline case) has "actor" listed. So obviously some flexibility is allowed. Just don't get carried away trying to make someone look more impressive than they really are. Remember that we're trying to write encyclopedia articles, not puff pieces. Use common sense, and you should be ok. --Xtifr _tälk 11:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that up. Could you edit the text in the fields table to clarify that? I would do it myself but the page is locked for me. --Sam (talk) 16:52, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I added a little bit of information, but just so you know, although the template page is locked, the page with the information is not. It is transcluded from Template:Infobox musical artist/doc. If you would like to edit it further, please feel free. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 17:10, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Ah, thank you. --Sam (talk) 17:16, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks for fixing that typo, I thought I checked my spelling before I saved that. Oh, well. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 20:12, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Firefox 2.0's spellchecker to the rescue ;) --Sam (talk) 20:50, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

I somehow missed the release of 2.0. I am off to download. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 00:08, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Michael Nyman Band

Should I really put all the past members in the infobox? That would be a really long list. I tried to include those who had had major stints with the band, and left out the others, which are listed in the "lineup" section. --Scottandrewhutchins (talk) 16:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

adding notable roles to the ibox

Hiya, I'm not very familiar with infoboxes and the procedure for adding things to them, so sorry if this seems like a silly question. I was wondering if it was possible to get a 'notable roles' section added to this ibox template. It's just that many singers are also actors so I thought it would be handy to have their roles in the box as well as their music stats. I had a look through the available iboxes and can only find one for actor and musical artist and not a mixture of both. I thought I would be able to just add '|notable_role = ' to the specific artist's ibox (on their page), but it doesn't seem to show up when I save, so obviously it cant be done like this (unless i'm doing it wrong). --Gungadin (talk) 22:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant to respond to this before. In order to add a new parameter, you actually have to add extra code to the template's page. Even so, I cannot think of any musicians that would really require a "notable roles" parameter. Most of the time, the musician is only notable because of his or her musical exploits, not any acting roles. I think that it might be more useful as prose in the biography section of the article. Also, the unclear definition of "notable" roles might lead to edit wars or inconsistencies in the content when compared to other articles. The infobox is supposed to display very non-controversial facts (although genre disputes have been known to cause problems), and I think a "notable roles" section might be too subjective. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 03:33, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Origins and flags

Two issues regarding the origin field:

Sometimes people read it as "where the band members were born" rather than "where the band formed". Is there a way to phrase it better?
Do we actually need flagicons in the field? There are some fierce debates on whether flag icons are overproliferated. My personal thoughts:
- Flag icons are most often used to save space where it would be too cluttered to write out country names in full, or at all. The origin field must write out the geographical location in full, and therefore the flag icons cannot ever reduce or replace the text.
- Therefore, the only possible use for flag icons here is to provide a visual cue that is redundant to text already 100% clear in meaning.

What's the opinion on these things? --Unint (talk) 01:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

My opinion on the flag's in infoboxes is that they really don't have to be there. They are mostly used so infoboxs don't have to squeeze in large country names (like for movie or album release dates in specific countries). I really don't think they need to be in the country infobox, it just clutters them. --Andrzejbanas (talk) 01:54, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you both on this; not only does it seem to me that the flags are a source of clutter, they are also a source of needless edit-warring and controversy; should Simple Minds, for example, be adorned with the Scottish or the British flag? My view is that we should remove this option from the template. See also Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music#Flags. --Guinnog (talk) 12:11, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The discussion has now been moved to Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Flag icons - manual of style entry?. --Guinnog (talk) 14:08, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

As for the other issue, how about displaying "Career origin" instead of "Origin" as a clarification? --Unint (talk) 15:53, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Per discussion there, and as no objection has been raised here, I'm going to remove the reference to the flag icon in this infobox. --Guinnog (talk) 17:35, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

One Page Per Artist

I think any pages for a musical group should be merged together so that a band history, list of members, and complete discography are included on ONE PAGE. I'm somewhat new to wiki, but I think that seems more logical than having separate pages like AC/DC discography, Past members of AC/DC, etc. Anyone agree? --Thomaslikespigs (talk) 19:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi. First off, I moved your new topic to the bottom of the talk page so people can find it. I'll explain why on your talk page. Now, as for your question, there are arguments on both sides, and there's no easy answers. The biggest problem with your proposal is that there are technical limits on article size. Very large articles cause problems with many browsers, especially when you try to edit. Also, many people consider large articles unwieldy to browse (especially, I think, those with tabbed browsers). There's no one answer that will satisfy everyone, so we just muddle along as best we can. I do think that the main article about a band should include at least a summary of the the membership, discography, etc., but beyond that, we absolutely have to split some things up. There are other issues—your question does not have simple answers—but that should do for a start. Cheers, Xtifr _tälk 20:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Note: this is also off-topic for this infobox. Further discussion (if any) should probably be moved to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Musicians. --Xtifr _tälk 21:22, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Individual band members?

What is the appropriate type for an individual band member? It appears that group_or_band would be for articles on the band, not its members. --Joltman (talk) 13:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

It depends on what they do within the band. If they sing and play an instrument, use solo_singer and if they only play an instrument, but do not sing, use non_vocal_instrumentalist. – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 01:50, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't that kind of contradictory to list a band member as a solo singer? Perhaps we should either change the wording or create a type just for members of a band? I think that a type just for band members would be best, because why should a singer get their own color but every other band member be the same? --Joltman (talk) 12:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I think you're correct. There should be a "band_member" category with the same color as the band color. Maybe add the wording "Member of /band/" up top, like singles have "from /album/" on them. --*Spark* (talk) 13:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

What ended up being called "Solo_singer" was meant for use by all articles pertaining to a singular singer, whether they perform with a group or without one. Instrumentalists (meaning people who never or very rarely sing) should be tagged with the instrumentalist color. --FuriousFreddy (talk) 22:59, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Spouse field suggestion

Would a spouse field be a good or a bad idea? It seems odd to me that we have them in the actors template and not the musical artist one. --GracieLizzie (talk) 16:10, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, ask yourself that question: do you think it's really relevant to this topic? --Unint (talk) 18:27, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it's as relevant here as it is to actors. So if you think it's irrelevant here, then perhaps it should go from actors too? --GracieLizzie (talk) 20:28, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

The way I see it:

Articles on actors are more focused on personal life across the board, due to celebrity culture and all. However, only a small subset of musicians are bona fide celebrities. In fact, some are intensely private and it is often the case that the names of their partners are unknown, and thus we do not always focus on those details as much.
I've checked out the edit war over the spouse field at Infobox actor, and I'd rather we not bring it over here. Likewise, they have a "notable roles" field; we do not, on the grounds of it being far too contentious.

But don't let that be the last word on the matter. Anybody else? --Unint (talk) 21:10, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm strongly opposed. It's not relevant to a musical career. It's not present in the scientists infobox. I don't believe it belongs in the actors infobox, although I suppose there's a stronger case for it there. In those rare cases where a musician's marital status is mentionworthy (if you'll pardon the coinage), it can be mentioned in the body of the article. In general, our policy is not to mention spouses (spice?) or offspring unless they're notable; adding this to the infobox will encourage the opposite. Anyway, in many (most?) cases that I can think of, it's the ex-spouses that are notable, i.e. Sonny Bono and Cher, Gregg Allman and Cher, Richard and Linda Thompson, Madonna and Sean Penn, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, etc. And I really don't think we want to add a Former Spouses field as well! --Xtifr _tälk 21:43, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

footnotes field

{tl|ediprotected}}

Would it be possible for an administrator to add a footnotes field on a par with the one on Infobox Officeholder? There are several pages on which I think it is needed to explain the information displayed in the infobox. Thank you. --Hera1187 (talk) 20:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

What is stopping you from using a footnote in the infobox? The note will still appear in the references section in the bottom. Why does it need the parameter? (An example of it in use would be helpful.) – Heave n's Wrath ^Talk 03:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Katie Melua plays the violin, but this is not widely know and I would like to put an explanation and cite to prevent it being deleted by well meaning editors who don't know this. An unintrusive footnotes field would do this. For an example of such a field in use, see Ehud Olmert. --Hera1187 (talk) 08:29, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

That can go as a regular footnote. There's no reason to have a special field for a standard feature. I've removed the editprotected request, as we seem to be far from having a concensus on adding this. --Xtifr _tälk 21:47, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Spouse

I propose to add spouse to this template. --Astorknlam (talk) 10:10, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Discussed fairly recently (scroll up a little). I'm still opposed to the suggestion. --Xtifr _tälk 09:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Image size (Feb 2007)

Someone should provide the possibility for image to be set at its size, as, when enlarged, it gives bad results as in Carlo Bergonzi. --Attilios (talk) 11:20, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Nationality field

Would it be possible to add a nationality field? Often the birth place and origin of an artist do not share their nationality. For example, Regina Spektor is an American but if you only looked at the infobox on her page you would think she was Russian. Katie Melua has joint British and Georgian citizenship but her infobox only states her birthplace in Georgia. There are many more examples of this where a nationality field would clear up any confusion. --Philip Stevens (talk) 10:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm dubious, but not totally opposed. Nationality has been the subject of numerous contentious edit wars in the past {see WP:LAME#Ethnic feuds for some of the more extreme examples). Also, I'd prefer not to encourage people to just look at the infobox. If nationality is worth mentioning, it's worth mentioning in the lead, and I think mentioning it in the lead should be good enough to solve the presented problem. And if history shows us anything, it's that people will try to fill in every field of an infobox they possibly can, even when it's not particular appropriate or called for. This field seems like it would be redundant in many (probably most) cases. Or, if it's not redundant, then we'd want to go through and re-edit several thousand articles to add it in. So...I cringe a little at the suggestion, but won't stand in the way if others also feel it's a good idea. But I'm glad you asked (protection aside), because I don't think it should go in without at least a little further discussion. --Xtifr _tälk 13:20, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Add {{editprotected}} again after further discussion has taken place. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. --Ian Manka (talk) 02:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think there are too many possible combinations and permutations of what could go in there - ancestry, place of birth, residence, etc. It would make the infobox too confusing. I'd put explanations of stuff like that in the article itself. --Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 04:02, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

G.D. signature

What about adding an "if" string for signature, I'm sure it won't be very useful but I need to use on the Carl Reinecke article. Thanks. --Walter Humala Godsave him! ^{(wanna Talk?)} 03:46, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Where exactly do you want to add the signature? --NeilEvans (talk) 20:35, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

"Years active"?

How are we to define this? --Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme (talk) 20:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Surely that's just common sense. --NeilEvans (talk) 20:31, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

not really...particularly for classical artists. when does it actually 'count' for career start? ...first recital? ...first paid performance? ...first acclaimed performance? it really isn't all that clear. --emerson7 | Talk 03:49, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd go with first recital, to compare that with modern artists, an artisat could be active for many years within a small niche of music and known to only a small number of people. They may then have a breakout hit in the pop charts some years later. But you wouldn't count the start of their career from the breakout hit would you? --NeilEvans (talk) 15:43, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Hence the dilemma. I'd say the musician is technically "active" from the moment they start to play an instrument or define themselves as a musician, whenever that is. --Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme (talk) 22:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I think years active is meant to be a definitive date, as you would not be able to find an exact date of any musician, if you looked for the first time they played an instrument. Something like first recital, I would think that someone could easily research that in regard to classical musicians. --NeilEvans (talk) 23:10, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

So, the first available date in reference to doing something musical or definitely the first performance? --Someoneinmyheadbutit'snotme (talk) 03:44, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I would say first performance, but I guess you should just use your own judgement for classical artists. --NeilEvans (talk) 23:40, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Voice Type

Hi, new here, but with a question: Couldn't there be a category not just for "Instrument," but for "Voice Type"? My issue is opera singers. On Jussi Bjorling, I just tried to change "Instrument: Vocals" to "Voice type: Tenor," but I see the template itself would need a change.

The only problem I see is that people would start trying to categorize every pop singer as an alto, tenor, baritone, etc., which isn't useful information for a pop singer, and would simply add clutter. For an opera singer, though, it's often one of the first things you need to know, like what instrument they play. Thanks, Mackan79 (talk) 14:27, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

This sounds like it might be worth further discussion, but for now, I recommend something like "Vocals (tenor)". I agree that people trying to classify pop musicians would be a problem (and would frequently constitute original research, even if correct). There might be a way around that, but I don't see it at present, so I think my workaround is probably the best bet until someone comes up with a better suggestion. --Xtifr _tälk 21:52, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I think that the only way to do that would be to have a different set of options used only for classical musicians (in other words, make it optional) --Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 03:58, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

theres's no question that this template is biased toward contemporary music forms, but technically, the voice is an instrument, and it's perfectly appropriate to indicate the voice range in that field. i've been using, [[Human voice|voice]]: [[soprano]] (voice: soprano) --emerson7 | Talk 19:44, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Height

I think we should at least have a couple of artists of height, like 5 or 6. Happy Editing! --Trampton (talk) 01:13, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say, but if you're asking for a height field to be added, then I disagree. Height is pretty much completely irrelevant to a musician's career. If there are any exceptions, then the height issues can be discussed in the body of the article. Adding a field to the infobox would result in people trying to add the information to many musicians' infoboxes, which would be extremely pointless. Hair color is probably relevant to more musicians' careers than height is—but still irrelevant to the vast majority, so I'd strongly oppose adding a hair-color field as well. --Xtifr _tälk 22:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Requested edit

This template is protected, and should be tagged with {{protected template}}, or another suitable protection template. Thanks --Qxz (talk) 19:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. – Luna Santin (talk) 02:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Classical Conductors

I have been working on creating a new entry for a Classical Conductor and was going to base it on what has been done elsewhere. Looking at a few sample conductors I don't see this Infobox used, and I think it probably should be. So the question is what "background" value should I use for a classical conductor? Are they considered an instrumentalist? If so, it might be nice to add that to the description as an example. Thanks. --Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 16:12, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

actually it is being used...ref: Michael Tilson Thomas, Leonard Bernstein, Yehudi Menuhin and Pierre Boulez just to name a few. ....works well with orchestras too! ref: San Francisco Symphony and London Symphony Orchestra. although this infobox is arguably waaaay contemporary-music centric, it works relatively well, but i'd be interested in what additionally you'd like to see. --emerson7 | Talk 20:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I see the value "classical_ensemble" being used in most of the examples you cited, but one is left blank. Surely the background "classical ensemble" isn't really accurate when it's just one person, is it? I don't mind classifying a conductor as an instrumentalist, but we should be using some sort of individual classification, rather than implying that the person is an ensemble. --Alucard (Dr.) | Talk 03:55, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

the ensemble is the orchestra. what good is a conductor.... --emerson7 | Talk 01:27, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I have also come across a conductor being listed as "non_performing_personnell", ref: Zubin Mehta, which I disagree with. There really does not seem to be an appropriate background in which conductors fall. I agree that putting a conductor under instrumentalist would be better, but then could that be added to the description. Ideally, I think a separate category should be there for conductors. --Xunvala (talk) 15:25, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Why doesn't it include the nation in which they currently live?

Someone just added a Soviet flag to the Regina Spektor infobox, making it appear as if she is Soviet, whereas she now has U.S. citizenship. Why doesn't the infobox include the nation where the individual currently lives and/or holds citizenship? --Badagnani (talk) 21:32, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

You can use the Origin field for where she started her musical career. --Unint (talk) 21:35, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Live members

Perhaps the inclusion of another section for live members (in between the ones for the current and former members) in order to include any additional personnel performing only in a live capacity, but not as full time members? --Inflammator (talk) 12:15, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Legal name

I'm trying to fix up the Keiko Fuji page, and wanted to list her legal name (her current legal name) and birth name (with maiden family name) separately, but see that this is currently unavailable in the template. Why don't we add a legal name item? --mitcho/芳貴 (talk) 06:20, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

That sort of thing standardly goes in the Alias field. Details (such as that one is a legal name or maiden name) are better in the body of the article. --Xtifr _tälk 22:26, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Management field

Why dont we add a "management field" to the infobox. e.g. 50 Cent's would be Violator Management --Wikien2009 (talk) 16:53, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that level of detail is really necessary or appropriate for the infobox, though I don't feel strongly about the matter one way or the other --Xtifr _tälk 22:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Background colour help

What background colour would a DJ be. --Wikien2009 (talk) 13:13, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Non performing personnel would be the best fit. --NeilEvans (talk) 20:00, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Microformat

I recently marked up this template with hCard microformat classes, but I'm not very happy with the results, because its; not easily possible to determine whether the template is being used for person or a group. In the former case, the name should be wrapped with HTML class="fn" (as happens now), but in the case of a group, the wrapper should use classes "fn org". Any suggestions as to how this might be achieved? --Andy Mabbett (talk) 20:29, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Please replace
<big class="fn">{{{Name}}}</big>
with
<big class="{{Template:Infobox musical artist/hCard Class|{{{Background|}}} }}">{{{Name}}}</big>

as kindly suggested on my talk page, by Soumyasch. --Andy Mabbett (talk) 14:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. Note that it may take some time for existing transclusions to be updated. --ais523 08:20, 26 April 2007 (U T C)

Thank you. It seems to be working for both solo artists and groups. --Andy Mabbett (talk) 09:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Image size (Jan–Apr 2007)

Apparently, putting any value in the Img_size parameter breaks the infobox (does not recognize size, and puts the image in full size). Is this intended or not? --ReyBrujo (talk) 03:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean, it breaks the infobox. The parameter for image size does work. --NeilEvans (talk) 16:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It seems to be breaking again. Adding Img_size makes it look as though the image link does not exist (red link). --Just64helpin (talk) 22:21, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

actually, it's not the image size value, it's the appended "px". if only the value is added, it appears to work. example gut: img_size=200, example nicht so gut: img_size=200px --emerson7 | Talk 03:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Opera

Further to the note above from the Composers Project, there is also a consensus at Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera that these boxes are not being used on opera articles. Thank you for your cooperation. --Kleinzach (talk) 11:18, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I again see no consensus there; just a draft statement from you, posted after the above comment, with which one other editor has agreed. --Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:37, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

If you look again at the various discussions on both the Composers and Opera Projects talk pages you will see that members of the Opera Project have been unanimous in deploring the use of biographical infoboxes. --Kleinzach (talk) 00:23, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep. Only Linishu has offered halfhearted support for them. --Folantin (talk) 10:16, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Composers

This infobox has been added to many "classical" composers' pages. I just wanted people here to know that there has been a consensus at Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers that infoboxes are not a net-positive for these articles, and so they should not be considered a standard part of these articles. Just wanted to let you guys know so no one gets bitten while trying to add infoboxes! :) Thanks, Mak (talk) 22:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I see no such consensus on that project's talk page; only on-going debate. AIUI, there's a wider biography-project consensus that infoboxes should be used. As I said in that debate, what is need is not the removal of infoboxes, but changing the existing infobox to make it more suitable - or, if that's not possible, and new, "composers" infobox. --Andy Mabbett (talk) 08:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

A consensus was reached on April 12/13 in which all the regular Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers editors participated. --Kleinzach (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Those editors do not own the articles concerned. Debate is continuing; ergo no consensus has been reached. --Andy Mabbett (talk) 16:33, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure why this infobox was deemed appropriate for composers to begin with; the fields needed for popular musicians are clearly at cross purposes with those needed for composers. Also, the background colour documentation clearly only covers "non-classical composers". --Unint (talk) 16:45, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Read the discussion fully and I think you'll find a reasonable consensus. This is not a policy matter. --Moreschi ^Talk 15:58, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Accounting for px at the end of Img_size's value

Please change line 6 from

  |<tr style="text-align: center;"><td colspan="3">[[Image:{{{Img}}}|{{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{Landscape|}}}}}|yes|{{min|300|{{{Img_size|}}}}}x200|{{min|220|{{{Img_size|}}}}}}}px|{{{Img_capt|}}}]]

to

|<tr style="text-align: center;"><td colspan="3">[[Image:{{{Img}}}|{{#ifeq:{{lc:{{{Landscape|}}}}}|yes|{{min|300|{{{Img_size|}}}}}x200px|{{#ifexpr:{{strlen|{{{Img_size}}}}}>3|{{{Img_size}}}|{{min|220|{{{Img_size|}}}}}px}}}}|{{{Img_capt|}}}]]

This solves the problem discussed at WP:VPT that setting Img_size = 150px with that "px" at the end causes the image to be linked instead of shown. --Pomte (talk) 17:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

This looks like it will badly break things if the Landscape option is used, and will allow overriding the standard maximum sizes by the simple expedient of adding "px" to the end of the size, which is highly undesirable! --Xtifr _tälk 00:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

The landscape option doesn't break because it remains the same as before. I agree though about increasing the size being undesirable, so I've withdrawn the edit request. But we still need to fix all the "px" uses. If someone wants to do it with AWB or something, that'd be great. A way to do it manually is to add a dummy category Category:Musical artist articles needing maintenance when the length of Img_size is greater than 3. The latter method would require an edit to the template. --Pomte (talk) 03:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I changed the template so that it checks if {{{Img_size}}} is a number; if not (such as if it ends with px) it is replaced by 300. --Patrick (talk) 07:13, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

That's not quite right either, as it should only be 300 if the landscape option is set; otherwise it should be 220. But aside from that detail, this sounds like a good approach. --Xtifr _tälk 08:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

It is changed to 300 before applying min, so it becomes 220 anyway. --Patrick (talk) 09:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, ok, cool. I didn't look closely enough, sorry. --Xtifr _tälk 10:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Cause Of Death

i am proposing adding cause of death to the infobox, other sites like IMDB, answers.com list cause of death. it is useful information for most people and i feeel it should be listed above the fold. --Randywilliams1975 (talk) 18:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that's something that needs to be in the infobox, I think just put it in the article. --Joltman (talk) 19:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

i concur with Joltman...everything needn't be infoboxed, and i'd like to see a lot of other things before cause of death. --emerson7 | Talk 21:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Hello. I am not a member of the Project, but I do a lot of work on biographies. I wish you folks would revisit the idea of adding "cause of death" to the info box. It would mean adding just one more line (after the date of death) and would be a quick and easy source of this information. Thanks. --Michael David (talk)) 14:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

French interwiki link

Could someone add an interwiki link to the French template (fr:Modèle:Infobox Artiste musical), please? Thanks. --131.111.100.155 (talk) 16:33, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The interwiki links go on the documentation page, which isn't protected, so you don't need an admin (or even an account) for this. Done. --Xtifr _tälk 20:14, 10 May 2007 (UTC)