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Musical artist pages infoboxes being changed from "Infobox musical artist" to "Infobox person"

Just wondering is boldly changing artist infoboxes from {{infobox musical artist}} to {{infobox person}} ie Joan Jett, Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey, Michael Jackson, Madonna (entertainer), Meat Loaf and Mick_Jagger to name a few, what's the projects take on this ? Seems the reasons they are getting changed over is "infobox:Person" allows for more parameters, but these are musical artist. Some discussion I've started Talk:Freddie Mercury, Talk:Meat Loaf, Talk:Michael Jackson. Isn't there a way to embed the "infobox person" inside and at the bottom of "Infobox:Musical artist" ? Mlpearc Phone (open channel) 15:51, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

There might be a way, but people usually embed some musical artist parameters inside the person infobox. Regarding the preference for one infobox versus another, I find that a great many editors wish to show spouse and other information in the musical artist infobox, parameters which are not included in the musical artist, which is why folks want to change the kind of infobox. Also, there is a long-term disruptor called the Cause of Death vandal who changes to the person infobox because he wants to include the cause of death parameter, and I have always tried to revert this guy whenever I spot him, but that doesn't mean I think the person infobox is bad or the musical artist infobox is better. I think that if a musical artist has a famous spouse then it's worth combining the infoboxes so that all the pertinent information may be displayed. Binksternet (talk) 15:45, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
@Binksternet: thanks for your input, I've crossed paths with that vandal also. Cheers, Mlpearc (open channel) 02:51, 14 August 2016 (UTC)

The definite article in band names... again

OK. Look. I know this argument (or versions of it) have been done to death. But goddamnit, the way Wikipedia deals with indefinite and definite articles, article names, and piped links is completely contradictory and I don't understand why we do it the way we do it.

So Wikipedia invests a huge amount of time into settling the Great Article Debate: is it The Beatles, or the Beatles? I think this was actually worth doing, and came down on the right decision. But we’ve ended up with a bizarre situation in which some band article names include “the” (such as The Beatles) and some do not (such as the Spice Girls), even when both are always referred to with the definite article.

What’s more there seems to be a preference to include “the” in the wikilinks. So we’re writing the Beatles, apparently. (Do we therefore also pipe the Spice Girls as the Spice Girls?) But the decision to make "the" lowercase indicates that we do not consider “the” part of the formal name. It becomes grammatically identical to saying “the White House”, in which, rightly, "the" is not part of the wikilink.

I’m basically saying that these are identical grammatical constructions and so should be wikilinked accordingly:

Accordingly, I changed the Beatles to the Beatles on the Abbey Road article, but was reverted twice (without explanation I might add, humph harumph!). I’m not going to fight that battle specifically but sheesh, we’ve ended up with three different ways of treating definite articles in band names and the lack of consistency kills me. Popcornduff (talk) 13:39, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Apologies, everyone. Shortly after posting this I had deja vu and realised I brought up this same issue here before, archived here Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Music/Archive_7#Including_the_definite_article_in_band_name_wikilinks. It's worth reading. Nonetheless I stand by it and the previous conversation seemed to end unresolved. Popcornduff (talk) 13:45, 1 September 2016 (UTC)
Is everyone too sick of this subject to reply? Popcornduff (talk) 08:00, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

Hi Popcornduff this is what happens when one wants to legislate every little details: the law corpus soon grows bigger than the word it aims to rule. I get a very close issue with a piece of King Crimson, the construKction of light that is exactly writen this way on their CD cover. Some say that dropping the initial lowercase doesn't bring added clarity (funny about light construKction), so what about the central K? Should we also drop it, arguing search engines ignore case, when the CD cover shows the title as a tiny thin life line (initial included) popping the central K as a pulse? My opinion is to let the last word to artist, e.g. for your example, let the one that wanted prepended the be classified within the T with the The, and the others within their own initial, like Minuit. Grnaz (talk) 19:00, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Helmholtz pitch notation

It seems some standardization is needed (especially typographically) for the use of Helmholtz pitch notation in articles. The Helmholtz pitch notation article itself uses actual prime (not apostrophe) characters, and Unicode U+0375, "Greek Lower Numeral Sign" (͵). The talk page there suggests that some pages are using the IPA symbol for "secondary stress" (ˌ). Over on the de:Tonsymbol, it looks like they're using U+201A, lower single quotes (‚), and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Stringed instrument tunings suggests a subscripted capital I! Going back to the source (Helmholtz himself) Die Lehre Von Den Tonempfindungen Als Physiologische Grundlage Fur Die Theorie Der Musik, it looks like proper prime symbols above, and subscripted serif capital I below. Which should it be?--Theodore Kloba (talk) 22:18, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

A look at the second edition of Ellis' translation, we see what appear to be proper primes (accents) above and below:On the sensations of tone..., so maybe the use of the capital I was just a limitation of the typesetting available to Helmholtz. A further complication in both books is that the note letters are always shown in italics, so maybe the intent was not a slanted "prime" symbol afterall! --Theodore Kloba (talk) 20:01, 2 August 2017 (UTC)
If this were andrewpedia, I'd of course use modified Helmholtz notation as I do elsewhere. And I'm not alone in this, see the external references there. Some of the ideas and opinions on that page might be of use here, or not. See also the detailed conventions of TOEOT for many problems with MHN that only become obvious with usage, many of them potential problems with the alternatives as well. Andrewa (talk) 02:14, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
One other possibility I just thought of is to use LaTeX math formatting, which lets you put primes above or below and places multiple primes nicely. For example, use <math>B_\prime-F\sharp-B-d-f\sharp-b-e^\prime-g^\prime-c\sharp^{\prime\prime}</math> to produce: . —Theodore Kloba (☎) 18:55, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

New workpage for Helmholtz/Scientific pitch notation style

I have started a new workpage, /Pitch Notation Systems with a draft of language for a section on pitch notation systems.—Theodore Kloba (☎) 19:47, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

RfC Musical band member timelines

Please see original RfC here. - FlightTime (open channel) 01:37, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

Duplicate RfC
  • (If there's a better layout format for this RfC without changing the context, then please help)

Location of band members timeline. When a band has a "List of X band members" subage (see selected list of bands at this ongoing discussion for examples) should the timeline go on the subage, or the bands main article or both. - FlightTime (open channel) 15:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

  • Subpage - If the band has a list of members subpage, then this is the proper place to include a timeline graph.
  • Bands main article - All timeline graphs should be displayed on the bands main article.
  • Both - Timeline graphs are appropriate for both "list of" subpages and the bands main article.

Survey

Subage - When a band has a moderate to high turnover frequency a "List of X band members" is usually created to handle the larger members information. It has been suggested that timelines should be list on both the members subage and the bands main article. In the list of bands in the section above, the "status quo" seems to be, if the member subpage exist then the timelines is displayed there and not on the bands main article, when the bands member changes do not warrant a "list of" subpage, then the timeline, (if warranted) should be displayed on the bands main article. - FlightTime (open channel) 15:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

Request to change policy on not capitalising "the" in band names

I recently corrected numerous articles related to The Sound by properly capitalising the band's name from "the Sound" to "The Sound". Grammatically this makes sense as the band in question is called "The Sound", not "Sound". I was told this is not the current policy, so I request some discussion on what I see as being quite a silly policy. Lockytas (talk) 23:46, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

The practice of using lower case 'the' in band names that appear in running prose comes from several style guides including the Chicago Manual of Style. It also comes from a great many examples of musicians and other writers talking about their band without the "The" at all. Notional examples might be members of the Beatles saying "my Beatles bandmate" or critics saying something "was a Beatles-style song." This shows how unimportant is the "the".
In 2012 there was a titanic request for mediation about the issue, hotly debated on all sides, the result being today's style guide, the one you don't like. If you want to change the style guide you will have to mount a larger effort to overturn the existing rule. Binksternet (talk) 00:01, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
As a reference, the relevant style guides may be found at WP:THEMUSIC and WP:BANDNAME. Binksternet (talk) 00:40, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
What drives me crazy about this is that we continue to include "the" in the wikilink, which makes zero sense. Popcornduff (talk) 04:35, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
When "the" is included in the wikilink, the reader will have utterly no doubt that "the" is part of the name. It's just too disruptive to the eyes when a small grammatical word is capped mid-sentence. Many style guides, almost certainly for this reason, insist on the downcasing. Tony (talk) 10:43, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
In English, some proper nouns take "the" (like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty) and some don't (like Central Park or Buckingham Palace). When they take "the", we don't capitalise it and we don't include it in the wikilink. Band names should follow the same logic. We're already hopelessly inconsistent about whether articles about bands include "the", by the way, even when they're invariably referred to with "the" - as with the Spice Girls article, for example. Popcornduff (talk) 10:58, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
"It's just too disruptive to the eyes when a small grammatical word is capped mid-sentence. Many style guides, almost certainly for this reason, insist on the downcasing." If this is true, I find it a very odd rationale - no style guide recommends lowercasing "the" for the titles of films or books etc, although exactly the same logic would apply. Instead I think the lowercase makes sense for the reason I give above: when proper nouns use "the", we don't capitalise. (Note that band names aren't titles.) Popcornduff (talk) 11:21, 15 September 2017 (UTC)
Ageed with Binksternet and Tony1. On Popcornduff's main point, about "some proper nouns [that] take "the" (like the Eiffel Tower ...)', they actually only do so in constructions in which it isn't awkward. No one talks about "my the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty comparison essay", but "my Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty comparison essay". Such cases have nothing to do with proper names at all, and are not different in any way from other constructions with an optional "the" in English, e.g. "I'm going to the store" versus "My store coupon expired", and "Whose store is this?", all in reference to the same store; "The damned dog got into the trash again", versus "Have you seen my dog?", "That dog is fat", all in reference to the same dog. This is the reason the "[t|T]he" is dropped from "his Beatles bandmates"; it's a general feature of English, and not a proper versus common nouns matter at all.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

MOS:TONE/MOS:FICT, WP:PSTS, and reviews of fictional or artistic works

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#Proposed clarification of reviews' relation to WP:PSTS and MOS:TONE. This is a request for comments in the general sense, but not a WP:RFC at this stage, being an initial discussion draft (broadened to cover writing about fiction generally), building on a lengthy discussion/dispute at the same page.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:51, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Draft guideline material on how to write (and not write) "Production" sections

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film#List of points to cover, a draft list of advice on the writing of "Production" sections. This is part of an RfC on MOS:FILM, but the material is written broadly enough (on purpose) it might actually live at MOS:FICT and apply to other media (TV, video games, comics, novel series, albums, etc.) – and a minor variant of it used for albums, musicals, and other music productions.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  05:37, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Guidelines for layout/content of articles on musical instruments?

Dear fellow editors,
Does anyone know if there is a MOS article (or essay) documenting the best practices to follow when creating or editing articles about musical instruments? I found Wikipedia:WikiProject Musical Instruments and Wikipedia:WikiProject Musical Instruments/Guidelines, but there doesn't appear to be a specific set of guidelines for the recommended layout and content of articles about musical instruments, similar to the guidelines for albums, for example. However, if there is one, then I would be grateful if someone would be kind enough to point me to it. Thank you in advance.
Reason for asking: should articles on musical instruments contain a list of musicians known for playing the instrument? I have looked at examples of good articles listed here, and Hammond organ has a list of notable users, whereas clarinet doesn't.
I am one of the editors watching the article on the hurdy-gurdy, which has such a list; it was created by Antimuonium at 05:12 on 30 July 2016 and I have expanded it today for completeness, but I am concerned about potential WP:LINKFARM creep, especially since there already is a related article on Recordings featuring the hurdy-gurdy, which mentions the musicians.
Thank you in advance for any advice anyone could offer.
With kind regards;
Patrick. ツ Pdebee.(talk)(guestbook) 12:44, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Don't know if others will agree, but I generally dislike lists in Wikipedia articles. The article for the Roland TR-808 (which I wrote) made FA recently and I tried hard to include all the notable users in prose, explaining what's notable about them. Popcornduff (talk) 16:03, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

An arts-and-media MoS proposal

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal: Adopt WP:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines into MoS, it's been suggested to merge that WP:PROJPAGE into MoS, as one of the last remaining genre/medium-specific style guide kinds of pages that isn't in MoS, especially since someone's already put a guideline tag on it, and given it a misleading MOS:VG shortcut.

Strangely, several people from the WP:VG wikiproject have shown up to make what appear to be WP:OWN-based arguments against the idea. I hope that people from other media and arts projects, all of which have MoS pages (largely authored and maintained by people from those projects, but without a claim of absolute control by them) can participate in this discussion and assuage the unreasonable fears of people in that particular project. Promotion of topical style advice pages into MoS has not proven any kind of problem for WP:VISUALARTS, WP:ARTS, WP:FILM, WP:TV, WP:COMICS, WP:ANIME, WP:NOVELS, WP:MUSIC, etc. Meanwhile, the continued fragmentation of such a page to an "un-MoS" page (while simultaneously claiming to be an MoS page, somehow), is misleading and a recipe for conflict.

Or, if you think there's is some kind of problem, feel free to give the opposite opinion. I'm not telling anyone how they should !vote. I'm pointing out that that all the arts-and-media projects and arts-and-media MoS pages share a common sort of history, as well as the same practicality of their advice being included in MoS or shunted to a wikiproject backwater where no one is apt to take "guideline" claims seriously; it's the same across all these projects and pages. So is the increased level to which they agree instead of conflict, by virtue of MoS maintainers ironing out WP:POLICYFORKs between them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ<  23:40, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Very odd people from WP:VG] don't want their work officialized by the community ....would give them a much stronger back bone in deliberations. They should talk to those over at the WP:FILM project....as they have some very bad ideas that get by because its part of the MoS.--Moxy (talk) 02:31, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

Cry Me a River (1953 song) or Cry Me a River (Arthur Hamilton song)

A discussion as to whether the qualifier form "(YEAR song)" should be used for this song or, with wider implications, for any other song, is currently active at Talk:Cry Me a River (1953 song)#Requested move 27 December 2017. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 08:44, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Hate Me! or Hate Me! (Children of Bodom song) and also Hate Me (song) or Hate Me (Blue October song)

A discussion as to whether elements such as accents, diacritics, symbols or punctuation within main title headers obviate the need for qualifiers is currently active at Talk:Hate Me!#Requested move 31 December 2017. The other affected discussion is at Talk:Hate Me (Blue October song)#Requested move 21 December 2017. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 09:10, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Studio albums

We should add something to this MoS to mention that only studio albums are allowed in discography sections. This is the practice that almost all editors of band articles follow. Any time a non-studio album is included into the discography section of a band, it is quickly removed by other editors, regardless of how notable the album is. We might as well include this unofficial practice here. Angryapathy (talk) 15:08, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

This is more of a content issue than a style issue and is covered in Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Article guidelines. The guideline says the discography section is a "summary of the musician's major works" and that live albums "should generally not be included." This should allow for certain live albums that are considered among the artists' major works to be included but there are always the idiots that have to blindly follow an arbitrary guideline no matter how little sense it makes. Piriczki (talk) 17:51, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
I concur with Piriczki. It's hard to imagine, for example, that any serious article on Peter Frampton would not include Frampton Comes Alive! in its discography. Pstoller (talk) 03:31, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Descriptive phrases and song titles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Going question by question:

A4 and B4 Broad consensus that descriptive phrases should not be considered part of a song's title for purposes of mentioning it.
C7 and D7 Strong consensus based on policy to avoid excessive capitalization.
E3 Practical unanimity that parentheticals should be disregarded, unless the article is actually about a notable specific version.

F2 Only three editors gave a clear !vote on this one, but given the consensus for C and D, this seems to remain in line with the majority opinion. 198.84.253.202 (talk) 19:44, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

What should WP:MOSMUSIC and WP:NCMUSIC say about descriptive parentheticals (e.g. Title (Acoustic)) and descriptive phrases after dashes (e.g. Title - Radio Edit) in modern popular music track titles? Jc86035 (talk) 06:07, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Information

(For the purposes of brevity, please take "capitalized" to mean that something is in title case; "not capitalized" to mean that something is in sentence case; "track title" to mean the title of a track as shown in a track listing, such as 'Song – Single (Radio Edit)'; and "song title" to mean the name of a song excluding descriptive qualifiers like '(Acoustic)'. The RfC is probably slightly too lengthy for its subject matter, but it was the best thing I could think of that would allow it to be closed cleanly.)

WP:MOSMUSIC and WP:NCMUSIC do not specifically mention how descriptive parentheticals used in track titles in popular music, such as "(Remix)" and "(Acoustic)", should be capitalized. This implies that they should all currently be in title case (as with other parts of song titles), and that they should by extension be treated by part of the song title. Examples include the articles Ain't It Funny (Murder Remix), Lavender (Nightfall Remix), Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up, Knicks (Remix) (actually an EP) and Ignition (Remix). (Most remixes do not have their own articles.)

However, per discussions at Template talk:Infobox song and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs, it may be better to treat them as generic qualifiers and not part of the song title, much like how brackets containing phrases such as "(feat. Artist)" are currently treated.

(Notifying participants in the aformentioned discussions: TheSandDoctor, Ojorojo, Richard3120, Reidgreg, Martinevans123 and SMcCandlish.) Jc86035 (talk) 06:08, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Comment Shouldn't WP:SONGCOVER apply to several of these? "Ain't It Funny" and "Lavender" have separate articles, which could be expanded to include the remixes. In fact, Richhoncho and Ericorbit redirected "Funny (Murder Remix)" to the original following this discussion. It was begun again by Status without any discussion. Also, "Turn It Up" (remix) and "Iginition" (remix) were apparently refashioned from earlier songs. It seems that the originals and the remixes could be accommodated by one article, which is the goal of SONGCOVER. Knicks Remix may be the name of the EP, which includes "Knicks" (remix) and "Knicks" (instrumental remix). —Ojorojo (talk) 18:03, 29 April 2018 (UTC)
Comment. The thrust of our deliberations and subsequent project vote! on the inclusion of songcover was that articles are on songs, not on various recordings of that song. I see no reason to change that perception, and certainly not without taking it to the wider community. --Richhoncho (talk) 18:19, 29 April 2018 (UTC)

When should a descriptive phrase in parentheses, such as "(Acoustic)" or "(Remix)", be considered to be part of a song's title and be included within quotation marks when the song is mentioned? (pick one)

  • A1: Always; "Song (Acoustic)"/"Song (feat. Artist)"
  • A2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be (part of title by default)
  • A3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be (not part of title by default)
  • A4: Never; "Song"

When should a descriptive phrase after a dash, such as "Remastered Version" or "Radio Edit", be considered (along with the dash) to be part of a song's title and be included within quotation marks when the song is mentioned? (pick one)

  • B1: Always; "Song – Radio Edit"
  • B2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be
  • B3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be
  • B4: Never; "Song"

When should a descriptive phrase in brackets such as "Remix" or "Acoustic" be written in title case, as opposed to sentence case, when a song is mentioned? (pick one or two)

  • C1: Always; "Song (Remix)" and "Song" (Acoustic)
  • C2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be
  • C3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be
  • C4: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B; "Song (Remix)" and "Song" (acoustic)
  • C5: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources don't explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be capitalized (capitalized by default only if considered part of title)
  • C6: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be capitalized (not capitalized by default even if considered part of title)
  • C7: Never; "Song (remix)" and "Song" (acoustic)

When should a descriptive phrase after a dash such as "Radio Edit" be written in title case, as opposed to sentence case, when a song is mentioned? (pick one or two)

  • D1: Always; "Song – Radio Edit" and "Song" – Remastered Version/"Song" Remastered Version
  • D2: Always unless reliable sources explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be
  • D3: Only if reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be
  • D4: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B; "Song – Radio Edit" and "Song" – remastered version/"Song" remastered version
  • D5: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources don't explicitly indicate that it shouldn't be capitalized
  • D6: Whenever it is considered to be part of the title per A and B, AND reliable sources explicitly indicate that it should be capitalized
  • D7: Never; "Song – radio edit" and "Song" – remastered version/"Song" remastered version

Which parts of a track name should be included in the article title? (pick one)

  • E1: The song name including all descriptive parentheticals, and excluding descriptive phrases such as "Remastered Version" and "Radio Edit" shown after a dash, and excluding indication of featured artists; Song (Remix)
  • E2: The song name excluding descriptive phrases, but a parenthetical should be used as a disambiguator if one is needed and the parenthetical forms a unique title; Song (remix)
  • E3: The song name excluding descriptive phrases, but parentheticals should be disregarded for purposes of disambiguation; Song (Artist song) or Song (Artist remix)

Is a parenthetical that contains a non-descriptive phrase (excluding the name of an artist, etc.) and a descriptive phrase, such as "(Nightfall Remix)", treated as descriptive or as part of a proper noun? (pick one)

  • F1: The entire parenthetical is treated as if it were a proper noun and not descriptive, and statements within A–E do not apply to it (i.e. "Nightfall Remix")
  • F2: The entire parenthetical is treated as a descriptive phrase, but the non-descriptive part is treated as if it were a proper noun; the descriptive part does not require capitalization if not specified per C (i.e. "Nightfall remix"/"Nightfall Remix")
  • F3: The entire parenthetical is treated as a descriptive phrase and does not require any capitalization if not specified per C (i.e. "nightfall remix"/"Nightfall Remix")
  • F4: Defer to sources, but default to treating the whole phrase as a proper noun
  • F5: Defer to sources, but default to treating the whole phrase as descriptive but the non-descriptive part as a proper noun
  • F6: Defer to sources, but default to treating the whole phrase as descriptive

If you do not think the guidelines need to be amended at all, or you think any of these questions is unnecessary or is missing an option, please say so.

Survey

  • A4, B4, C7, D7, E3 and F2. WP:NCCAPS and WP:MOSCAPS indicate that excessive capitalization should be avoided, and so descriptive things like "(remix)" should not be capitalized. Furthermore, it is extremely common for record labels and artists to tack on metadata to the end of the track title (e.g. in physical track listings and in iTunes and Spotify), and these should be uniformly treated as not part of the actual song title. Overcapitalization in sources can also be a problem due to publications' style guides, or lack thereof, so I don't think that capitalization in sources should necessarily be followed, especially if they are specialized music publications. Jc86035 (talk) 06:07, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • For A and B, none of the options strike me as quite right. "(Murder Remix)" is clearly titular, whereas "(remix)" is purely descriptive. A dash is different punctuation to serve the same purpose as a parenthetical, so the same rules would apply. Whatever is part of the title belongs in quotes and should be capitalized; whatever isn't does not and should not. In keeping with that, I vote for C4, D4, and F1. As for E, the only reason a parenthetical (or dash) should be included in the article title is if the song only exists in that form, or the version in that form is sufficiently notable of its own accord that it merits a separate article. (Unless I'm wrong: it happened once back in '97.) Pstoller (talk) 11:53, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
    • @Pstoller: With regards to your issue with A and B, I ran into this while I was writing the RfC, and so picking F1 or F4 would also mean saying that A–E should not apply to "(Murder Remix)" (and so regardless of the outcome of the other five questions, if closed as F1 or F4 the article would probably keep its current title and be referred to the same way it is now). Articles for remixes are evidently quite rare, but I was mostly thinking of Ignition (Remix), which is sometimes referred to as just "Ignition", and also refers to itself as the "remix to ignition" (implying that we would not capitalize the first letter of "Remix" due to it being descriptive, although it's still not clear to me whether "(Remix)" is actually part of the title). Jc86035 (talk) 12:49, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
      • Simply put, I believe remixes and alternate versions with a name beyond "Song (remix)"—that is, where the remix/version gets its own name, as in "Murder Remix"—are proper nouns in their entirety, and should be capitalized and quoted as such. Those with only purely descriptive augmentations should not. I vote for whatever combination of letters gets us to that place, which on re-reading appears to be A4, B4, C4, D4, and F1. (C7 and D7 would achieve the same result, but C4 and D4 are expressly consistent with A and B, which seems to be the point of this exercise.) Regardless of how rare articles about remixes and alternate version are, I stand by what seems the rather obvious position that articles about an alternate version should have the version name in the title, and all other articles should not. Pstoller (talk) 02:58, 28 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Support A4 and B4, keeping in mind that a small minority of artists may choose very strange titles which should not be confused with parenthetic notes. Regardless of what version or remix, the base song is the same and I feel that title is the only thing that should be in double quotes. For capitalization I was leaning toward C7 and D7 but have to support C3 and D3 as we should follow use in reliable sources to determine what should be capitalized as a proper noun. e.g.: (Backstreet Boys remix), (remix), (Murder Remix). A certain amount of common sense should be exercised, and caution with sources that overcapitalize. Also support E3 but I feel I could use a couple more examples for F. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:59, 27 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Don't care excapt we should never use "feat." That is used as am abbreviation of "featuring", and we should always use the latter. Walter Görlitz (talk) 01:04, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Modified A1 (never "FEAT", etc, but "Acoustic" does change the song, in my opinion, and is worth noting); B4, C6, D7, and E3. StrikerforceTalk Review me! 21:05, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Support For now A4, B4, C7, D7, and E3. Article titles should not contain (remix), (feat. So and So), (acoustic), etc., since these refer to a specific variation on the song, which should be addressed in one article about all the iterations (WP:SONGCOVER). —Ojorojo (talk) 15:50, 30 April 2018 (UTC)
  • A4, B4, C7, D7, E3 and F2, per pretty much the same reasoning as Jc86035. Furthermore, we should not be using dashes in these titles at all. And virtually no remixes are independently notable, and should instead be merged into the article on the song (and to the section in that article for a particular artist's version if necessary). Some songs have a dozen or more remixes, and they should all redirect to the song article/section. [Aside: Some notable "remixes" are actually covers or near-total remakes with a lot of sampling, and may be independently notable (e.g. the DNA version of "Tom's Diner" could possibly qualify for an article, as far more people are familiar with it than with Suzanne Vega's original acapella piece, from which the vocals were sampled and sped up, over a hip-hop musical background; probably less than 1% of people who've heard the song have heard the original or even know it exists).] Create redirects using upper/lower case variants, since people (i.e., those looking for articles) approach capitalization radically differently: "Foo Bar (Bazz Quux Remix)", "Foo Bar (Bazz Quux remix)", "Foo Bar (bazz quux remix)", etc. If a word like "in" or "of" is included, you get even more variants, because some "musicky people" like to overcapitalize them, generally in mimicry of All Words Capitalized On My Album Cover Because I Like It marketing stylization. If you read/write offsite music-related material, you already know that the parenthetical convention is dominant in the real world, by a very wide margin. We thus do not need to account for dash variants, since that would also entail dealing with hyphen variants, and we'd spend all our time creating redirects no one is actually likely to use. They can just use the Search feature. And, yes, do capitalize non-descriptive remix names, which are effectively subtitles (and many of them are proper names such as stagenames but may look like everyday words – only someone intimately familiar with the release and the people behind it may realize that). So: "Foo Bar (Bazz Quux remix)", but "Foo Bar (dance mix)", "Foo Bar (radio edit)".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:34, 8 May 2018 (UTC)
  • Comment Could |prev_title= and |next_title= be set up like |A-side= and |B-side= where adding quote marks defeats those produced automatically. So although |prev_title=That Song (live) produces "That Song (live)", |prev_title="That Song" (live) would produce "That Song" (live). —Ojorojo (talk) 19:26, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
    @Ojorojo: Yes (and this could be done for {{Singles}} as well), although another tracking category or two would probably have to be used to avoid breaking things. Jc86035 (talk) 16:28, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
    Sounds like a plan.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:40, 4 June 2018 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

PROJPAGEs to merge?

There are two WP:PROJPAGEs (wikiproject advice essays), of varying ages, linked to from here:

Does anything in them represent sufficient consensus to import it into MOS:MUSIC? We have a lot of this kind of "aborted attempts to develop a topical MoS page" stuff lingering around on the system, and I'm of a mind to integrate the parts of them that people actually follow, into the actual MoS pages, then tag the remainders with {{Historical}}. The vast majority of them are not maintained, so they get out of synch with the real MoS, and confuse people into doing things they should not because they're mistakable for MoS pages (and often have "MOS:FOO" and "WP:MOSFOO" shortcuts that shouldn't go to them).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:27, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

MOS:AUDIO, MOS:VIDEO

I created a WP:Manual of Style/Audio (MOS:AUDIO, MOS:SOUND) disambiguation page, and a WP:Manual of Style/Video (MOS:VIDEO) one to match, with what I could find. Anything missing?  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:28, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Styling of twelve-inch single, 12-inch sinle, 12 in single, 12" single, 12″ single, etc.

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Dates and numbers#Clarification on using quote marks ( " ) as the unit symbol for inches in infoboxes
 — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:35, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

FYI: "Applicability of MOS:DONTHIDE to bonus tracks tables"

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please consider participating in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style § Applicability of MOS:DONTHIDE to bonus tracks tables, which is very relevant to music-related articles and content. —Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 18:54, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

Music sales chart rankings: number 1 or number one?

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Music sales chart rankings: number 1 or number one? where we are deciding what style to use in describing music sales chart rankings. Thanks! Binksternet (talk) 22:37, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

RfC on using the "As of" template, or some similar wording indicating that the score may have changed over time, for review aggregators

Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Review aggregators#RfC: Should the "As of" template, or some similar wording indicating that the score may have changed over time, be used for review aggregators in articles?. A permalink for it is seen here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:08, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Categorizing all songs by an artist by genre

I've restarted a discussion at WikiProject Songs about categorizing all songs by recording artists by genre. I think MoS/Music page watchers may be interested. If so, please review past discussions and contribute to the ongoing one. Thanks! ---Another Believer (Talk) 19:53, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Definite article in band names, where it is an integral part of the name

I know that there has been discussion of this before, which I have scanned and found no treatment of examples where the word "The" is almost invariably included in the proper name. I am thinking particularly of The Beat, and discussion at the talk page of a recently deceased member of that group. I fully understand the thinking behind a lower case 't' in examples whereby it is normal to say "'Hey Jude' is a Beatles song", but there are bands in which it is never normal practice to drop the definite article. The The would seem to be a case in point

Indeed, the current policy statement seems to acknowledge that it is not universally to be applied: it is moderated with "in general". MOS:THEMUSIC should explicitly allow for local consensus to be established that the article is essential to the band name, rather than hint at it with this uncertainty.

Suggest that we replace

Mid-sentence, per the MoS, the word "the" should in general not be capitalized in continuous prose, e.g.:

  • Wings featured Paul McCartney from the Beatles and Denny Laine from the Moody Blues.

with

Per the MoS, the word "the" should in general not be capitalized mid-sentence in continuous prose, e.g.:

  • Wings featured Paul McCartney from the Beatles and Denny Laine from the Moody Blues.

Where there is a clear consensus established at the primary article of the band in question that the band name is dependent upon inclusion of the word 'the', then it should be included and capitalised on every mention of the name, e.g:

  • Jamaican saxophonist Saxa joined The Beat to record their first single.

To do otherwise would seem to be to place ourselves above reliable sources. Kevin McE (talk) 07:46, 2 April 2019 (UTC)


  • Oppose. Inconsistent and there's no obvious logic to it. Either always capitalise the the or don't. No idea where you'd get a "clear consensus" from regarding this; the Guardian, which uses lowercase "the" for band names, even gives "the The" as an example: lc for newspapers (the Guardian), magazines (the New Statesman), pubs (the Coach and Horses), bands (the Black Eyed Peas, the Not Sensibles, the The), nicknames (the Hulk, the Red Baron), and sports grounds (the Oval). Popcornduff (talk) 08:04, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Apologies, I think I misunderstood this. You want to add a guideline to always include the article in some situations? I was confused by your capitalising of "The The". Popcornduff (talk) 08:06, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
I am suggesting that we put some clarification on the apparent room for manoeuvre inherent in "in general" by giving authority to a band-specific consensus where this is achieved. The Guardian would not consider it worth making a point of the matter in its style guide if it were not a matter of legitimate contention, and we are concerned with our own MoS, not the Guardian's (or any other publication's). Kevin McE (talk) 08:18, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Obviously we can create our own style, but I give the Guardian as an example of where the consensus about how to handle "the The" might not be as solved as you seem to suggest. (But you might not be suggesting that - I'm a little lost here.)
Sorry, but I'm still confused. I've read your post a few times and I still don't get it.
Are you saying there are times when we ought to always include "the" in the band name, no matter what? For example, are you saying we ought to write the the The song "This is the Day"? In this case, I disagree; capitalising "The" is sufficient to indicate that it's a proper name, doing otherwise is consistent, and anyway the band name is confusing enough that including the article doesn't help anything.
Are you saying that there are certain band names whose article should always be capitalised? I'd disagree with that too, for the reasons I gave above. Popcornduff (talk) 08:32, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
"Are you saying there are times when we ought to always include "the" in the band name, no matter what?" Yes. For some bands, there is clear consistency on this in RSes.
"Are you saying that there are certain band names whose article should always be capitalised?" Yes, because if the definite article is part of the band name, the rules of grammar dictate that it be treated as part of that proper noun.
Sensible prose can still be constructed by any writer capable of considering the effect of his/her prose: the song "This is the Day" by The The. Kevin McE (talk) 13:31, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Then I have to go with my first response and oppose this on the grounds of it being inconsistent - and frankly weird. Popcornduff (talk) 13:54, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
What then is your understanding of the phrase "in general" in the policy as it stands? Is that not an acknowledgement of legitimate inconsistency? It is not more important that we are consistent with good English than that we speak of the Beatles (often referenced simply as 'Beatles') and The Beat (never accurately referred to simply as 'Beat') in exactly the same way? Kevin McE (talk) 14:49, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't know what to make of "in general" - I can't imagine what exceptions it's talking about.
Why on earth would "the Beatles" be correct but "the Beat" incorrect? If it's a question of which RSs use, the Guardian writes "the Beat", for what it's worth. Popcornduff (talk) 15:00, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Because the Beatles are often referred to without use of the article ("'Hey Jude' is a Beatles song" is perfectly acceptable), whereas The Beat are not ("'Mirror in the Bathroom' is a Beat song" is not a phrase that anyone familiar with that band would ever use). Kevin McE (talk) 15:10, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Better call The Times. They've got it all wrong too. Oppose. Ohnothimagain (talk) 16:27, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

"obviously" is not a reason: do you have one? Kevin McE (talk) 20:17, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Yes. It's an incredibly stupid proposal (or to put it in the kinder, gentler words of Popcornduff, it's "inconsistent and frankly weird"). Joefromrandb (talk) 20:25, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Referring to record labels

An issue has arisen at The Mamas and the Papas. MarydaleEd, who has done a great deal of excellent work on the article recently, takes the view that, in every place throughout the article, the band's record label - Dunhill - should in all cases be given its full name, Dunhill Records. The editor has said, on the article talk page, "This is formal writing for an encyclopedia, not casual prose. Dunhill Records is an entity, not a person. It is proper for the full name of the company to be used in all references.... I am putting the name back as it should be and ask that further attempts to shorten it to a casual reference cease. ... [It] is my position as a professional editor with 40 years experience that the entity be referred to by its proper name in all references, Dunhill Records." This presumably is that editor's position on all similar articles. It seems to me that, while one or two uses of the full name are usually appropriate in articles like this, the normal practice is surely to refer to the short name of the label - Dunhill, Motown, Parlophone, etc. etc. - without needing to add the word Records in every case. Has this been discussed as a MOS issue before? What is the guidance, if any, and what should it be? Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:39, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

I personally think it's acceptable to shorten proper nouns like this, with record label names and other things. For example, in the TR-808 article, I repeatedly referred to the drum machine as the 808 and not the TR-808 and no one seemed bothered by that during the FA review. Popcornduff (talk) 17:46, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
Thank you, Ghmyrtle, for contributing to this conversation by adding it to this Talk page. The full name needs to exist to provide clarity for the reader. Remember, all style and grammar rules exist for one reason: to provide clarity and understanding when communicating to the reader. When referring to a business in formal writing, ensuring the reader is clear on which business is being referenced is critical not only for clarity but also for legal reasons. That is why full names are used when the names are not as common as, say, McDonalds or Motown. While we are not concerned here with legalities, clarity remains important, as does adherence to the proper style of formal writing. That being said, please know that this is not a mountain on which I choose to die, so I am happy to acquiesce to the will of other editors. I respect the opinions of others and want to be a helpful member of this community. Perhaps we could compromise by referring to the company as "Dunhill Records" in first reference within each section, followed by the shortened "Dunhill" on subsequent references within each section. I believe clarity can be maintained with that compromise. Again, thank you for participating in this conversation. MarydaleEd (talk) 23:32, 5 April 2019 (UTC)

Song titles in foreign languages and in English

I can't find a stated convention for songs named in two languages. One article puts the English translation first without quotes and then parenthesizes and quotes the original language title. Help! Lfstevens (talk) 05:03, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

A response to this questions would be easier if you could point to the respective articles. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 09:46, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
The article is Kolya Korobov. Lfstevens (talk) 16:25, 9 July 2019 (UTC)
IMO the Russian song title ought to come first, followed by an English translation: ... released the song "Маленькие боссы" (Little Bosses) .... -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 00:17, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
Works for me. Should this be an official proposal? Lfstevens (talk) 02:22, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
I don't think that kind of instruction creep is needed. Unless songs are published with English titles, the order I suggested is just common sense. You are of course welcome to raise this matter at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Songs. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:30, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Time signatures in prose

I'm curious about the preferred way to format time signatures since it's not really specified in the MoS whether to use "4/4" or "4
4". I'd imagine the latter would be considered more proper, since it's what people would use if they weren't limited by ASCII (like how C♯ is preferred to C#) but I'd like to know what the consensus (if any) for this is before I go around changing it. Ionmars10 (talk) 19:28, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

IMO there's no need to change existing usage, whichever it currently is in articles; both are clearly understood. What should be changed is the way {{Music}} renders time signatures – it should be 4
4; see Template talk:Music#Time Signatures. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:35, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

Parenthetical disambiguators in "songs" categories

See

Is it appropriate to copy parenthetical disambiguators into the middle of category titles, when there's no actual ambiguity? Comment here in general, or there in particular, or both. Dicklyon (talk) 05:04, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

I don't know of any specific guidelines which would confirm or contest my viewpoint on this, but I think it's probably permissible for the sake of consistency. For example, the main category for Category:Halsey (singer) songs is Category:Halsey (singer). You make a fair point about the lack of ambiguity though. Perhaps someone more experienced with naming conventions for categories than I can weigh in on this. –Matthew - (talk) 17:59, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

RfC: using "The" in song/album article titles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
There is no consensus. Original close overturned by community consensus. See Special:Diff/920640558. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 00:52, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
original close

(non-admin closure) The discussion is closed and the result is Remove.

There seems to be some confusion as to the purpose of having in parenthesis a clarification of an article's subject. The purpose is to distinguish that particular subject from, at least, another one that has the exact same name or title but concerns something different. This is an important point for the discussion, and, appropriately, it has already been pointed out by participants.
Wikipedia's policies leave little room for doubt as to how the titles of articles should be created. WP:COMMONNAME directs us to have article titles that are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources. Which is why we have in Wikipedia The Beatles, The Who, and The Shirelles, since this how these acts are denoted in both their official discography and reliable sources, and we don't have The Cream or The Pulp. (For instructions about the use of the definite article in Wikipedia titles, we have MOS:THETITLE.)
In the context of disambiguating a title, however, nowhere is it mandated that the parenthetical clarification of the subject should follow the rules about an article title as such. On the contary, we must bear in mind that, per WP:D, the purpose of disambiguation is to resolve conflicts and to ensure that a reader who searches for a topic using a particular term can get to the information on that topic quickly and easily. The primary purpose of the process under discussion is, therefore, the reader's quick and easy orientation. In this, whether we have "Beatles album" or "The Beatles album" inside the parenthesis makes evidently no difference whatsoever, in terms of information and orientation.
In conclusion, we are left with the simple instructions in WP:NCDAB to keep it simple, or as the text has it: Use the same disambiguating phrase already commonly used for other topics within the same class and context, if any. Otherwise, choose whichever is simpler. For example, use "(mythology)" rather than "(mythological figure)". Notice that the example uses a typically innacurate yet entirely helpful term to orient the reader.
Note: A participant who provided an extensive and IMO well presented suggestion to Keep all definite articles concedes the point that disambiguated articles are not meant to have everything inside the parenthesis following the rules about article titles, by stating "Disambiguated Wikipedia article titles are not really Titles. They are purely an expedient for finding the right content." Well, not exactly, since formally a title is always a title, but one could not agree more with the point being made! The Gnome (talk) 12:42, 23 August 2019 (UTC)


Hello there. I'd like to see what other editors think in regards to the use of the word "The" in band names in parentheses in the titles of articles about songs and albums. Here's an example of what I mean by this: there is currently an article titled "Revolver (Beatles album)". However, there are also numerous articles where this is NOT the case: for example, "Smile (The Beach Boys album)" or "Smash Hits (The Jimi Hendrix Experience album)". I've looked at MOS:TITLE, MOS:THECAPS, MOS:THEMUSIC, and WP:NCTHE, but I'm not really seeing any indication of what the protocol should be here. –Matthew - (talk) 01:31, 7 July 2019 (UTC)

  • Having slept on it, I am of the opinion that the "The" should only be included in cases where the band's name without the "The" would not be the primary topic, or would lead to a disambiguation page. This is a bit difficult to put into words, so allow me to present examples once again:
Therefore, articles about songs or albums by specific bands should be titled as follows:
  • Example (Beach Boys album)
  • Example (Beatles album)
  • Example (Jimi Hendrix Experience album)
  • Example (Rolling Stones album)
  • Example (The Who album)
Under this model, the "The" would be included for such bands as The Clash, The Doors, and The Who, since the words on their own (clash, doors, and who) either lead to disambiguation pages or articles which are not about the bands. Meanwhile, the "The" would NOT be included for bands whose names are still the primary topic even without the "The", such as the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the Rolling Stones. I don't know if I'm allowed to cast a vote, if you will, since I started this discussion, but I would support this as a proposal. Thoughts? –Matthew - (talk) 16:13, 7 July 2019 (UTC)
Note: I have eventually come to oppose my own initial proposal. I now support retaining the exact names of bands as given in their respective articles. See below for details. –Matthew - (talk) 03:35, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Support or remove all The from parenthetical disambiguators – Add Shirelles -> The Shirelles to your list, where I got reverted for a such a change at Tonight's the Night (The Shirelles song) and some others a few years ago. @Discographer: might say if he'd reconsider with this framework. IIRC there was an explicit discussion and approval for the Beatles case; I had assumed that applied more generally, but didn't try to define the limits. Dicklyon (talk) 20:57, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Keep all (proper names) with the guidance of MOS:THE and MOS:THEMUSIC; I prefer to see "the" left out when an authoritative references tell us that "the" is not part of the band name, and left in when "the" is part of the name. i.e. use the proper name properly. What redirects exist is not a useful metric. "(Beatles album)" is bad and "(The Beatles album)" is good because it's the band's name. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 21:24, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    I disagree. I think that "Revolver (Beatles album)" looks less awkward and rolls off the tongue much better than "Revolver (The Beatles album)" does. However, I would prefer "Endless Wire (The Who album)" to "Endless Wire (Who album)", because of the primary topic reasoning I outlined above. I understand where you're coming from though. –Matthew - (talk) 21:32, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    I appreciate your desire for information to be aesthetically pleasing, though I sincerely hope you wouldn't forgo clarity and accuracy to achieve it. Thinking of Verve, I pondered "Forth (Verve album)" and felt bad for casual readers/researchers. Is that the forth album Verve released, or an album called "Forth" released by the Verve? That "the" really helps clear things up doesn't it? I suggest a shave with Occam's razor i.e. KISS. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 01:47, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
    I think that there are two problems with your example about Forth though. First, it's spelled "Forth", not "Fourth", so I don't think people would get confused there. Second, under my proposed model, the band The Verve would include the "The" in a case such as this, because the term "Verve" leads to a disambiguation page. Regardless, there are no other albums with Wikipedia articles called Forth, so as of right now, that article is just titled "Forth (album)" anyways. I don't think that my proposal would be confusing for casual readers/researchers. –Matthew - (talk) 03:16, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Remove all because of common usage. Certainly the name of John Lennon's most famous band was "The Beatles" but he, and every other writer, dropped the "the" when the band name was used as an adjective, for instance the statements, "sounds like a Beatles song" or "never appeared on a Beatles album". Essentially, our parenthetic disambiguation is the same type of descriptor, and the "the" is not needed. Binksternet (talk) 21:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    I think I agree, actually. It may be the Beatles, but in such instances like you mentioned with John himself, simply "Beatles" works without issue. My problem lies with bands like The Clash and especially The Who. Never once have I ever heard somebody refer to The Who as simply "Who", but after a quick Google search, I've found that there are a few sources which do write it that way. I may well end up changing my position in agreement with yours. –Matthew - (talk) 22:33, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
  • I don’t have a stance, but I do in general support coming to a consensus one way or another. This is one of those perennial time wasting arguments that do nothing other than rile editors up and turn them against one another. Sergecross73 msg me 21:47, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Remove all, even in "The Who" and "The The". The inital cap is a sufficient signal that a proper name is being referred to. "Endless Wire (Who album)" is no less clear than "Endless Wire (The Who album)". Deor (talk) 22:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    Oh someone didn't forget the The (yay). To be clear then, by "remove all" you suggest "Dusk (The Album)" is more appropriate than the current "Dusk (The The album)"; you don't think that this and your "The Who" examples are possibly a little confusing to readers who may not be familiar with article title policy, and in fact are very good examples of exactly why we shouldn't "remove all"? Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 01:22, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
    It would be "Dusk (The album)", not "Dusk (The Album)", and yes, I think it's sufficiently clear for use as a disambiguator. Deor (talk) 15:23, 15 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Keep "The" when it's used as proper-noun Wikipedia-article title. So "Eagles" but "The Who".--Tenebrae (talk) 23:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
  • There actually already was an RfC consensus on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Smashing_Pumpkins/Archive_5#Request_for_Comment. Do we really want to reopen a hard-fought discussion that ended in a workable compromise? --Tenebrae (talk) 22:43, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    That discussion is a consensus on one band. This is on handling all bands in general. Sergecross73 msg me 23:06, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    Oops. Well, maybe that discussion will help inform this one.--Tenebrae (talk) 23:09, 11 July 2019 (UTC)
    That discussion is completely off point. But there was one on the Beatles which concluded to drop "The" in disambiguators (and I thought I recalled also in categories such as Category:Beatles songs, but looks like not). Not sure where that is. Dicklyon (talk) 00:18, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • While this discussion is heavily featuring the Beatles as an example of "common use", remember that there's is but one of many and varied names. Consider the common use of "the Band of Joy". And just for kicks; let's not forget the The? A reliable coverall !policy should be indifferent to specific cases (which can be argued case by case as needed); we already have a reliable coverall, and it's to use bands' proper names. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 01:07, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Remove all I agree with the reasoning offered by Binksternet above. This has nothing to do with disambiguation (the rationale provided by the RFC proposer), nor does it have anything to do with whether or not "the" is officially part of the band's name; it has to do with on common usage. My observations of common usage are as follows: When used as a noun in a sentence, the band name is preceded by "the" in almost all cases, even if "the" is not officially part of the name. There are exceptions on a per-band basis in common usage, depending on the nature of the band name, such as if it is pluralized, and when otherwise it would be confusing to leave out "the". "I went to a concert and saw the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Carpenters, the Eagles, and Bread" (the last being a common usage exception). You probably wouldn't write "I went to a concert and saw the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Carpenters, Eagles, and Bread." However, the inverse is true if the band name is being used as an adjective, even more so in a sentence than in parenthesis after a song or album title. "I went to a Beatles concert. I went to a Beach Boys concert. I went to a Carpenters concert. I went to an Eagles concert. I went to a Bread concert." You certainly wouldn't write "I went to a The Beach Boys concert"; you wouldn't write "I went the Beach Boys concert" either unless you were referring to a particular Beach Boys concert (HA see how I left out "the") that is already known to the reader. Although "the" in the parenthetical reference is less objectional, I think it should still follow this common usage and be left out. When I first saw this change being made to article titles of Beach Boys works (HA did it again), I thought, "here's another case of someone with too much time on their hands making a mass arbitrary change." However, after thinking about it more and actually looking at articles with "the" removed, I think it is comes across better, is more consistent with common usage, and should be the convention going forward. —hulmem (talk) 01:52, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Look, I get the premise here, and agree that "Revolver (The Beatles album)" doesn't roll off the tongue as well as it does without the "The". But the first problem (there are a lot of them) with changing this convention is that including the "The" is never wrong, while dropping the "The" can be wrong in so many different ways.
As discussed, there are countless situations in speech and prose when it is contextually acceptable (huuuge emphasis on contextually) to omit the "The" when talking about bands with "The" in their names. But the situations for omitting a "The" in prose or speech are almost purely intuitive, will vary from band to band, and can sometimes be a judgment call. It's not an on/off switch either, but more of a spectrum; some band's "The" is stickier than other's. It's not possible to replicate the "naturalness" of judging when to hack off a "The" with a yes-or-no rule like this. The current rule, "use the band's formal title as given in the Wikipedia article", is simple, easy to remember, intuitive even to readers and new users, and the process to check or make a correction is trivially easy. Basing a new rule about dropping "The" in every case is silly, and any rule about dropping it sometimes based on redirects/disambiguations is unworkable and needlessly complicated.
The reason "The Who" presents a difficulty is that people very rarely call the band just "Who", while people routinely say "Beatles" or "Beach Boys". Why? There's a whole spectrum of acceptable cases to drop the "The" from a band's name. It's not just because "Who" is a common word, because there are other bands with "The + [common word]" names where the "The" gets more commonly left off, like the Fall. Yet no one searching for the Fall would type "Fall", even though it is sometimes contextually natural to call them that. Similarly, even given that people sometimes say "Who" to refer to the band, it's usually when you're already waist-deep into reading about them—i.e., you already know you're reading about The Who, so there's no opportunity for confusion. It may sound a little odd, but you still know Who they're talking about. But that unusual, purely contextual usage has no bearing on whether people think of "The" as a dispensable part of the band's name as a title. Would you call "The Police" just "Police", or "The Band" "Band"? Rarely, if ever. What about, say, The 1975? I guarantee that outside of a deliberately jokey usage about how unnatural it sounds to refer to them that way, you will almost certainly never find an instance of someone calling that band just "1975". And "The The"—again, outside a joke, no one would ever call them plain "The"!! This is silly; we'd be switching from "The Beach Boys" to "Beach Boys", which is acceptably natural either, but also switching from "The Who" to "Who", "The Band" to "Band", "The 1975" to "1975", and "The The" to "The", which all sound unacceptably unnatural without their "The".
You could try to adopt a rule for selectively dropping "The" in some cases but not others, maybe based on redirects/disambiguation pages as discussed above. But there is never going to be a simple, unambiguous, easy-to-remember rule of thumb to make that distinction in a way that works. There are going to be tons of tricky cases that will arbitrarily depend on a band's relative level of notability in relation to the common noun—as judged by the state of Wikipedia in a given moment. Some examples: People commonly say "Doors" to refer to the band, while "Clash" for "The Clash" tends to be unnatural (but like "Who", occurs in rare, contextual instances). So while keeping "The Clash" remains good, natural-sounding, and obvious, mandating "The Doors"—but not "The Beach Boys"—just because of a redirect/disambiguation is totally arbitrary and confusing. It ditches/thwarts the purported reason of adopting of more natural-sounding titles, basically on a technicality. Worse, the distinction would be done for a reason that will seem opaque and arbitrary to an average user or reader, not to mention hard to apply for experienced users. Some more: "kinks" redirects to The Kinks, replacements goes to the disambiguation page Replacement. Quick: based on the proposed rule for selectively dropping "The", which one gets the "The" left off in an article title? Can you remember intuitively, or do you have to take a second to remember to yourself how the rule works? What if the state of the titles/redirects change?
Analogously, the problems with a rule like that can also be shown if you were to apply it to titles of articles about TV episodes—and why not, since TV show titles, like band names, sometimes sound natural without their "The". So, some examples from TV land: Sopranos redirects to The Sopranos, and people routinely say "Sopranos" for the show; Americans is of course its own article, separate from The Americans (hardly anyone calls the show just "Americans"); office is its own article, natch, while The Office is about the original British show—so what about the (more popular, but disambiguated) The Office (American TV series), plus the fact it would be profoundly weird to call either show "Office"? How would this all play out for articles with "(The _____ episode)" in the title?
Even if you like the idea of making some new rule so that some articles can have "more natural" titles like "Revolver (Beatles album)": at the end of the day, the reason for that new rule (and opening a can of worms), the purported big benefit, is... that if you were to read a title like "Revolver (The Beatles album)" out loud, it may sound momentarily unnatural. What?? Ask yourself, when are you ever saying Wikipedia articles out loud, or even typing them out like that? Do you tell a friend "Oh, check out the Wikipedia article 'Revolver' (The Beatles album)'"? That sounds odd, but it's not because of the "The". No, you would say "check out the Wikipedia album about the Beatles album Revolver". You'd go by subject, not the actual title. And this is keeping in mind that the "drop every The" rule would enforce "weird-sounding", or even outright wrong, phrases like "(The album)". So even if we're taking the problem of natural-sounding vs. weird-sounding titles very seriously, on net you'd probably lose more natural-sounding titles than you'd gain.
Disambiguated Wikipedia article titles are not really Titles, and we don't (or hardly ever) have to announce them or think about them as Titles. They are purely an expedient for finding the right content. "Copy-paste the band's exact title as given in their article" is a fine rule; adopting any change discussed here would add needless complication and confusion for, at best, little gain. —BLZ · talk 02:35, 12 July 2019 (UTC)
@BLZ: I think you've changed my mind here. While it does pain me from an aesthetic point-of-view to admit that including the "The" is never wrong, while removing the "The" in some cases may cause issues, I can't help but agree with your reasoning. The Kinks are an especially tricky case, and the fact that titles and redirects can change is problematic. I concede my previous viewpoint, and (with great and petty sadness), now support retaining the exact names of bands as given in their respective articles. –Matthew - (talk) 03:32, 12 July 2019 (UTC)*
Of course, what's really underpinning this question is the old argument about whether we consider definite articles part of band names. And I don't think we should. Edit: This has inspired me to finally get off my ass and write an essay on this subject. Popcornduff (talk) 06:04, 17 July 2019 (UTC)
  • [Lukewarm] support for removing all; make exception for The The. Having got so used to seeing examples in Beatles song and album articles, I go to an article like the Rolling Stones' Aftermath album and struggle with the inclusion of "The" in the title. I take the point that not everyone is familiar with the Beatles examples, and the changes made in their articles don't necessarily constitute common usage here. When the Beatles page moves took place years ago, I had the impression it was more about some editors wanting to reinforce the outcome of the RfC/RfM dedicated to The/the Beatles. Same with the moving of, say, The Beatles' break-up to The break-up of the Beatles.
  • One thing that's always confused me with the removal of "The" from the Beatles article titles: how come we still have "The Beatles chronology", "The Beatles singles chronology", etc, in the infoboxes? It's not as if the header sets the band name in the possessive form: it's not The Beatles' chronology (as one would write "the Beatles' career" or "the Beatles' touring history") – which makes sense, because the band name is being used adjectivally. But then, shouldn't the chronology headers also lose the word "the"? Same with some of the template titles for the band, I guess. JG66 (talk) 03:52, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
    JG66 - Wikipedia is hopelessly inconsistent about dealing with this. Hence we have the Spice Girls but The Rolling Stones. It drives me nuts. Popcornduff (talk) 08:01, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
    There is that inconsistency with band names, yes (and I can't fathom that one either). But I'm talking about why we have, say, "The Rolling Stones singles chronology" when, as in album and song article titles, we're not using the band name in the possessive sense, otherwise it would be "The Rolling Stones' singles chronology". We're really saying "the Rolling Stones single chronology", just as we would "the Bob Dylan singles chronology" – in which case, the definite article should be dropped, leaving us with "Rolling Stones singles chronology". (Either that or make it possessive: "The Rolling Stones' singles chronology".) JG66 (talk) 15:03, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
    While interesting, this RfC is about the use of "the" in parenthesized disambiguation; either you're suggesting this RfC needs to have its scope altered, or this is off point and distracting. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 18:59, 19 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Remove all (Summoned by bot) – Exactly as Fred reminds us just above. There are all sorts of comments concerning official band titles, but this Rfc is not about that. There are also all sorts of comments about common name, but this Rfc is not about that, either. This Rfc is about the use of the word the in parenthetical disambiguation. It doesn't matter what term the band used. It doesn't matter what the common name is. It doesn't matter whether reliable sources have the band's name mostly with or mostly without the. Parenthetical disambiguation is about getting you to right article, and that is all. So the question you have to ask yourself is: Does "Revolver (The Beatles album)" get you to the right place faster, or better, than "Revolver (Beatles album)"? Answer: No, it does not. Therefore, leave it off, because of WP:CONCISE. (Exception for "The The".) Mathglot (talk) 08:04, 22 July 2019 (UTC)
  • Torn - There are lots of persuasive arguments here, but none so persuasive that it makes me say "yeah, the others are wrong." I don't see a demonstrated need firm written guidance here, so I would suggest establishing local consensus by band. If guidance is needed, then I support always using "The" when it's the band's name. That way it's always accurate and doesn't require editors to review DAB pages or tally up how reliable sources are using it. (Summoned by bot) Argento Surfer (talk) 15:13, 23 July 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Closed?

@The Gnome: There was no consensus here. Correct my math if it's wrong but I count 8 against 5 with 2 uncertain. Hardly enough to rule one way or the other. I would have also voted against this proposal, so make it 8 against 6. ilil (talk) 05:35, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

The close is at least aligned with the clear majority. I thought you were saying the opposite at first. Dicklyon (talk) 02:16, 25 August 2019 (UTC)
I agree with ILIL this is very clearly a no consensus close, and with all due respect to The Gnome, it looks like they've put their own opinion rather than assessing the consensus of the discussion, which had very clear opposes in almost equal numbers to the supports. For the record I also strongly oppose this change - it is being used now as an excuse to force through large numbers of undiscussed changes to long-term article titles, when there was no consensus in the discussion to do so. If we title a parent article as The Supremes, then for consistency the disambiguator should follow that.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:38, 19 September 2019 (UTC)
IMO no conclusion can be drawn from this RfC. It's not a clear consensus either way. Andrewa (talk) 08:42, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

ILIL, Dicklyon, Amakuru, SmokeyJoe: From the above ISTM that the RfC should be reopened. Suggestions as to how? Andrewa (talk) 17:48, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

I don't know. How do these things work? There isn't a "move review" or "deletion review" forum for this, is there  — Amakuru (talk) 18:04, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Closing discussions#Challenging other closures. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:11, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Perfect, thank you! I've requested reopening on the closer's talk page, see if that works first. Andrewa (talk) 19:09, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Endorse close. I concur with the closer, in all of their reasoning and summation, other than the omission of a key point ((em|in favor)) of the close going the way it did: WP:CONCISE policy. This is a good close, being based in the policy-and-sources rationales, which are necessarily given more weight than emotive TRUTH/GREATWRONGS "feels" swirling around subjective and generally wrongheaded notions regarding proper names – brow-beating, extreme ideas which no one with an actual linguistics education would take seriously.

    The bare fact that even a music magazine would write, e.g., "The Magical Mystery Tour is one of the most popular Beatles albums" (not "... popular The Beatles albums") is incontrovertible proof that the definite article is not a required component of the band name, and is omitted whenever the context doesn't require its presence. It's just how English works; get over it and move on. Disambiguation is obviously also such an optional-article context. There are zero readers for whom "(The Beatles album)" is a useful disambiguator but for whom "(Beatles album)" would fail to be sufficiently clear.
     — AReaderOutThataway t/c 04:54, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

    PS: Yes, of course make some rare exceptions when the results could be confusing, thus "(The The song)" and possibly "(The Who song)". Determine exceptions on a case-by-case basis. There would probably be few enough to just list them in a footnote in the guideline.  — AReaderOutThataway t/c 05:31, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

    I think you've picked a poor example with The Beatles, as they are sufficiently famous and have a sufficiently distinctive name that Beatles means nothing else. That's an exceptional case.
    A musical magazine would also write "Sticky Fingers was one of the most successful Stones albums" but that doesn't mean we rename the Rolling Stones article Stones. Context is everything. Andrewa (talk) 06:37, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Now raised at wp:ANI#Request to re-open RfC. Andrewa (talk) 03:41, 7 October 2019 (UTC)

Addendum

Greetings, all. Despite my misgivings about piling on comments or clarifications onto a discussion already closed, I understand that a detail I thought self-evident in the above probably isn't. The case presented here is whether the Remove decision involves each and every band whose name carries the definite article. The response is, of course, yes, it does, and, therefore, albums from The Who need only by denoted in a disambiguating parenthesis as "(Who album)". In the context of music, this evidently constitutes a perfectly clear orientation for the reader. The only exception we can admit, and here perhaps the clarification was necessary, concerns work by the group named The The. In this unique case, it would indeed be confusing to have "(The song)", so the full group-name is to be used, i.e. "(The The song)".

ilil's complaint about the closing is one we often encounter in Wikipedia. Decisions in Wikipedia discussions, such as RfCs or AfDs, are indeed more often than not the result of the numerical superiority of one side's !votes, but not necessarily and not always so. The strength of an argument determines the degree to which it influences the outcome, with stronger arguments being given more weight in determining consensus per WP:CRFC. This is precisely what went down in this case. I hope this is clear enough. -The Gnome (talk) 06:57, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

I'm aware that consensuses are drawn based on arguments, not number of votes, but the ruling did not seem like it was based on argument. There was no rebuttal to the points raised by @Brandt Luke Zorn:, who I thought offered the strongest and most cogent argument of either side. It even convinced @MatthewHoobin:, the nominator for this proposal, to 180 his views on the matter. Just seems strange to me. To me, this discussion clearly ended without a definite consensus. ilil (talk) 07:15, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Greetings, ilil. I addressed, whether directly or indirectly, the relevant, important points that were made. Even with such an austere approach, the decision's text is rather long. In the addendum above I clarified all that merited a clarification. As far as I'm concerned there is nothing more to be said in this context. Of course, if anyone feels strongly something went wrong with the closing, they can ask for a review of it, per WP:CLOSE. Take care. -The Gnome (talk) 07:38, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
@The Gnome: What about Brandt Luke Zorn's point about The 1975? I'm okay with the decision being to generally remove all instances of "The", from an aesthetic point-of-view, but it seems to me that BLZ's "extensive and ... well presented" argument is in opposition to the removal of "The"s. –Matthew - (talk) 15:59, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
Yes, I agree that Song (1975 song) would be too easily misinterpreted in the same manner as Song (The song). I think reasonable exceptions like these can be made. Binksternet (talk) 16:12, 24 August 2019 (UTC)

A few points:

  • If simplicity is the goal, which rule is simpler?
(A) Using the band's proper name as given in their article title, verbatim and including the word "The", consistently in all uses.
(B) Omitting "the" selectively in some cases, but not in others, based on the vibe we get about whether the word "the" is really part of the band's name.
If simplicity means "fewer words," then sure, (B) is "simpler". If simplicity means "which rule will be easier to apply consistently and intuitively", then (A) is obviously simpler.
  • Again, on simplicity: The Gnome cites WP:NCDAB and quotes this part: "For example, use '(mythology)' rather than '(mythological figure)'" Sure, but simpler is not always shorter. This is not a rule mandating shorter disambig phrases in every instance. Neither "mythological figure" nor "mythology" are proper nouns, so this example is not a fitting analogy for what we're dealing with here.
  • There are countless instances beyond "The The" where it would be improper to drop the "The". I know I gave a long comment in my first response, but this was in part because I tried to really meticulously articulate why some bands need the "The" in their name, and how there are degrees of necessity rather than black/white on/off. So I'll save everyone some time—but hint at how much time could be wasted in the future—by giving another counterexample, but with no explanation: The Game (rapper). Higher (The Game song).
I bring this example up only to, once again, hint at the worms inside the can we'd open with this new rule: the endless relitigation of specific cases and the bizarre, haphazard, and unevenly applied results that could occur with a default rule to drop the "The". By the way: yes, I know there are counterarguments, even compelling ones, about why "(Game song)" might be appropriate to use. I have already thought through these arguments, and am prepared to discuss them in depth if someone wants to go down that road. But I'm asking, more fundamentally: do we really want to have this kind of back-and-forth in individual instances on such a tedious issue? The fact that there could be any valid disagreement at all about how to treat a particular name highlights the failure, complexity, and impracticality of the proposed rule. The list of "reasonable" exceptions and potential exceptions would grow to mind-numbing length, which is a red flag that a rule does not really work as a general rule.
  • The Gnome said that part of my earlier comment "concedes the point that disambiguated articles are not meant to have everything inside the parenthesis following the rules about article titles, by stating 'Disambiguated Wikipedia article titles are not really Titles. They are purely an expedient for finding the right content.'" This is a total misreading of my point in the quoted portion. What I said there was in response to the aesthetic argument that a title like "Revolver (Beatles album)" is somehow more satisfying than "Revolver (The Beatles album)"—and how irrelevant such considerations are. And in fact, rather than conceding tha disambig phrases "are not meant to have everything inside the parenthesis", I was making precisely the opposite point: when it comes to proper nouns, disambig phrases should follow the form of the band name verbatim because that is an easier rule for both writers and readers. —BLZ · talk 18:28, 24 August 2019 (UTC)
@The Gnome: Thoughts? –Matthew - (talk) 17:52, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Let's Ride (Game song) and Touchdown (Game song) had "The" removed in 2012. Have these caused any problems? Dicklyon (talk) 19:52, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
I'd recommend putting the The back in both cases. The artist's article is at The Game (rapper). Touchdown (Game song) in particular reads to me more like it's about a song of the genre Game song, similar to Fight song. So the previous titles were more recognisable. And on the other hand, adding the The doesn't seem to have any drawbacks. Andrewa (talk) 22:18, 2 October 2019 (UTC)
Those would be disambiguated with (game song) or (fight song) without the caps. With the caps it's a name. The consensus was to "remove" the "The", so let's go that way unless and until someone makes a new RFC that arrives at a different consensus. Dicklyon (talk) 01:54, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
Agree that they should be disambiguated in this way and that readers should recognise the capitalisation in this sense... but they don't, and Wikipedia is not terribly consistent in the use of caps to help them... we cling to primary-school notions of proper noun rather than seeing the cap as a marking.
But disagree that The consensus was to "remove" the "The", so let's go that way unless and until someone makes a new RFC that arrives at a different consensus. Consensus was not achieved, but was wrongly assessed, and there are procedures for reviewing the close that are underway, see #CLosed?. Andrewa (talk) 02:30, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
And if you look at The Game (rapper) you find "better known by his stage name The Game (or simply Game)". So this case is particularly appropriate. Dicklyon (talk) 01:55, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
I have looked, and if it said "better known by his stage name Game (or The Game)" then there might be a very weak case for removing the "The". But what it says is the very opposite, so no case at all. Andrewa (talk) 02:30, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
The article suggests that "The" is superfluous to his stage name. Even where "The" is judged to be an important part of the artist's name, as in The Beatles, we drop it in the disambiguator, just as anyone would drop it in talking about "a Beatles song" "a Game song". So "The Game" is not an example of a problem case or exception like "The The" or "The 1975" is, but rather an example of where there's really no sensible argument at all for keeping a superfluous "The". Are there other examples where removing "The" would actually be a problem? Perhaps, but so far only the 2 have been found. Dicklyon (talk) 02:51, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Working on "the" removal

I've done quite a few bands, removing "the" from (the Beach Boys song) and (the Beach Boys album) for instance; also the Shirelles, the McCoys, the Zutons, the Carpenters, the Byrds, the Cars, the Lumineers, and a few others. I haven't seen any reaction, so I'm assuming this is all OK and we can keep at it, yes? And I haven't found anything that looks like exceptions beyond "The The" and "The 1975". Besides song and album, there are a few EP articles to do, too. Dicklyon (talk) 14:38, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Dicklyon, Tbhotch, Walter Görlitz, I would suggest that there are no new rules that would justify Working on "the" removal for the moment. There is AFAIK no standard procedure for reopening an RfC after a contested close, but there is sufficient discussion above to warrant it. Suggestions welcome. Andrewa (talk) 17:44, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, new rules is not the way to characterize the consensus about naming conventions for disambiguating music titles. Still, I agree with Tbhotch's interpretation that dispensing with both "The"s there was in line with consensus as applied to "Dynamite", a Supremes and Four Tops album. Dicklyon (talk) 02:00, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
I was of course wrong that there's no procedure for reviewing the close, fortunately I posted queries as to whether there is such a procedure at #Closed? above and also at wt:RfC and I'm now following the suggested procedure.
The main reason it's not the way to characterize the consensus is that there was no consensus. Andrewa (talk) 02:38, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment (as I was pinged). I find this "the" thing controversy particularly funny, English is not my native language so titling "Title of Work (The Band release)" or "Title of Work (Band release)" makes no real difference. However, I believe the same grammatical mistakes happen in Spanish, and practically any language with definite articles, when "Title of Work (álbum de The Band)" exists (if you don't speak Spanish, the bolded text sounds like "the the" in English); in fact we call bands, regardless the official name, "Los/Las" to avoid such repetitiveness (Los Beatles). In English, I assume, calling "Title of Work (The Band release)" implies a The Band release, which makes no sense either way. If we take the article I brought here, Dynamite (The Supremes and the Four Tops album), you can already see that the page had "the Four Tops" in its title not "The Four Tops" since 2011, and the title "Dynamite (Supremes and Four Tops album)" already existed from 2006 to 2008 [1]. This is nothing new, and while Dynamite (Supremes and Four Tops album) starts with "Dynamite is the third and last collaborative album between labelmates The Supremes and The Four Tops" and it seems OK, other popular bands have things like a song by the Clash, a song by the English rock band the Beatles, a song by the Everly Brothers, all uncontrovertial as requested by MOS:THEMUSIC, a subsection of MOS:THECAPS that exists since 2010. Why Dynamite (Supremes and Four Tops album), a collaboration by the Supremes and the Four Tops, is incorrect, but Dynamite (The Supremes and The Four Tops album), a collaboration by The Supremes and The Four Tops, is a well-written article? © Tbhotch™ (en-3). 18:59, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
    Interesting points, thank you!
    Capitalisation is a place in which I think we're particularly illogical. See User:Andrewa/andrewpedia.
    And yes, stepping back it's amusing... particularly but not only to detractors of Wikipedia. It's no big deal. Wikipedia is going to survive, and our readers are going to find the articles they want. To make a big thing of it is as ridiculous as throwing your expensive tablet across the room because you're annoyed at needing one extra mouse click to get back to the article you found minutes ago but didn't bookmark. Which one of our contributors almost did recently, by their own account.
    English and Spanish are living languages, and the human brain is incredibly adept at using them. And the brain doesn't follow static prescriptive rules in creating and interpreting language, and neither does current linguistics, but many Wikipedians want to, which tells us something about our demography and ethnography but I'm not sure what. I wish I were still studying ethnography, it would make a fascinating term project.
    The most fascinating thing to me about Wikipedia is our polity, and particular our use of consensus. That fascination is not the reason I'm here in fact it probably doesn't even encourage me, often just the opposite. In particular, the way people game the system. NYRM is still the most spectacular documented example, and there are many worrying and unanswered questions there. But what other examples are slipping below the radar?
    I certainly believe in Wikipedia, and that's why I'm here. And I think that the rules help but that we often misunderstand their status. See User:Andrewa/Rules, rules, rules.
    To the question in point: Does a lack of consensus really authorise implementing the proposal? That seems to be what is happening here. Andrewa (talk) 21:18, 3 October 2019 (UTC)
  • @Dicklyon: please can you stop moving articles, if it wasn't clear before it should be clear now, this proposal has no consensus. Also, aren't you topic banned from making mass moves of this nature? Or was that lifted at ANI? I know I defended you, and rightly so because you're a useful contributor, but I can't remember the final decision... Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 06:16, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
    The RFC was closed with a consensus to remove "The". Until someone starts a new RFC and finds support to overturn that, it's what it is. Dicklyon (talk) 17:33, 5 October 2019 (UTC)
    See WP:ANI#Request to re-open RfC. Andrewa (talk) 22:46, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

Now that the RFC result has been overturned to "no consensus", I will hold off working on this until a consensus emerges one way or the other. Dicklyon (talk) 01:09, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Please discuss first

In view of the overturning of #RfC: using "The" in song/album article titles and noting that this page is already under discretionary sanctions, I propose that all edits to this MOS page however trivial they seem should be discussed on this talk page first.

If undiscussed edits continue to be made I will apply for full page protection. But that should not be necessary. Andrewa (talk) 02:22, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Edits based on the overturned RfC

As the first discussion point I propose that these edits by Dicklyon should be reverted as they are apparently based on the overturned RfC. Andrewa (talk) 02:22, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Those edits were based on a clear majority at least, even if the RFC close was overturned. Why don't you work on getting a consensus for what to change it to? Dicklyon (talk) 05:17, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Because, just as with your suggestion of a fresh RfC rather than overturning the bad close of the previous one, that's not the process. The onus of proof is now on you to show that consensus supports these changes, not on me to show that consensus supports reverting them. But even so, I'm seeking consensus here on reverting them. If you wish to change the phrasing to something new, by all means propose that. But without consensus to change, the original wording should be restored. Andrewa (talk) 18:48, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
I don't care, but the link you just made does not support what you claim it does. Perhaps you meant WP:BURDEN, that is for references and not for RfCs.
I will continue to apply WP:THEBAND, when I encounter it and when it's obvious. I will not get involved at this level of detail. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:22, 11 October 2019 (UTC)
Good point, it doesn't, does it! It was intended to clarify my meaning, not "support" the claim... it's a link to the article namespace not to policy etc.. But it doesn't even do that! I think it should, onus of proof is a fairly common phrase. And my point stands I think. It's not up to those opposing the change to demonstrate consensus not to make it. It's up to B2C to establish and demonstrate consensus supporting the change. Andrewa (talk) 13:17, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

about the Doors...

Everyone probably doesn't want to hear more about this, but I just noticed edits like this on an article on my watch list. I'm not asking to reopen the question of whether to capitalize or not capitalize the "the". However, to me, if we are saying that the "the" shouldn't be capitalized because it is not part of the band name - then why include it in the link? Just use "blah blah blah the Doors". It should be "The Doors" or "Doors", but "the Doors" just looks odd. Brianyoumans (talk) 00:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Modifications to the general music policy on Wikipedia

Given most classical music (or concert music, as Dr. Robert "Bob" Greenberg of The Great Courses fame calls it) showcase the full piece each article talks about, why are articles about pop music, such as Get Lucky (Daft Punk song), only allowed a 30-second sample? This confuses everyone, including me. --Fandelasketchup (talk) 14:44, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Copyright? --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:36, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

MOS:THEMUSIC for solo artists

Currently, the wording of MOS:THEMUSIC says it applies to bands. But what about solo artists, for example, the Notorious B.I.G. or the Tallest Man on Earth or the Alchemist? Do the same rules apply? Which of these would we write: "Mo Money Mo Problems" is a song by the Notorious B.I.G. or "Mo Money Mo Problems" is a song by The Notorious B.I.G.? Thanks. 83.250.95.80 (talk) 18:54, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Good question. Also The Neptunes which is a production duo and not really a band. Binksternet (talk) 19:35, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
@83.250.95.80: You must see my edits been reverted by AshMusique and some IP in the article regarding The Weeknd and The Alchemist [2] [3], I guess this is the reason why you here right? I don't think the wording should only applies to bands, it should applies to solo artists or a team of producers as well. TheAmazingPeanuts (talk) 21:09, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
...As was said by theAmazingPeanuts, lower case 't'.
The RfC to get The Beatles changed to the Beatles was super huge and messy, with a couple of editors dropping out over the result. Just so you know what might happen. Binksternet (talk) 22:03, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Put on Yesterday, a the Beatles song, and all your troubles will seem so far away. Dicklyon (talk) 23:10, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
We should keep it consistent for every artist whose name begins with "the", otherwise it's going to lead to long arguments about whether bands who are effectively just one person should be capitalised or not, why musical duos shouldn't be capitalised but production duos should, etc. Richard3120 (talk) 15:09, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
I think we should update it to apply to the names of musical acts generally. I can't think why we'd want to apply this to bands but not solo acts - the same logic applies. I know the battle for this policy was huge in the first place, but I would have thought that now we have it wouldn't be a big jump to have it place for all acts, not just groups.
(As an aside, I think the same logic would also apply to the names of newspapers, companies, restaurants, clubs, etc, but that's out of scope for this discussion to say the least. A while ago I wrote an essay with these thoughts if anyone's curious.) Popcornfud (talk) 15:13, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
MOS:NICKNAMETHE is pretty darn specific, saying lower case 'the' for a nickname, pseudonym or any alias. Binksternet (talk) 16:11, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
Binksternet, that's true, and I didn't even think of that policy in this case. Popcornfud (talk) 16:13, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
MOS:NICKNAMETHE for "nickname, pseudonym, or other alias" links to MOS:THECAPS, which lists exceptions and says names "should be quoted exactly according to common usage." Some1 (talk) 16:26, 20 August 2020 (UTC)
You might want to look again because it says not names but "the titles of artistic and academic works" are the things that "should be quoted exactly according to common usage." Which is not what is being discussed here. There are plenty of times that Wikipedia purposely does not follow what the artist wants, for instance all the rappers with a dollar sign in their name get a simple ess from Wikipedia. Regarding the Weeknd's style, MOS:NICKNAMETHE stands as definitive guidance on the question. Binksternet (talk) 07:08, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

A similar discussion is taking place over at Talk:The_Weeknd#the_Weekend. Thoughts and opinions are needed. Pinging editors in this discussion: 83.250.95.80, Binksternet, AshMusique, Dicklyon. (TheAmazingPeanuts, Richard3120, and Popcornfud were already pinged/are already aware of the discussion over at the article). Some1 (talk) 16:06, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Feel free to join the discussion regarding the capitalization of "the" in a solo musician's stage name: Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Capitalization_of_"the"_in_a_stage_name. Permanent link: [4]. Some1 (talk) 01:48, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Italicisation of a few Latin expressions

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music#Italicization of various Medieval movements. Please discuss there, not here. --Francis Schonken (talk) 07:32, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

See RfC on changing DEADNAME on crediting individuals for previously released works

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biography#RfC: updating MOS:DEADNAME for how to credit individuals on previously released works
This potentially would affect a significant number of articles.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:33, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discographies has an RFC

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discographies has an RFC for a possible alternative format for singles discography tables. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Heartfox (talk) 01:31, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Updating Images and notation section

I am proposing to amend the Images and notation section in the following way:

  • Save the file as type or extension .PNG. If .PNG is not an option in your notation program then save the score as another type of image file and convert that to .PNG (with Windows Paint, for instance).
    • Save the file in the SVG format, which is supported by most music notation programs. The score can then subsequently be cropped in vector graphics editors like Inkscape (note that objects may have to be converted to paths to display correctly on the web). If SVG export is not possible, PNG is preferred, to preserve transparency.
  • Images larger than 550 pixels wide may not be conveniently displayed on 800 × 600 monitors, so keep images below that size where possible.
    • Images larger than 600 pixels may not be conveniently displayed on mobile devices.
  • The sharp (♯) and flat (♭) signs are &#9839; and &#9837;, respectively. A natural (♮) can be entered with &#9838;.
    • The sharp (♯) and flat (♭) signs are {{music|sharp}} and {{music|flat}}, respectively. A natural (♮) can be entered with {{music|natural}}.
  • A superscript circle (degree sign), which indicates a diminished chord, which may not display correctly for everyone, "°", can be produced by typing &deg;, &#176, or (on Windows PCs) Alt + 0176. A superscript lower case "o" (<sup>o</sup>) may be used instead. The slashed o, "ø", which may not display correctly for all readers, is produced by superscripting the character produced by typing &oslash; or &#248;, or by keying (on Windows PCs) Alt + 0248
    • A superscript circle (degree sign), which indicates a diminished chord, can be produced with {{music|dim}} or {{music|dimdeg}}. A superscript lower case "o" (<sup>o</sup>) may be used instead. The slashed o, "ø", which may not display correctly for all readers, is produced by {{music|halfdim}} or {{music|dimslash}}.

intforce (talk) 21:12, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Walter Görlitz (talk) 07:01, 8 February 2021 (UTC)


Question about chord notation

An example for chord notation given here is: e7–A7 | d7–G7 | C   ||. There are articles on Wikipedia entitled E9 tuning, and C6 tuning that continue to use this designation (not E9 or C6) throughout the body of the article. Are they incorrect by not using the superscript ? Eagledj (talk) 17:02, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

It's a European notation. In North American notation it would be Em7–A7 Dm7–G7 C, and I'm not sure about the bar marks. Check out chord chart and Nashville Number System. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:32, 10 April 2021 (UTC)
My question, though, is whether E9 and C6 are acceptable in articles rather than E9 and C6. If the superscript is in the MOS, then a bunch of articles will need to be changed, including some of their titles. Examples: E9 tuning, Copedent and C6 tuning. Eagledj (talk) 14:27, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
First a general suggestion: this made me think about the discussion now archived at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music/Archive 74#Scale degrees – summarizing the conclusion of that discussion (which is about a different topic, but with somewhat similar implications): use whatever, in a given context, makes it clear to a broad readership. This usually also means that a notation as common in handbooks (etc) is preferable. A specific point might, for instance, be that this chord notation may appear on a page that also uses scientific pitch notation – A7 then means a tone of 3520 Hz. If then either A7 or A7 would be simplified to A7 things could get quite confusing. But I suppose that in other contexts, where no some somewhat similar notation for something different is around, the A7 notation would be viable, if the context makes clear what it means. But I also suppose that micromanagement rules to specify only a single "correct" notation would be generally counterproductive: the objective is to make some content clear to readers – without context A7 or A7 are as unclear as A7. --Francis Schonken (talk) 15:06, 12 April 2021 (UTC)
I missed your question. No, E9 and C6 are tuning systems, not chords. I can see how the way that the note and a number are adjacent might be confusing. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:27, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Chart hits

Is there any consensus on how to refer to chart hits in prose? I think “number 1 hit” is generally accepted. I try to correct instances of "#1 hit”, but often see “no. 1 hit”. I think the latter is okay - using “number” seems a bit too formal to me. Any advice? I would avoid “no 1 hit” or “no1 hit”. TrottieTrue (talk) 03:44, 22 April 2021 (UTC)

Per MOS:NUMBERSIGN, "No." or "number" are both okay and the number sign should not be used. 188.148.229.11 (talk) 17:52, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying - I’ll bear that in mind. Using “number” everywhere is a bit cumbersome so it’s good to know that “no.” is acceptable (presumably lower case “n” is fine). TrottieTrue (talk) 23:49, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
Lower-case n is not fine. No. is the correct capitalization. See MOS:NUMERO. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:39, 6 June 2021 (UTC)
Thanks for the info. What about using numbers? Ie. "No. 1 hit" - is that okay?--TrottieTrue (talk) 13:29, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
What does NUMERO say? Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:13, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
“Integers from zero to nine are spelled out in words.” However, the MoS linked in that article says “Sport scores and vote tallies should be given as figures, even if in the zero-to-nine range”. I would think it reasonable that chart hits are similar to sport scores and should be written as numbers, not words. TrottieTrue (talk) 12:33, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
First, you're reading a different MoS. So you think a charting value is a sport score or vote tally? I think you're wrong and are reading the wrong MoS to suit your preference. The correct MoS is clear. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:16, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Tracklist producers

So it seems the default for the album tracklist extra_column is for producers. I've also noticed that oftentimes albums, especially modern albums, list producers as "additional producer" or "vocal producer", and so we need to add these notes to make things clear to readers. It can really crap up the columns and make things hard to discern when you have notes going all the way to ^[e] because of "additional producer" "co-producer" "vocal producer" "additional vocal producer", etc! Much like how Template:Infobox restricts these producers to be listed in the infobox, I think the tracklist should follow that. I think listing excessive producers like that in the Personnel section should be fine. Having producers listed at three separate points in articles always seemed excessive to me anyway...

eg. Rare, Dirty Computer, The Breakthrough Tree Critter (talk) 14:58, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

The extra_column is not for producers, but it can be used for that. It can be used for many other things, and it does not need to be used at all. We also do not need to list additional or vocal producers. The templates abuse is starting to cause problems and we are getting bug reports about things like this. Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:38, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

RfC on Track Listing sections in song articles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Winter in Canada usually lasts long enough without encouragement; but that does not change that fact that on Wikipedia, it is snowing in October. Clear near-unanimous consent against having this as "standard practice". RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:42, 10 October 2021 (UTC)


Should track listing sections be included in MOS:MUSIC as a standard practice in song articles when the song was released as a single with a "B" (or "A") side? --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:04, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Survey

Discussion

Seems pointless. I mean it's a single it has a track listing of one song. Well OK there's a B side, but that's subsidiary. It's there because you have to something on the reverse side because a disc is an orientable shape. Albums don't have subsidiary tracks. You can mention the B side in the text if you want to. Herostratus (talk) 04:53, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

In the same way that a chart table is unnecessary if a song only makes it on one chart (MOS:ALBUM), I think a track listing for only an A- and B-side is unnecessary and is only needed for LPs, EPs or 7's with several tracks. Tkbrett (✉) 12:23, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Include track listings for alternative editions only when they are significantly different and when the tracks are the subject of extensive commentary in the article. In such cases, additional track listings can be listed under subheadings. Otherwise, notable differences can be summarised in the prose in lieu of additional track lists.

Perhaps the "for alternative editions" wording (copied from WP:ALTTRACKLISTING) can be removed or modified to clarify the point.
—Ojorojo (talk) 14:06, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
Comment: Multiple track listings for singles is only likely to be an issue for singles in the 1990s/2000s, when multiple formats were common (7", 12", CD, cassette), and particularly for dance songs which often had five or six remixes (as JohnFromPinckney points out above – two CD singles with different remixes on each was not uncommon). No strong opinion on keeping or discarding the different track listings in these cases, but then we would have to decide which is the "main" format to use for the track listing section. Richard3120 (talk) 15:58, 4 October 2021 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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