Wikipedia talk:Meetup/Sydney/October 2012

Advertising

Once we have a few people committed, we should advertise this on WP:AUSN, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject France.

When we have a date selected for the physical meeting, we need to spam Category:Wikipedians in Sydney. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:52, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have notified the Australian noticeboard. Can someone notify the Classical music and France WikiProjects? I am about to notified everyone in Category:Wikipedians in Sydney. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:43, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have notified the France and Classical music WikiProjects. Graham87 14:59, 3 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The GLAM people and WikiWomens Collaborative have been notified. Whiteghost.ink (talk) 07:15, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

We have been retweeted by the radio station https://twitter.com/ABCClassic/status/254058932618788864 and I've posted to Google Plus https://plus.google.com/115729756375122889743/posts/9LbSurZLGkq . In four days this meetup page has been viewed 454 times. Only 3 meetup and 3 online participants so far. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:46, 7 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

New tweet from ABC today, unprovoked :-) "#classic100 composer count from Wikipedia puts Berlioz and Debussy in the lead so far" [linking to the countdown WP article. Witty lama 06:13, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome!

I love the idea and hope you will be able to engage many people! I won't be able to attend and French classical music is not necessary my area of expertise ;-) Juttavd (talk) 00:35, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Any editing help or translations would be greatly appreciated! Whiteghost.ink (talk) 07:11, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from WikiProject Classical music talk page

The following message was posted to the Classical music talk page:

Very nice! For those of us non-locals, perhaps you can have participants create a list of articles created/edited, so members of this group can examine and perhaps expand. -- kosboot (talk) 00:28, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, it'd be a very good idea to document our progress on-wiki. Graham87 05:20, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. fwiw, I've started a list based on the voting suggestions: Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/October 2012/The List (feel free to rename as it wont be 'The List' once the countdown starts). That can be used as Special:RecentChangesLinked/Wikipedia:Meetup/Sydney/October_2012/The_List to find people who may be interested in helping. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:57, 5 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have been updating and cross checking the list of possible choices for the Countdown. Below is a table of some of the things that stand out from Day 1 as needing work. "The List" shows more things that are needed and some of them will certainly be on articles about works that turn out to be in the Countdown choices. Here is a chance for anyone with a good reference collection to press it into service. I will keep a lookout and update this table. Any improvements to these articles would be great. The third column is for the motivational tick. Whiteghost.ink (talk) 12:53, 8 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm being bold and moving this table to the project page itself - as this should be the key coordination document for us to all work from - so we know what needs to be done, what has been completed, comments etc. All new ideas for work to be done should be added to that I think. Witty lama 00:54, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions from GFHandel

Here are a couple of suggestions for what we can work on from GFHandel - copied from his usertalk page:

Most works in the countdown lists link to specific articles, however I don't believe that most of those articles have a "See also" return link to the "List of compositions of ..." article for the associated composer. Note that sometimes it would be nice to target a return link to a section (e.g. "Cantatas" on the "List of compositions of..." article for a musical work that is a cantata). You can see such a return "See also" link here.
(A biggie ...) It seems that every "List of compositions of..." article has a different format, and it would be nice to present lists of musical works in a consistent manner to our readers. It will not be possible to simply roll up sleeves and start editing as there are too many list editors with ownership issues (such as myself), however it might be possible to study a number of "List of compositions of ..." articles and formulate a plan for suggesting one or more standard formats for such pages (e.g. to take to an RfC that will sign-off formats that can be used—should an editor wish to put in the work to apply the format). I like such lists in sortable tables, however I realise that composers of different eras will have different requirements. Does anyone think it might be possible to specify list requirements that could lead to {{templates}} that assist with formatting? Perhaps at this stage some requirements-gathering (by documenting the information and formats of lots of such list articles) might be useful? I have no idea if any musical projects are working on such things; but if they are, nothing seems to be coming of it. (PS. The Schubert list is spread over two articles: this and this.)

Best wishes. GFHandel ♬ 07:00, 8 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to add point 1 to the project page's list of things to do. I think point 2 might be beyond what we can do for this event. Witty lama 01:44, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed it, because that sort of layout issue should be decided by WikiProjects, not by participants in editathons. See also sections are not mandated in WikiProject Classical music's guidelines and are generally discouraged on Wikipedia. Graham87 06:47, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

But in that spirit, I've just added a link to List of compositions by Claude Debussy by Lesure numbers to the lead section of the article I wrote about Debussy's Petite Suite. Graham87 06:54, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's hard to begin to say how much I'm against the removal of my suggestion, and with the use of links such as your edit that sought to find another way to address the issue; but I'll have a go...

In an article about a musical work, there are three main types of links to an immediate parent article:

To a "List of compositions by {composer}" article,
To a "List of {genre} works by {composer}" article (e.g. "List of operas by {composer}"). Because of the word "List", such a link is often to a section on the "List of compositions by {composer}" page,
To a "{Genre} by {composer}" article (e.g. "Operas by {composer}"). Those articles may contain a list of works, but more importantly they contain prose detailing the composer's work in the genre,

and therefore the opus designator (e.g. "L", "HWV", "K", etc) cannot portray the intended target well enough. On the other hand, the "See also" section is free to include sufficient link text to clearly describe the link's destination.

Linking the opus designator, to anywhere except a page that explains what the designator means, is a poor idea as it is a general principle that the text used for a link should indicate the destination as closely as possible. E.g. the natural link for "HWV" is to HWV—not to a list of works.
The "See also" section is a wonderful advertising mechanism for Wikipedia and there is no problem in repeating the highest-value links there. After reading our wonderful articles (which is when they encounter the "See also" section), we should be doing everything possible to encourage readers to navigate upwards (and sometimes sideways) so that they can find other similar wonderful articles.
There is practically no consistency across musical work articles, so to bury links to parent articles (such as lists) is simply not going to work in a way that allows readers to consistently find information from article-to-article. We should be aiming to provide consistency in navigation for our readers, and I promise you that articles, in every genre and composer, are going to throw up ownership issues (and sometimes, genuine concerns) about how using things like opus-designator links should be handled in "their" part of the wiki-world. An example of where your scheme (of linking things like "L") fails is for works with no opus designator (e.g. most of the works from the previous century).
"See also" links are an internal mechanism akin to "Further reading" lists found in other publications. They are for the highest-value links in an article, and it is simply an infatuation on the behalf of some editors that they have to be removed into article text.
I have been adding such "See also" links for years—with no resistance.
I don't believe that categories are sufficiently mature to remove the benefit of using the "See also" section in the way I describe. Almost no composer has articles for all works in a genre, so the category mechanism can only provide an incomplete listing of works (and that's how it will be for years to come).
Putting such high-value links in a "See also" section is a good interim measure (for those who so despise them) when the time comes (many years from now) to find another way to present the links to our readers. At least the links will be available for migration to another format.
I'm simply dismayed that we have to "get consensus" from a project to do what everyone else here though was a productive and logical idea. Has Wikipedia really changed to the point where I'm made to feel like a naughty fourteen year-old by using my initiative in this way? May I remind everyone here, that such projects (despite operating for years and years) have failed to resolve this issue, and have failed to do even basic things—like finding consistent ways in which lists of musical works can be displayed to our readers (and if you don't believe me, take the time to look through ten "List of ..." articles). Sorry, but we can either form projects and committees that sit around arguing, or we can roll up our sleeves and do sensible and logical things to build an easy-to-use encyclopaedia for our readers. I know what I am going to be doing.
Since "consensus" was mentioned, could you please provide a link to a discussion that resolved in favour of using links such as the "L" edit you made?

I realise that this is not the forum for continued discussion on this issue, however I just had to get this off my chest. If this ever comes up in one of those really useful project discussions, please let me know and I'll dive into the mire.

GFHandel ♬ 22:00, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The to-do list of this page is for noting articles that need to be worked on, not for promoting individual editors' preferences about layout. If you (or anyone else) would like to add links to "List of compositions ..." articles in a see also section, feel free. I have no strong opinion about their presence, for the record.

Re: the Debussy link, it just happens that we don't have an article about Lesure numbers so List of compositions by Claude Debussy by Lesure numbers is the best link target to explain what "L." refers to in that case. In cases where we have an article about a composer's catalogue of works, of course that article would be the best link target. Graham87 04:14, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Geonotice

I've just made a request for a watchlist geonotice: Wikipedia:Geonotice#Classic_100_Edit-a-thon. Please go there and suggest a better text if you prefer :-) It says to give 5 days notice which we certainly havn't done, whoops. I didn't think of this promotion method until just now. Witty lama 04:37, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is apparently now in place.[1] Can someone in Sydney please check that this is visible on their watchlist - it's not on mine. Witty lama 00:00, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Spare dongle?

Anyone who's attending got one? I've never used one (my laptop comes out only for holidays away). Tony (talk) 08:21, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I don't, but do you want it for Wifi? If so, don't worry - the SLNSW has free access throughout the building. Witty lama 23:55, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

And the reason for the move to another room was to have a power board under the table - this has been organised. Whiteghost.ink (talk) 01:40, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tables of recordings

Does anyone think it would be good to have a table of well-known recordings on the Marseillaise article as there is in Poulenc Organ Concerto article? Or are there too many good recordings? Whiteghost.ink (talk) 04:39, 10 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

Anyone got a list of basic sources to order at the library? Tony (talk) 08:29, 12 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. Here's a few options, still working on it: