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Track by track analysis

What are people's thoughts about albums being laid out track by track on seperate pages? I've just become aware (no pun intended) of this happening with The Who's Tommy. It seems a bit excessive to me, especially as it's mostly pages like It's A Boy (The Who). Surely these should be included on the album's page, if at all. At the very most they should be edited into one the songs or the plot of Tommy article, nes pas? MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 12:22, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, maybe a 30 second track wasn't the best example, so how about Acid Queen or Eyesight to the Blind (The Hawker). Either way, there's really not much to say about most of these tracks, other than "it was in Tommy and it's about something-or-other".MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 12:29, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree - the only tracks that should have their own pages are those released as singles (and even then it should only be for famous singles), or tracks that have enough contextual importance to justify its own article. Anything else should just be put into the album's article. DJR (talk) 12:48, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Furthermore, the example you give should be prodded IMHO - they have no enclopaedic value and their infoboxes just contain the album's information. I've done the same thing with A Certain Romance. Wield the axe! DJR (talk) 12:50, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Okay, but how about less obviously pointless pages like the Pink Floyd ones (i.e. all those linked at Wish You Were Here (album)#Track listing or Animals (album)#Track listing etc etc ad nauseum). I'm not sure about these as they are fairly long articles, but again it's mostly just "this is what the lyrics are about" and pointless (though not uninteresting) trivia. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 13:44, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Agree. However, should you prod the pages, you may encounter opposition from those who are proprietary about 'their' pages despite the uselessness (sorry, I meant lack of encylopedic value) of long analyses of three minute songs. Fantailfan 14:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah prod them all. By "tracks that have enough contextual importance to justify its own article", I mean tracks which have explained the relevant history for that song (e.g. "Beat It"), information regarding their multi-platinum status (e.g. "Crazy") or the significance of the song in catapulting a band to overnight fame (e.g. "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor"). Lyrics can be analysed if relevant to controversy/acclaim of the song (e.g. "Stan"). Stuff that just analyses lyrics without wider context should be prodded, regardless how in depth the analysis is. DJR (talk) 15:23, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Please just merge and leave a redirect in these cases. Redirects are cheap, and there's really no compelling reason to get rid of the edit history. If there is a good content, move it into the album article. Jkelly 16:31, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Angels and Airwaves' album We Don't Need to Whisper also might need some merging as almost every song from that album has its own articles, and most of them could even be considered copyvios from Kerrang... --Fritz S. (Talk) 16:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
While I have absolutely no problem with all songs having articles, I think the working standard tends to be songs released as singles, with exceptions for songs that have value beyond a stub or that have some sort of third party reference that discusses it. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that's the consensus, more or less. --Fantailfan 18:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Also keep in mind the existence of whole-album navigational templates, like {{Dsotm}} and {{ReiseReise}}. (The latter actually links to a number of redirect pages that all point back to the album itself.) –Unint 21:59, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Anything that's not a single or a song that's heavily important in historical context should be confined to the album articlew. --FuriousFreddy 03:54, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I've turned all the tracks from Tommy, A Quick One and Who's Next into redirects to the album page. I've not done Quadrophenia yet, as the track pages already had merge tags on them, but Who Are You was full of redlinks, so I just stopped them before they started. I left the singles as they were, though. I've left it at The Who for the moment, as I'm not sure I'm ready to take on the monster that is Pink Floyd just yet, let alone the rest of the world. I'll see how much flack I get first. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 09:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Did same for Quadrophenia except for the actual singles.--Fantailfan 10:22, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I now added merge tags to half the non-single tracks of Angels and Airwaves' We Don't Need to Whisper and listed the other half at possibly copyright violations (because they consisted only/mostly of text copied from Kerrang). --Fritz S. (Talk) 10:31, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
People all over the world,
Join in!
Stop the cruft thing,
The cruft thing. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 13:24, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Original album scheme inquiry.

The orange used for the original album entries is rather discomforting. Are there any objections to picking a shade of blue or something else which is easier on the eyes? --Folajimi 20:05, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah -- you'd have to update thousands of pages to make the change. —Slicing (talk) 21:16, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
True, but I am assuming that it is possible to submit an automation request; it would be rather inconvenient to manually implement such a change. Folajimi 21:25, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Personally, I find current colors rather ugly and I wouldn't mind toning them down a bit. Is this possible to manipulate colors in the code of the {{album infobox}} template? Or maybe just orange border would be enough? Jogers (talk) 21:35, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
By the way, this was discussed before. Jogers (talk) 21:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Thousands upon thousands... 23,041 uses of this template right now (and counting!). It is very possible to put the colors into the template itself. However, this would require meta-template, which we aren't supposed to use (WP:AUM). We could use different templates (e.g. {{Studio album infobox}} and {{Live album infobox}}, but I don't think that's too practical. I think we just have to suck it up and stick with what we've got. Maybe pick some colors that we want to stick with, and run a bot to change them all. tiZom(2¢) 22:45, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
The last thing we want to do is end up changing all the colours only to come across angry objectors, so if there is to be a change, it'd have to receive undisputable consensus. At that stage, a bot (or several) would definitely have to be used... i dread to think how many man-hours would be wasted doing in manually. DJR (talk) 22:53, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think the colors matter as much as the reason for changing them. If we're discussing issues with low-vision readers, or colors that are seizure-inducing--I'm not making a joke--then there is good reason for changing them. --Fantailfan 23:37, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, this is more than just a matter of aesthetics; the current hue used for 'original albums' makes it rather difficult for me to read the text. --Folajimi 01:21, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
I can read it just fine. Perhaps your computer monitor is oversaturated? (I kid.) Reguardless, there's no good reason to implement a color change (even the bot-work would be frought with problems), unless orange infoboxes become illegal or something. (There's already enough of a problem with people not following the color-use rules; I've seen far to many gangsta rap albums uploaded with dark grey boxes, so that they can look more....gangsta, I guess. Anyways.) The color isn't there for decoration, and trust me, it could have been a lot worse, like pure cyan or Technicolor red. --FuriousFreddy 03:47, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I can read it just fine, too. I also have normal vision and brain activity and use flat-panel displays. My wife has temporal lobe epilepsy. Popup windows, flashing web pages and inappropriate color choices and contrasts (not even so obvious ones as yellow text on purple background) can induce seizures. So, I am sensitive to these issues on her behalf, if not my own. --Fantailfan 12:31, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems to me that the more useful question would be "why do we even have a colour scheme?" I'd question what we gain from distinguishing records in the way we do. The reason so many newbies don't grasp that studio lp's must be orange and live recordings must be turquoise is presumably because there is nothing immediately telling them that we have this scheme in place, and there is certainly no intuitive connection between the colours and their meanings. I assumed the colours were just random when I first turned up, in fact, and chose a nice pink colour for my first infobox. You have to wonder, if our editors can't tell what the colours mean then what chance do our readers have? Flowerparty☀ 04:20, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Instead of providing a background color property, set some default values like song/single, live album, compilation album, etc. It would even allow the template itself to give a category to the article. -- ReyBrujo 04:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
How does that address the issue at hand? --Folajimi 02:15, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The colours would be coded in the template instead of the article. That way, if later it is decided to have the colour changed, you would change it in the template, effectively updating all the articles at once. Also, it is much more obvious for someone new to the infobox to add a type = studio album, type = single or type = compilation album than having to manually assign the background color. -- ReyBrujo 02:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
How easy will it be to make such a template? --Folajimi 02:29, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I would say pretty trivial. I have been collaborating in Template:DL character, where the class determines the infobox background color (and which was based in older templates like the Template:SW character). Note that a consensus must be first reached, since this is a heavily used template. -- ReyBrujo 02:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Of course! Personally, I support this alternative; the sooner its adoption can be proposed, the better. --Folajimi 02:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Sounds great but note that the "type" field is used not only for simple descriptions like "live album" or "compilation album" but also for more complicated ones like "soundtrack to film by artist" or "tribute album to artist1 by artist2". If we were about making such a change, the issues discussed here would have to be resolved differently. By the way, the {{album infobox}} shouldn't be used for songs and singles. They have their own infoboxes (see WikiProject Songs). Jogers (talk) 10:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like {{Qif}} territory... when all is said and done, will this template be user-friendly at all? --Folajimi 12:18, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
No, no Qif, but m:ParserFunctions, just like the ones using right now. And I used single as an example because it was late and was the first thing to come to my mind ;-) It is possible to leave a "default" option. In example, the type parameter would accept "album", "live album", "compilation album", etc. If any of these predetermined types is used, the infobox would get a specified background color (hardcoded in the template). If none of these is specified, the type would show whatever the user has written there (in example, "one time tribute album" to give a nonsense example would appear as type even though we have never considered it) and would use a default color (in example, the "album" color, or we could setup a "unknown" color for these cases, maybe an ugly one to "subliminally" force people to choose a correct type instead of a hand-made one). Once the changes are done, a bot could replace the background color with the new type parameter based on the current background color and/or the album type, and once that is done, it would be a matter of determining which colors are the best considering people with different eyesight difficulties. I can create a template at my sandbox, if people is still thinking it may be too hard. As for the issues discussed in the archive, we can create a list of all the topics that have been left behind with the current infobox, and see if we can implement them now. Note that the proposed album infobox is basically the old one, merging the background and type parameters in a only field, so if the previous infobox did not cover it, the proposed one won't cover them as well. -- ReyBrujo 14:33, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Your suggested demonstration is an excellent idea. Could you please provide a link to your sandbox? --Folajimi 15:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
User:ReyBrujo/Sandbox, note that I haven't yet done anything, after having lunch I will make the proposed changes in there. -- ReyBrujo 15:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
ReyBrujo << (Speed of light). All in due time, of course. --Folajimi 15:33, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, it wasn't as trivial as I hoped (last words anyone?). To prevent having to copy the switch four times (one every time the background color was needed), I put the switch in a new template User:ReyBrujo/Temp/Sandbox. In a second auxiliar template (User:ReyBrujo/Temp/Sandbox2), I added another switch to automatically wikilink the type to the correct article. When the user sets the Type property to EP, the first auxiliar template will return salmon and the second auxiliar will return EP. The main problem I am having now is that, seemly, nested templates tend to break in different ways (the test cases in the auxiliar templates should show that), which end affecting the infobox. I will be needing some more time to review why the template is broken. -- ReyBrujo 18:17, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe it is working now. I have noticed some other templates would need to be modified (like Template:Extra chronology and Template:Extra album cover (by the way, shouldn't that one be protected too?). They will all use one of the auxiliar templates (the one that determines the colour based on the type). Feel free to test at my sandbox at will. I have documented the auxiliar templates, and added unit cases in case anyone is worried about breaking them. -- ReyBrujo 21:34, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
The {{Extra chronology}} template is protected because it's used in the code of the {{Album infobox}} and it's therefore a high use template. There is no need to proctect the {{Extra album cover}} template. Jogers (talk) 22:07, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the template at User:ReyBrujo/Temp/Sandbox2 the 'soundtrack' wikilink is used for the 'television theme' template. Is this intentional? --Folajimi 01:48, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, at first I linked to Film soundtrack, however I realized it was a circular reference. [1] I have changed the template to point to Film score instead of Soundtrack, as it seems is the right option. [2] However, the main focus is the ability to both give several different types the user can choose from that all point to the same article (in example, greatest hits and compilation album both point to Compilation album, however the user sees the text he wanted to, even though it is pointing to another page), or to directly replace several types with a "standard" definition (in example, the user could choose greatest hits or compilation album as album type, however both would display Compilation album in the infobox). -- ReyBrujo 02:13, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Nice catch. Too bad I'm busy at the moment to fix that; Film score != Soundtrack. See Trespass (soundtrack) and Trespass (film score). Conflating the two is a great disservice. I hope that your work will help address the matter. --Folajimi 02:43, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of what Flowerparty mentioned earlier, would it be possible to include a legend within the template? It should be just conspicuous enough to be noticed, but not to the point of being obnoxious. --Folajimi 16:36, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure. We can even use the auxiliar template instead of hardcoding the colors as it is currently done to get the reference table update automagically everytime a color is changed in the template. -- ReyBrujo 17:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
See here for the same table as with the WikiProject but using the template instead of the hardcoded values. -- ReyBrujo 17:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
This seems very nice and useful. Jogers (talk) 17:29, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Thoughts about the infobox changes proposal

Well, I have mixed feelings but I must admit that this is somewhat interesting concept. It would require making changes to a large number of articles but this may actually be worthwhile and I'm not thinking only about the possibility of changing the colors. A more important advantage of this proposal is cleaning up the mess and making the usage of the infobox more intuitive. Many articles use non-standard type descriptions and wrong colors. Of course, the issue of wrong colors would automatically be resolved. Moreover, the template could automatically place the articles with non-standard "types" in some maintenance category so we can fix them manually. But like I said before, the "type" field is also used for stuff like "soundtrack to film by artist" etc which is intentional and correct because there is no other way to make such a description without using a separate template (I encourage you to read this discussion carefully). The issue of such non-standard descriptions would have to be resolved differently. I have two ideas for how it could be done.

  1. Instead of choosing an ugly color for "default", the color would be specified manually in non-standard cases (by keeping the "background" parameter which would override the values choosed by the template itself).
  2. Creating a new parameter which would work like this:
    • type = soundtrack / tribute album
    • new parameter = to film / to artist1
    • artist = artist1 / artist2
which would produce: Soundtrack to film by artist1 / Tribute album to artist1 by artist2 Jogers (talk) 22:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I like the changes proposal, and I like Jogers' sub-proposal. Defs needs the green light - will solve a lot of problems if implemented. DJR (T) (WC) 22:47, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
My original proposal of having a ugly color to enforce selecting the correct type was, indirectly, to encourage people to report the non-standard extensions to the project so that they could be added to the infobox. However, since the Type parameter accepts "non-standard" types, adding the Background property back wouldn't really hurt. I would suggest creating a bot that would check once per week every album infobox and report non standard types and associated background colors, to determine when a non-standard is important enough (or there are too many similar non-standard types) to be added to the standard types.
The first alternative is easy to implement. The second needs some polishing, as it adds more complexity to the parser (aka, I am not sure how to achieve that). I think it may need to be used as:
* type = {{array|1=soundtrack|2=tribute album}}
* new parameter = {{array|1=to ''film''|2=to artist1}}
* artist = {{array|1=artist1|2=artist2}}
or using a "longtype" variable along with an new template:
longtype = {{array
  | 1={{album longtype | type=soundtrack | new parameter = to ''film'' | artist = artist1}}
  | 2={{album longtype | type=tribute album | new parameter = to artist1 | artist = artist2}}
}}
I am just speculating here, I haven't seen this kind of templates yet. Sorry for the lack of indent in the test samples, I prefer having them this way than in a single line. -- ReyBrujo
Oh, you seemingly misunderstood me. These are two separate examples:
  • type = soundtrack
  • longtype = to film
  • artist = artist1
which produce: Soundtrack to film by artist1
  • type = tribute album
  • longtype = to artist1
  • artist = artist2
which produce: Tribute album to artist1 by artist2
This I guess is easy to implement, right? Sorry for the confusion. Jogers (talk) 08:26, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh, yes, that is easy to do. I thought you wanted both at the same time, that would have made things a bit more complex. -- ReyBrujo 11:01, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Tried to come with a better name than longtype, but couldn't. I have implemented the parameter and added two examples from the Spinoff infoboxes. The first one shows its usage without Artist (Soundtrack to Forrest Gump), the second with Artist (Album to The Next Best Thing by Madonna). To really match the current Madonna infobox the Background parameter must be implemented. -- ReyBrujo 11:17, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Not anymore :-) "Soundtrack by Madonna" is actually better than just "Album by Madonna". I'm just wondering whether repeating the name of the film is necessary in this case. Jogers (talk) 11:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually, it may be a good idea to implement the background parameter too, at least temporarily. No bot will be able to change all the pages using the {{Album infobox}} template at once. If we just replaced the current album infobox with the code from your sandbox all of these pages would end up with pink infoboxes for several days. If we implemented the overriding background parameter these pages would remain the same until a bot remove the background parameter and replace linked descriptions in the type field like "Album" with plain ones like "Album". This way implementing the proposed changes to the template would be transparent. By the way, if we are about to update all the pages anyway don't you agree that "Studio album" say more about the type than just "Album"? Jogers (talk) 11:45, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I have added the background parameter back. As you can see in the sandbox, I have painted Madonna' soundtrack in yellow by specifying the yellow background twice, in the main template, and in the extra cover (which I added to test the parameter in the Extra album cover template). Background color overrides everything, if it is not defined the type is used to find the background color.
As for the type field, feel free to add new types to User:ReyBrujo/Temp/Sandbox and User:ReyBrujo/Temp/Sandbox2. I believe the test cases should be moved from those two pages into the User:ReyBrujo/Sandbox template, so that at anytime anyone checking the album infobox will be able to spot possible errors in both auxiliar templates. I still don't like that you need the same switch repeated in both templates, it may be easy to add a new type (like "Laser disc") in one and forgetting to add it into the other. As for the type visualization, there are two options: different types that create the same wikilink with a different text (like greatest hits generating [[Compilation album|Greatest hits]] and compilation album generating [[Compilation album]]) or standarizing them (like greatest hits generating [[Compilation album]] directly). Or, if you want to be more strict, not allowing greatest hits as type, only compilation album. I think the first alternative is better (the user may go WTF? with the second, and the third may not be too newbie friendly). -- ReyBrujo 15:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Hmm... Why not link greatest hits just to greatest hits? :-) Jogers (talk) 17:34, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the Greatest Hits type, I would like to steer people away from that classification. It's really a subtype of compilations. I would like to see greatest hits generate [[Compilation album]] directly. That would cause only momentary confusion. Either that, or disallow greatest hits, but I'd give it about four days before someone added it to the template. -Freekee 05:26, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I don't like it very much too. I wouldn't mind disallowing the "greatest hits" type. Jogers (talk) 09:59, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

"Type" field possible values

Well, but what about Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People and Magical Mystery Tour? Any idea how to standardize them? Jogers (talk) 12:02, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

  • The former is an EP, that is bundled with multimedia content on a different storage medium; this is similar to "multimedia album" CDs, which have additional content available on the disc. The latter should be split up; there is some serious conflation going on in the article. From what I gather the LP was not bundled with the Double EP; in fact, they were released invidivually on different continents. Folajimi 12:44, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Whilst that's technically true, Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People should be thought of as a DVD before it is as an EP, as it was explicitly advertised upon release as "the first ever DVD with a bonus CD", as opposed to the norm of it being other way around. Anyway, the point Jogers was making (I think) was that we need (a) standard(s) for visual music releases, preferably without the need of mentioning the medium (VHS or DVD), as this is quite often interchangable. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 13:21, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess we're coming back to the unfinished discussion I have just archived :-) Jogers (talk) 13:30, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm sorry, I thought that was your intention. :) MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 13:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
No worries, it partially was :-) This issue has to be resolved if we are about to standarize the "type" field ultimately. Is video album a proper term for this kind of release? Is anybody willing to write an article about it? Are we going to use a separate color? Jogers (talk) 14:04, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Usually, I support hashing out these issues before we proceed, but I think there is no end to the possible variations (see 'Trespass' above). How will these issues affect the work being done by ReyBrujo? In other words, can these issues be addressed with minimal effort after the new template is created? --Folajimi 14:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I split this discussion into a separate section. It may be a good idea to sort this out if we are serious about implementing these changes to the template. Jogers (talk) 14:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree, it should be sorted before the template "goes live", or at least very shortly after. As for video album, I'm not sure. It may just be an English (as in England) thing, but the word video is very strongly connected with video cassettes for me, as in DVDs, laserdiscs and videos. But I can't think of an alternative, so I'll just put it down to me being too picky. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 14:52, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

If I read the information correctly, the "Animals..." release IS an EP; it could have been on any storage media. If that is the case, the concept of a "DVD bundled with an CD" is little more than a marketing gimmick, and only conflates the issue at hand.

The recording ought to be considered an EP, and treated as such — regardless of the horse it rode in on. --Folajimi 15:28, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

The CD part was a new EP. The DVD part is a career-spanning retrospective compilation. It all depends on which bit you consider to be more important, with the other bit being supplementary to it. It was advertised with the compilation DVD bit as the main feature and the EP as a bonus, which is backed up by the fact that on the packaging and in the article the DVD's track listing gets top billing over the CD's. But this is largely speculative and not at all helpful, and we can come back to it later if we so wish. The issue at the moment is about video albums themselves. Let's change the example to Greatest Video Hits 1, as it's straightforward enough. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 15:40, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I have just added the "Animals..." infobox at the sandbox. As you can see, the Type parameter will echo whatever it is written there if it is not a "magic word" it can recognize. In fact, the only modification I did was changing the template from the standard to the Sandbox one, which probes the new template passes the compatibility test with this specific album. We should focus on whether that kind of type (instead of having two infoboxes, one for EP and another for DVD, or to have an extra field for extra types) is accepted or should be considered exceptional. -- ReyBrujo 15:54, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Will it do the same for film scores? --Folajimi 16:04, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes. We just need to change the film theme back to the generic soundtrack, and create a new film score type. -- ReyBrujo 17:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
While I agree that the difference between a soundtrack and a score should be clear, I can't help thinking that having seperate colours for TV soundtrack, film soundtrack and film score seems a bit excessive. There have been a few films that had the score released as the soundtrack, part two or something, and John Williams' Star Wars sores are always called original motion picture soundtracks, as seen on the album covers in their own articles. Furthermore, where does that leave things like Labyrinth, where it's half Bowie soundtrack and half Trevor Jones score? Just something to think about. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 11:38, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I think that the same color should be used for all kind of soundtracks and film scores. What about this chocolate "Television theme songs"? Jogers (talk) 12:58, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I reckon that should be scrapped. We should just use one all-encompassing colour for use by all three types, and just differentiate them by the text displayed in the infobox field. If that makes sense. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 13:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
It makes perfect sense to me. Jogers (talk) 13:34, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
No complaints here. Folajimi 14:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
No problems here as well. We could even create a "super type" like (in example) "Television and film related albums", which may tag albums as needing an album type cleanup, so that others could change the type to a more specific one (soundtrack, television theme songs, film score, etc). -- ReyBrujo 17:00, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't see the point. Jogers (talk) 21:10, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Just in case someone knows the album can be broadly defined in those terms, but is unsure about which one, just like categorizing something in Category:Albums because the user does not know about the subcategories. -- ReyBrujo 21:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
You mean just as a temporary placeholder until someone more experienced comes along and changes it? MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 22:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I doubt whether such a specific "super type" would be very useful. I'd prefer it if we recommend to leave the "type" just as "album" in case the editor is not sure about which one to choose so the article would be placed in Category:Infoboxes with non-standard values. Jogers (talk) 22:33, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
But how about allowing some more specific "soundtrack" values like "film soundtrack", "video game soundtrack" etc? It this case it might be reasonable to categorize articles using the plain "soundtrack" value. I guess it would be more straightforward. Jogers (talk) 22:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
FWIW, the All Music Guide considers GHV-1 to be a compilation... Folajimi 16:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Right. So, the ¥1,000,000 question is should we just display video albums as if they were audio - just call them "compilations" and "live albums" and use the standard colours, or should we give them their own colours and terms - i.e. "compilation/live video album" coloured purple or something, and if so, what should those terms and colours be? MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 16:27, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
ReyBrujo suggested that we wait until later. Perhaps we should start picking the different tones/hues we like right now, and just assign them later? Folajimi 16:32, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I'd rather get this sorted soon, as I originally brought it up ten days ago, but there's no reason why it should interfere with the template or anything else. It can just happily sit back slightly as a secondary issue. That being said, in order to properly choose the tones/hues we like, we should decide how many we need to have. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 17:03, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, I suggest discussing everything first. The old infobox has been around for some time, won't hurt it to be a week or two more around. We can, at the same time, listen to suggestions for colour so that both topics can be finished in about the same time. If the proposed infobox maintains backwards compatibility, whenever it is ready, if we have the colours ready, both changes could actually happen as fast as a bot would be able to run. -- ReyBrujo 17:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah exactly - the new template will make it quite easy to change colours all in one go whenever necessary, so we can definitely keep the colours discussion pending while the new template is implemented. As I said earlier, this colours discussion is likely to be the final decision on the matter for a good few years at least, so it is very important than incontrovertable consensus is reached between all relevant parties. Given the number of pages that use the template, it's outcome has the potential to spark many people into mindless compaints. DJR (T) (WC) 17:18, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Based on previous discussions, I have modified the template. Now everytime a non-standard type is used, the article is included in Category:Articles about albums with infoboxes using non-standard type parameter value. Note that because User:ReyBrujo/Sandbox is both the template and the example, when viewing you won't be able to see the category (as it is using includeonly tags). To test, you will have to edit and preview the page, or go to an album like Animals Should Not Try to Act Like People, edit it, replace Album infobox with User:ReyBrujo/Sandbox and preview it. Hopefully MediaWiki caches results :-) -- ReyBrujo 03:42, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

It seems it was a cache issue, I purged Wikipedia cache and now the page is categorized correctly. Also, I have expanded the unit testing in the auxiliar templates, so don't worry about breaking the template :-) -- ReyBrujo 04:56, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Great. Any idea for better name of the category? Jogers (talk) 07:22, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
How about just Category:Infoboxes with non-standard values? MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 08:58, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Or even Category:Non-standard album infoboxes? DJR (T) (WC) 00:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
This is simple and clear. What about the category description? It must say that it's a maintenance category and link to the project's page. Jogers (talk) 11:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, that's the easy part. As you said, we know what it has to say, and it can be edited numerous times to get the wording right, if needs be. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 11:57, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Is remix album going to be a possible "type" value? Should it have a separate color? Jogers (talk) 15:12, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

It's been suggested to use the compilation color for them [3]. Jogers (talk) 15:16, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, remix could be a possible type. I am one of those who think it is better to have many types than few, as it is much easier to merge types than splitting them. As for the color, I don't have problems with that; at least for now I can't foresee any problem. -- ReyBrujo 16:54, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. Seperate type, shared colour, methinks. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 22:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

What about Category:Mixtape albums? Jogers (talk) 21:58, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Isn't there an article about types of albums? In example, for the {{DL character}} template, I defined the classes based on the existing character classes plus the most important prestiges classes in the campaign setting. If there is a similar list about albums, we could defined from there which ones to pick. -- ReyBrujo 20:26, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm not aware of such an article. Jogers (talk) 10:20, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Isn't a tribute album a kind of compilation? Shouldn't they use the same color? Jogers (talk) 11:39, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

I dunno. Tribute albums are half-way between compilations and cover albums. I'd say leave it as is for now, but I really don't care if it's changed, because it does make sense. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 15:15, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually cover albums could use the same color as well, don't you agree? Jogers (talk) 15:20, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
They could, but I think that a band covering an entire album (such as Dub Side of the Moon or Petra Haden Sings: The Who Sell Out) or covers recorded with the express intention of being part of an album (such as Pin Ups) have very few elements of a compilation about them. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 15:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I see. It was just an idea that popped up in my head. I don't mind keeping it the way it is now. Jogers (talk) 15:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Spectra nominations

ReyBrujo, could you make room in your sandbox for spectrum nominations? Or, should that discussion be tabled until the template is done? Folajimi 00:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Ehem... what? :-) Sorry, I don't really know a lot about music terms, only about lyrics and melodies that make me feel good :-) -- ReyBrujo 03:48, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
No, no, no. I was refering to the range of hues/tones that will be used for the template. e.g. Green for 'Original', Yellow for 'Compilations', etc. Folajimi 03:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Ah, I thought you were referring to spectrum as a music term "_" Anyways, you can begin checking colours by modifying the ones listed inside the switch at User:ReyBrujo/Temp/Sandbox. Note that, since you are modifying the template, you will have to save the template before the changes can be seen. I have expanded the self unit testing, so if you change a colour, the check will probably fail; don't worry, just test around and remember to revert to the last page that did not break the test. If needed, a new page could be created to test colour pairs. -- ReyBrujo 04:33, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Are we talking about colors yet? I must be the only one who likes the orange for albums. It's bold and has the second greatest contrast of any of the colors. I do find "salmon" to be ugly, and would appreciate a change. Will there be a color for an unspecified album type? I think there should be. I also favor a bad color, which would prompt a change. I suggest a somewhat dark shade of gray. That way it's not ugly or seizure inducing, but it's obvious that something is not right. There should probably be instructions nearby, though. The current template shows gainsboro as for both default and soundtracks. Whatever colors we choose, these two should be different from each other. -Freekee 05:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

No, you are not the only one with an affinity for the use of Orange. Yes, it may be bold, but it is also rather brash. It is the reason I steer clear of using it when creating album articles.
That said, the decision about the spectrum which will be used has been tabled until the template itself is complete. You may also want to checkout the section on "Straw poll about the proposed infobox changes" located below. Folajimi 20:22, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Album length

I suggest creating a new field for the length in the album infobox. While keeping length, maybe adding hours, minutes and seconds so that people could add the values directly, and have some template magic to convert them in mm:ss format. Or, creating an auxiliar template to do that (in example, {{album length|hours=1|minutes=30|seconds=30}}, which would generate 90:30, while at the same time allowing {{album length|minutes=90|seconds=30}}. I have noticed people prefer writing 1:30:30, 1h 30 min 30 sec instead of 90:30, and maybe having those fields or templates will allow them to write the length in a "human readable" form, while allowing us to change the format with little interaction by just changing the template/s. -- ReyBrujo 20:11, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is necessary. Using this field is pretty straightforward and I would prefer it to fix incorrect description in the code itself rather than manipulating the way they are displayed. Jogers (talk) 11:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
What's wrong with the 1:30:30 format? I checked the project page and there isn't a standard of any sort mentioned for declaring times. I know that I personally record the lengths in the format I mentioned. It might be worth standardizing the proper format of course... If there's already a universal preferred format for "lengths of time" please point me to it. (Though now that I think of it, movies are generally listed as being 110 mins long, not 1 hour, 50 minutes) ~ Gertlex 15:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
When in doubt or without a solid reference, I usually check the template to search for hints. The example shows a mm:ss format (77:19, in that example). Also, as you say, movies are given in that format. -- ReyBrujo 16:08, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Spectra selection, Take #2

If the template far enough along to be rolled out, I suggest that the next course of action should be spectra selection for the legends. That is, unless there is an outstanding issue to be tended to... --Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 19:31, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, it looks like there are no objections. Does anybody have any suggestions? MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 17:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Do future albums get infoboxes?

— Prodigenous Zee - 00:58, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

For reference, check Cat:Upcoming albums — and what I find there is that it is generally done. You'd be hard-pressed, again, to stop people doing it, and the page is going to be continuously updated anyway, as {{Future album}} attests.
(Oh, and people will generally tell you to always put some text under your headers.) –Unint 01:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
I see, thanks. But won't that create some confusion? For example the "released" section, it makes the album look like it's already been released when it hasn't. (ok, I'll put some text in the future) — Prodigenous Zee - 01:22, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Track listing display issues

A few common issues I want to work out:

  • Can we standarize how to display songs that start partway through a track, or multiple songs as part of the same track? This is an issue with:
    • progressive rock albums: e.g. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence;
    • more experimental electronic albums, which kind of run in the same spirit: e.g. Dead Cities (album);
    • and albums with hidden tracks that aren't their own separate track (many).
    • And a special case: what if a CD contains a length of music between two tracks in the track index (i.e. an extended section with a negative track time)?
  • Should one-off guest vocalists be credited among "credits" or under individual songs (which I got the idea of from the main project page)? e.g. Chimera (album).
  • How do we format enhanced/multimedia sections on CDs? What about multiple non-song items that need to be listed?
  • If an album has different selections of additional songs on releases in different regions, how do we list these? As new lists, starting from 1 (even though they're not track 1 on the album)? As lists starting from a higher number (even though list formatting doesn't work that way)? As prose altogether?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Unint (talk • contribs) .

Hopefully these answers will help:

  • Any track with more than one song is usually handled as a medley. If the same person wrote all the songs, list the medley all in one line like this:
  • I ususally place the quotation marks around each song, rather than around the entire medley, unless the two songs are often associated with each ther (e.g. "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In").
  • Sometimes, medleys have special names, as yours does. In that case, list it like this:
    • Dance to the Medley: "Music is Alive"/"Dance In"/"Music Lover" (Sylvester Stewart) - 12:12
  • If you have different composer on each song in the medley, use sub-bullets (this is the way it is done at [Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence]]).
  • For hidden tracks, list the songs in the "medley" style, and use footnotes to denote a hidden track.
  • List the track time as the song actually plays, not as the time encoded on the CD (which should solve the case of negative time)
  • List one-off guest vocalists either with the tracks or in credits, noting which track(s) they were on.
  • I don't think it's neccessary to list what's included on an enhanced CD. A sentence or tow of prose included in the article body should suffice.
  • The tracklisting on the article should be that in the album's primary region of release. Any songs which do not appear on that version should be listed in a section titled "Tracks included on international versions" or something similar. Don't include tracklistings for each country, because you'll end up with a listy article--FuriousFreddy 03:41, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Rerelease Albums

What colour are albums which contain (a) new track(s), but also contain ones from another album, but the new album has a completely new name, and artwork etc.? The album I'm trying to sort is My Number One (album), which contains some songs from an older album; does it count as compilation? -Рэдхот 08:57, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

If the reissued material equals or outweighs the new material, list it as a compilation and color it darkseagreen. Otherwise, keep it as you've got it. --FuriousFreddy 03:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
That's what I guessed. Thanks! -Рэдхот 15:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Foreign language albums

We get quite a number of these at the translation desk, asking for a translation of the song titles. I am not quite sure how much sense that makes. As a specific example, what should be done with this? Is an article of this form (track list plus one sentence) even worth including? I'd be grateful about any comments, Kusma (討論) 02:09, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't Chinese have a kind of "romaji" translation? I work with some japanese albums and artists, and we always try to use japanese, romaji and english. Without a way for a casual user to understand at least the meaning of the songs, it is of little use, even if the song is notable. This is a personal opinion, though. -- ReyBrujo 02:47, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
In that specific case, while the titles could be transliterated, that is not likely going to help much (does it help you if I tell you that 生命天使 is pronounced "shengming tianshi"?) Actually, the titles in Mandarin and those in Cantonese should be transliterated using different methods (yuck). Translation of somg titles like these without seeing the lyrics can easily produce nonsense, so I don't really want to do it although I can guess what most of the titles mean. Kusma (討論) 02:53, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I assume that a casual reader may know either the translation or the pronounciation of the album, not the Chinese name, in example, after listening it from the radio. Chinese names (much like Japanese) are not useful, as we can't expect users to know how to write it down. So, we need to give them the other two options left: translation and pronounciation, either with IPA or some other mechanism. In example, T.A.T.u. has album names in Russian, but they (usually) redirect to their english translation. -- ReyBrujo 03:28, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
It seems that the translation won't be of much use unless the English translation is in common usage — i.e. findable via Google and so on. If there's no English market for something at all, that could be a problem. –Unint 03:30, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Why are only studio albums put in the chronology section?

Where does that leave the live albums? — Prodigenous Zee - 11:55, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I usually include live albums. But now there's the option of additional chronology sections in infoboxes, you can put in three chronologies if you want to, one only for studio albums, one including live albums and one including compilations. If you really want to, that is. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 12:02, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
Me too. But this one time I realized that someone had changed the next album in an infobox from a live album to a studio album, I quickly went to check this page and it said that only studio albums should be put in chronologies. Also the extra chronolgy would only be too much work. It would be much easier to just put live albums in chronologies. — Prodigenous Zee - 12:07, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
It's not that hard, just go here, copy/paste the code, match up the colour and write something like Live album in the artist field. I've done it on a bunch of singles already, Boys Don't Cry (song) for example. In fact, it probably took longer for me to write this than it does to do it. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 12:12, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
I see, but how would that work in articles on studio albums? I just don't get it... — Prodigenous Zee - 05:18, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, maybe that wasn't the best example, what with the extra cover complicating things. Have a look at End of the World (The Cure song), and whereas that chronology is split to show the next European single & next American single, you can do it to show next (or previous) studio album and next (or previous) live album instead. If you're still a bit confused, let me know of a page you're particularly thinking of and I'll show you what I mean. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 09:06, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
As of now I don't really have an example. But once again if there is an additional chronoly box, what would go into the middle of the section (this album)? — Prodigenous Zee - 09:19, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean. I've knocked up a quick hypothetical example at User:MightyMoose22/meh to try and show you what I mean. I'm assuming nobody has a problem with listing studio albums on a live album's chronology. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 09:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I'm talking. Although it might be true that nobody will have a problem with it (even though I have), it's somewhat confusing for the less average user. What's really the problem with just mixing live albums and studio albums in the same chronology? — Prodigenous Zee - 10:03, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree that the example used at User:MightyMoose22/meh is a bit confusing. The chronology should be easy to follow to the readers and this I'm afraid is not. I don't see much trouble with adding live albums to the chronologies and I guess that they are included in most articles because it's just more straightforward. Jogers (talk) 10:42, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, well like I said up there, I usually include live albums in the ordinary chronology. This was just a demonstration of the possibilities that extra chronologies present and the exploration alternative options. Straying somewhat off topic, but just showing what can be done if needs be. One thing I don't get though, Zee, is that you think live albums should be included in the studio chronology but you say you have a problem with studio albums appearing in a live album's infobox? Or am I misunderstanding? MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 12:40, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
That sounded a bit defensive didn't it? I didn't mean it to. Sorry. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 13:12, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh yeah, I didn't realize that. I didn't not word my sentences properly. What I have a problem with is live albums not appearing in studio album chronolgies, I have no problems with studio albums in live album chronolgies (I said that before based on the example you gave). (Defensive? No. :) ) — Prodigenous Zee - 14:03, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Oh, okay. So yeah, I think it'd be best to put live & studio albums in the same chronology and ignore most of this conversation. :) MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 10:05, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't think I've stated this, but it says on the project page that only studio albums should be included in discographies. Perharps a change to also include live albums in be acceptable? — Prodigenous Zee - 11:31, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
What about EPs and compilations? They are commonly included as well. Jogers (talk) 11:53, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Now, this is where it gets tricky. Where do you draw the line between EPs and singles? Some EPs have four tracks, some singles have six, maxi-singles can have as many as twelve, but they're still counted as singles. As for compilations, I don't know. I'd say not unless they've got more than a couple of new tracks on them, but having said that I'm happy with including all of Cream's because they were all released after the band split up, so they don't interfere with the "real" chronology, if you'll pardon the phrase. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 13:46, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it's starting to get tricky. But due to the fact that I ususally only touch articles in connection with Iron Maiden, it won't be a problem to me. But I guess if you don't know you could just do the edit and refer them to the talk page, on the talk page talk about your situation. — Prodigenous Zee - 00:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Any one else? — Prodigenous Zee - 12:11, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
I always put EPs, live and compilation albums in. Non-LP singles no. Singles will sometimes be challenged as NN if they didn't chart. --Fantailfan 13:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Problem with some Phish album chronology

I would like some input about a particular issue right now on some Phish album articles. 68.112.25.197 (talk · contribs) and Sectornine (talk · contribs) want to make the chronology section go by date of live shows instead of the date of release. For examples the articles involved see the following:

I have had it as going by release year as per guidelines (not policy, though) at Wikiproject: Albums#Discography. I would gladly take any expert commentary on this situation. Cheers! -- MOE.RON talk | done | doing 01:49, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

It should be organized by release date, not by the recorded date. This applies for all albums. --FuriousFreddy 02:08, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Now the user is putting "recorded in 19XX" in the chronology field if it is a live album (ie. Phish: New Year's Eve 1995 - Live at Madison Square Garden)). I have only ever seen release dates put in the chronology field, but I was wondering if his edits should be revert back to just the release year. Thanks! -- MOE.RON talk | done | doing 19:32, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Extraction?

I noticed that many pages lack the time info for individual tracks even if they are readily available in other sites. Which I suspect is because the task is tedious for most. I'm just wondering if there is a way to extract track data from databases like MusicBrainz. -- Jared A. Hunt 06:27, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Album of demos classification?

I just added The '92 Demos, an album released by Local H in 1999 which was made out of a demo tape the band recorded in 1992. My question is, what album type does this get classified as? I put compilation album as it seemed closest, but I don't quite think that fits. Do we need another classification, or does everyone think compilation album is close enough? Joltman 14:25, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

  • I'd say go with the compilation album category... It does seem to fit that better than the "Original Studio Album". It's easier to classify it as such, instead of going through the rigamarole of adding/agreeing on a standard color...Gertlex 23:34, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
  • If none of those songs have been released on any other albums, I'd call it a studio release. If they show up elsewhere, then compilation is best. It looks like only a couple of them were rerecorded and released, so it's your call, I guess. -Freekee 03:58, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Notation for track lengths

What's the proper format for adding the length of a track on a music page? I've seen several...

  • [4:03]
  • (4:03)
  • Title of the Song — 4:03

(Note that the last uses a long dash)

Personally I like the first two best... Can I get some feedback and then a decision on which to use (and state such in the project article)? Gertlex 23:14, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

  • More often than not, I use the second option, with a long dash. From what I gather, you get to decide [with impunity]. Besides, if guidelines are ever set, the affected articles can always be modified... --Folajimi 23:21, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
    • It does seem to be whim as to what is done (I like the suggested "— (4:03)", as that keeps the length separate from and subtitles that might be part of a song name (such as "Jam (Remix) — (3:01)"). I would hope for a guideline to be set sooner rather than later so that the edits I do make to album entries could be fewer and more comprehensive.Gertlex 23:31, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Unless I'm missing something, doesn't it say here exactly how to do it? — Prodigenous Zee - 01:04, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
Mea culpa; I stand corrected. --Folajimi 01:11, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
I did see that part. I was simply uncertain because it fails to do more than happen to show the track length in the example and discuss the long dash. Presuming that none will object, I will clarify the bit that left me uncertain.
~ Gertlex 01:50, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
What about something like (1:00) or [1:00]? That way it differentiates from the song name and IMO looks better than a simple dash. --blm07 18:26, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Italics are normally only used for titles, foreign words and emphasis. Also brackets around the timings seem an unnecessary additional devive if a spaced em dash is already being used. Keep it simple & elegant.

Straw poll about the proposed infobox changes

As not many editors are involved in the discussion about the proposed changes to the template I thought it may be a good idea to make a poll so we can find out what are the general feelings. Jogers (talk) 11:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

For those who don't want to read the entire discussion at original album scheme inquiry section: This proposal is about to make the "background" field in the {{album infobox}} optional so the proper color would be chosen by the template itself. The user would only have to declare an unwikified, standardized "type" parameter. The articles with non-standard "type" parameter would be placed in a maintenance category in order to allow interested editors to clean them up. These changes would allow standardization of the "type" field usage and easy change to standard colors which received a lot of complaints since they were adopted. Almost no articles would be affected by the changes without a proper modification of the infobox code. An automated bot would have to modify most of the articles using the infobox.

Do you support or oppose the proposed changes?

Support

  1. Some more tweaks need to be made but I definitely support this concept. Jogers (talk) 11:53, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  2. Yep. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 12:02, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  3. Support. Concerns about retroactive application of the template can be implemented using bot request. Folajimi 12:56, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  4. Support. --The official fantail of Wikipedia 15:09, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  5. Sounds good. ~ Gertlex 15:36, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  6. Support. Madder 21:59, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  7. Support all the way. Provides much needed functionality and can provide an easy resolution to colour disputes. DJR (T) (WC) 23:30, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
  8. Conditional support on two conditions: (1) We are actually able to efficiently change the colors of all obteenbillion uses of the album infobox, and (2) those colors at User:ReyBrujo/Temp/Sandbox are modified. They're all shades of green ,and therefore too similar. If we're going to go through all the (somewhat arbitrary) trouble of changing colors, we should come up with a genuinely better color scheme. --FuriousFreddy 00:38, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
    We haven't really started discussing colours yet, so they're far from finalised. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 01:49, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
    The beginning of the discussion is just above, so feel free to give your opinion about the colours. As for the massive, I am guessing we will do some tests before implementing a bot to change everything (in example, manually change 10-25 random albums each of us to see if we find unexpected behaviour, fix problems, try 10-25 random again, etc, until the test completely passes. I guess we can expand the bot a little to drop a note in the talk page (or just inside the article as a comment above the infobox) stating that the album infobox has been changed, and that any problem in visualization should be reported here (or in the template talk page) instead of reverting to the old album infobox. -- ReyBrujo 01:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
  9. Support, I welcome anything that gives flexibility and standardization. -- ReyBrujo 01:52, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
  10. Support. I had actually thought about this kind of thing before, but I never said anything :) Joltman 14:13, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
  11. Support. This is the same thing {{Infobox musical artist}} is using, right? –Unint 02:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
  12. Support. I'm for anything that would centralize the presentation layer decisions and remove its meaning from an "at large" implementation. I just hope the non-standard types are within a reasonable order of magnitude. UnhandledException 05:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
  13. Support. This is the sort of thing that ParserFunctions were developed for (which means this won't require meta-templates, by the way). I think it'll make things better down the road. —TheMuuj Talk 02:38, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

  1. I love the idea because I like how easy it would be to manage. I hate the implementation because I have sworn off meta-templates. You all can decide... tiZom(2¢) 20:42, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Comments

  1. You might also look at the way template:LUL line deals with colour.
  2. It may be possible (almost certainly) to change the template in such a way that the pages don't need to be changed. Rich Farmbrough 22:13 28 June 2006 (GMT).
    1. How could we use it?
    2. Do you have any specific suggestion? Jogers (talk) 22:35, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
    I am guessing Rich Farmbrought meant that, by keeping parameter compatibility, it would be trivial to replace the old infobox with the new one, either moving the page or copying the latest stable version in place of the current {{album infobox}}. As for {{LUL line}}, you create one template for every line colour, and then use replacements. In example, by hinting at Waterloo & City Line as line, the template searches for Template:Waterloo & City Line colour, which contains the RGB colour of the line. I had thought about that, but decided that an array would be better (however, since array could only be accessed by index number, I used a switch which is quite similar to a map, which was what I wanted since the beginning). However, it is another method that can be used if the switch turns to be too slow. -- ReyBrujo 01:36, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
    Exactly correct sir. Rich Farmbrough 22:35 29 July 2006 (GMT).
  3. If I understand correctly, a specified background color will override the color that's associated with the album type, is this correct? ie, if I put studio album, which would be orange, and put purple for the background color, it will be purple, right? Is this really necessary? Is there a valid reason to overwrite the standard color? I thought that was one of the problems we were having, where articles had an arbitrary color chosen instead of its type's standard. Joltman 14:44, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
    • This is meant to be temporary. If we just replaced the current template code with the proposed one, most of the articles would have a non-standard type value (because most of them use wikified description such as "Compilation album" instead of just "Compilation album") and therefore all of them would end up with the same default color (gainsboro). A bot would have to remove the background parameter and unwikify the "type" description in order to allow the changes to work. Moreover, the overriding background parameter would allow to choose a color for non-standard types until we figure out how to deal with them. Jogers (talk) 15:30, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

iTunes Originals

Hey folks; I'm not a member of your project, but I'd like to get your input/help on something. I'm working on a minor project. I started the iTunes Originals article to compile a list of all iTunes Originals albums; there previously were only 3 or 4 existing articles for specific iTunes Originals sessions by an artist, with various format names. I standardised those all.

An iTunes Originals release is a 20-35 release available exclusively on the iTunes Music Store (IMS) in the US, and sometimes in other countries. (and occasionally only available in other countries - like several Japanese bands on the Japanese store). The composition of the releases is: roughly half the tracks are spoken word (an interview type segment, but with no interviewer) in which the artist talks about their history, their music, and often the song that is about to be played next. The rest of the tracks are music. Some of the songs are existing album recordings from past albums, and the rest are exclusively recorded for the iTunes Originals. Each one also usually includes an intro track in which the artist speaks "iTunes Originals" - sometimes over a ditty they play (see Jack Johnson, Barenaked Ladies, Jars of Clay - all intros are pretty much listenable in entirety as previous in the IMS). Occasionally the IO's contain video as well - some prior release, some exclusive.

The point of my bringing this up is that I'd like to classify them, possibly in their own category ("itunes originals releases" for articles that are an actual itunes release like ITunes Originals - Death Cab for Cutie, or artists who have released itunes originals for the artist itself. I don't know how categories work really, but since the releases are starting to be tagged as "2005 albums" or something like that, I think it's prudent to make a distinction between this 25 track compilation with narration and a normal album. There are currently 33 such releases, and more coming all the time. perhaps there should be a sub-category under albums for iTunes Originals albums? or a seperate category. Maybe there should be an infobox type for it (like live albums, soundtracks, iTunes Originals...) I don't know; that's why I'm bringing it up to you. Maybe it's not important enough to warrent anything at all. I dunno. Discuss :) TheHYPO 04:19, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

  • Sounds like it definitely merits a category like "2005 albums" (they would be tagged both)... From what I've read, I wouldn't consider it unique enough to garner a whole separate infobox color. From your description, I'd call those albums compilations... that's what those Now! cds are classified as (I'm presuming you've heard of them). ~ Gertlex 04:30, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I know of the NOW! CDs; the difference is that each of these releases is by one artist, and they do include exlusive new recordings of (usually) old songs, though they also include old recordings. I would consider them compilations, though not of old recordings - just of old songs. That's why I think they might garner a category of their own (right now it's just the list that I linked to in the title of this section, that I made). Someone really needs to go through the four or five articles that exist for specific artists' ITO's (all linked on that page) and standardise them. Some consider the albums as 'album' (new albums) - most use the orange colour. Some also put them in the choronological release list of the artist and consider them "the fourth album by [artist]", while I personally think it's a secondary release. I'm mainly interested in the Barenaked Ladies session, whose article I just created. I believe it's a fair model for the article, but I don't have the time myself (or the knowledge of the artist) to edit other originals. I'm also not part of this project, so I don't know what standards to apply as well as some of you might. I know it may not garner it's own colour, though if the new 'type' system goes in, there could probably be an increased number of unique types with similar, but individual colours (such as a slightly different shade of green from compilation for iTunes Compilations, or a different shade for re-recorded compilations like Bon Jovi's latest hits record, or a different shade of teal for live albums that are acoustic, or live albums that are from one concert vs. compiled from various shows, etc... But that's a suggestions for another time. Right now I'm interested in standardizing and organizing the iTunes Originals! Thanks TheHYPO 05:57, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
      • I had misread what you said (and hadn't followed links...) and got the impression that the iTunes Originals were compilations like the NOW! CDs. Whoops :) ~ Gertlex 17:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I think there should definitely be a category for this album type, and I shall create it now (as a subcategory of Category:Internet albums. --kingboyk 11:48, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Track Listing Format Suggestion

Per the project article, the standard for listing tracks is in the following format:

  1. "Graveyard Shift" (Jay Farrar / Jeff Tweedy / Mike Heidorn) – 4:43
  2. "That Year" (Farrar / Tweedy) – 2:59
  3. "Before I Break" (???) – 2:48

An alternative (besides not listing writers of songs) that I've seen used a couple times and that I think is more readable (outside the code at least) is the following:

  1. "Graveyard Shift" – 4:43
    (Jay Farrar / Jeff Tweedy / Mike Heidorn)
  2. "That Year" – 2:59
    (Farrar / Tweedy)
  3. "Before I Break" – 2:48
    (???)

Ultimately it takes up twice the vertical spacing, but like I said, I find it more readable... A third blend of the two:

  1. "Graveyard Shift" (Jay Farrar / Jeff Tweedy / Mike Heidorn) – 4:43
  2. "That Year" (Farrar / Tweedy) – 2:59
  3. "Before I Break" (???) – 2:48

I'm not exactly suggesting that this replace the current format, but maybe this could be added as a second acceptable format?
Comments? ~ Gertlex 04:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I actually really like how the third one looks. --badlydrawnjeff talk 17:32, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
It's better to decide which formatting style is the best one than to allow different styles, methinks.
Also, The current standard at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums#Track listing is like this:
  1. "Graveyard Shift" (Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy, Mike Heidorn) – 4:43
instead of:
  1. "Graveyard Shift" (Jay Farrar / Jeff Tweedy / Mike Heidorn) – 4:43
Jogers (talk) 17:49, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Didn't notice that... I just copied that example from No Depression (album) and edited to show what I was talking about. (And seemingly very few album articles actually state who wrote each song) I mentioned multiple accepted formats to appeal to those who'd rather not edit every article already existing.
~ Gertlex 23:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the current guidelines are fine and don't need to be changed. Also, the project shouldn't support too many alternatives, as its guidelines are basically there to give album articles an uniform look. --Fritz S. (Talk) 23:35, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

YEAR in music vs. YEAR

Trying to track down the justification for this WikiProject's prohibition against the YEAR in music|YEAR type of link, all I could find was this (from Archive 6, I believe):

Why shouldn't we link years like 2003? —Akrabbim 14:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Because WP:PIPE says that we should avoid easter egg links (i.e. links "that require the reader to follow them before understanding what's going on") and explicitly states that "year-in-x" links "should be labeled accordingly, and not with just the year." --Fritz Saalfeld (Talk) 14:56, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I would note that WP:PIPE is not WP policy but a "proposed" policy (as it says at the top), and when I look for the justification for its glancing reference to the "YEAR in x" question, I find no consensus but rather a series of heated debates, with no indication that any consensus had ever been reached. People clearly feel strongly on either side of the question, but it seems like the anti-piping faction has gotten its position semi-enshrined more or less by default.

My personal view is that YEAR links are fairly useless, and that "YEAR in x" links are somewhat less useless. I also feel like rewording articles to either contain the phrase "YEAR in music" or parenthetical invitations to "see YEAR in music" is an awkward solution to a non-problem. Nareek 20:34, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think "year in music" links are even needed in most cases, unless the artist, album, etc. in question actually features prominently in that year's article. –Unint 04:47, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

IMPORTANT Video game albums error / request

While doing a search for this company, I found that a lot of video game albums have "EverAnime" listed as the publisher. EverAnime is actually a heavy bootlegger of video game / anime soundtracks. There's a lot of information about them around the internet; this is a good start. If anyone wants to take up the job, try searching "EverAnime" and replacing all the album pages with correct publishing information. I'm going to go ahead and start the "EverAnime" article. Thanks.--Zeality 00:15, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I imagine WikiProject Computer and video games could probably have that done in no time. –Unint 04:50, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Double-stubbing

Hi all. I notice some inconsistency in how the by-decade and by-genre stub tags are being used: in a number of instances, someone adds {{2000s-rock-album-stub}} and {{metal-album-stub}}, and then someone deletes one of them, or else someone tags as {{1990s-rock-album-stub}}, and then someone else replaces this with {{christian-album-stub}}, say. It would be preferable, I think, to retain both where they're equally applicable -- that's especially true where some of these stub categories are becoming very large, and double-stubbing is often useful as an indication of how to re-split these, and for we AWB fans, makes the re-splitting itself easier. Alai 04:38, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

Also... There's a newly created stub type, Category:2000s metal album stubs, which is already in danger of becoming quite large itself. I anyone has any bright ideas for further splitting this up (either by year, or by sub-genre, I imagine), or any of the other largish stub types, please chime in at WP:WSS/P. Alai 05:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Independent Record Labels

How are albums released under independent record labels handled? Is the Label field left blank, or should a piped link to independent record label page be added?
(eg:) Label | independent (or capitalized?) -- Heaven's Wrath   Talk  23:58, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there a need to distinguish them? I have never considered giving them special consideration or typography. –Unint 05:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

"Credits"

I'm almost certainly alone here, but I don't think "Credits" is a great way to list people responsible for making a record. I know in a previous discussion on this that "Personnel" was roundly deemed unsuitable - why? It's a perfectly adequate term for listing the band members, particularly as production staff invariably have their own section, with the consequence that, after a bot went over an album article I wrote, it now has a "Credits" section, and a "Production" section. "Credits" is too general a term, and to my mind, only suitable for a film or a computer game.

I think it's a bit of a shame that all these articles need to be homogenised so severely, with the result that if you write an article and it doesn't comply 100%, it gets changed, often when the original version made perfect sense anyway. It doesn't really make one want to write any more. Bretonbanquet 21:25, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Another thing that might be relevant to all you homogenisers - is there any standard etiquette for the order in which band members are listed? I never really gave it much thought until I noticed someone had re-ordered the members of Fleetwood Mac on one album so that the first name on the list was just about the least important member the band ever had. Should we list them in order of joining the band (my preferred order), or alphabetical order (risks less important members being top of the list), or by instrument, with vocalists top and drummers last (seems grossly unfair, especially when the album is mostly instrumentals, for example). Bretonbanquet 21:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Most of the bands article I have seen divide between current and former members, ordering current ones by instrument, and former ones by departing date. If you haven't yet, check this (third point) for some tips. -- ReyBrujo 22:04, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for that. I hadn't seen that page. I was thinking also of band members' order on album pages - any further ideas? Bretonbanquet 22:12, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
Since this WikiProject is a branch of the WikiProject Music, I would think guidelines stated for Music could very well apply in albums, as they haven't (apparently) been redefined. Maybe later some active member can give you further information. -- ReyBrujo 22:46, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd just like to clarify that I'm not a bot :-) The mentioned discussion can be found here. I'm stopping to change "Personnel" to "Credits" with AWB until the issue is addressed. Jogers (talk) 10:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, didn't mean to call you a bot :o) Bretonbanquet 18:19, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Stars

Well, this matter is controversial. I usually don't touch them but using them like this: [4] [5] doesn't make any sense to me. Any thoughts? Jogers (talk) 14:57, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Totally agree. If people insist on using these, they really should only be used for 5-point scales. --Fritz S. (Talk) 15:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
Yep. 1 - NME don't use a 5-point scale, 2 - they don't use stars at all. Using a five star scale for them is entirely inaccurate, seemingly just for the sake of it. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 15:10, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
ooooooohh sorry --Childzy talk contribs 15:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree as well. If they are to be allowed, they should only for those reviewers that do use stars. -- ReyBrujo 16:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup of album infoboxes

The current infobox examples at project's page place pipe characters ("|") like this: 

| Name        = 
| Type        =

instead of placing them at the end like this: 

 Name        = |
 Type        = |

This is very good because infoboxes made this way are much less likely to get screwed up by inexperienced users who often don't know what is the pipe character for. However, many pages use the second format. I thought it may be a good idea to convert them while I'm going through album articles with AutoWikiBrowser (see User:Jogers/AWB). I couldn't figure out proper rexeges, though. Does anybody have an idea how to do this? I'm pretty sure that I've seen such edits somewhere. Thanks in advance. Jogers (talk) 12:03, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

The dirty solution would be a regexp like s/(Name|Type)\s*=\s*([^\|]*)(\|\s*)$/ -> \| \1 = \2, but I am not sure how to rewrite that for AWB (as I use Vim for that kind of stuff). You will have to type very filed in the first () set, otherwise you may be replacing other places where the user was using = (or if you don't think they will be using it, you can just use ([^=]*). -- ReyBrujo 13:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
It's almost the same as in AWB but it doesn't seem to work (the (\|\s*)$ part doesn't match). Jogers (talk) 14:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Hmm... that is strange. Maybe adding some optional spaces before it. Try removing the $, maybe it does not parses it (or maybe AWB is using it as a reserved variable like $1, and you need to escape it like \$). -- ReyBrujo 17:32, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
Something like this: (\|)?\s*Name\s*=\s*([^\|]*)((\|)?\r\n) -> $1$4 Type = $2\r\n almost works. The only problem is that the pipe character may appear in the parameter value (e.g. Type = [[Album (music)|Album]]). In this case the regex doesn't match. Is this possible to make "[^...]" match everything except a certain string of characters instead of matching everything except characters inside the brackets? In other words, how to make a regex that would match everything except a certain word? That would help. Jogers (talk) 15:39, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
You usually just add the word after the regexp, in example, if you want to match everything until the word Album, just put do something like (.*)Album. From what I see, $1$4 puts a pipe if it is at the beginning or at the end, so it is using a Visual Basic-like regexp (which does not really surprise me if .NET took that directly to keep compatibility). I will see if I can connect to work's computer to try some stuff out in VB. If not, on Monday I will check if the regexps behave similarly. -- ReyBrujo 17:00, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. This: (\|)? *Name\s*=\s*(.*)((\|)\s*\r\n) -> $1$4 Name = $2\r\n seems to work perfectly. However the "reviews" field is problematic because it often contains a newline. When I change to the singleline mode so "." matches all characters instead of all but newline it doesn't work anymore. Jogers (talk) 13:51, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
As far as I know (at least in Visual Basic) "." matches all but newlines. It seems .NET behaves in a similar way if an option is not chosen before executing the regexp.[6] Try [.\n] for any character, if that option is off this should match every character. -- ReyBrujo 16:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
It works almost perfectly now. I just had to add "?" to "(.*)" in the singleline mode in order to match as few characters as possible before "\|\r\n" like this: (\|)? *Name\s*=\s*(.*?)((\|)\s*\r\n) -> $1$4 Name = $2\r\n. Thank you for the assistance. Jogers (talk) 19:19, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Vocals/Singing/?

I've been trying to figure out where to point links for vocals in the credits for an album. According to WP:ALBUMS, instruments are linked to the page for that instrument, e.g., guitar. I'm most naturally inclined to call the vocals vocals. The thing is, however, that this word really points to singer. Personally I think the page linked to should be singing which corresponds more to the technical aspect of singing (or, the "instrument") rather than people who sing. I think that making this distinction would be similar to how links are pointed to guitar not guitarist or drum/drum kit and not drummer. Thoughts? —PrintHorizon 14:39, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Whilst it is less like pointing to guitarist or drummer, it is more like pointing to guitar playing or drumming, so either way it'll be inconsistent. Unless we change all of them to use a third form of disamigbuation, which could potentially jeopardise content for the sake of style. I dunno. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 14:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
You have a point. I have noticed that the disambiguation page for "voice" has the following description for "singer": "…or vocals, a term used in music recording to signify that an artist has contributed vocals to a song or album." Since that is exactly what we are referring to on the album pages, I suppose using vocals|singer would be just fine. --PrintHorizon 12:05, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Quotes in track names?

What do I do for tracks with quotes that are in track names? Such as This is a track: "That Uses Quotes", this wouldn't look right with the current rule to use quotes on song names in track listings. --blm07

Standard American English usage requires single quotes. "No More 'I Love You's'" is a song on Medusa by Annie Lennox.--Fantailfan 18:54, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

How many albums is needed to justify an "Artist albums" category?

The issue is being discussed, somewhat, at a CFD for Category:Amorphis albums, which has just seven albums. It's argued that doesn't warrant a category. --Rob 20:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Traditionally, one. Jkelly 20:42, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums#Categories: "[...] a category for an artist's albums should be created even if they have only released one album (irrespective of whether they are likely to release more in the future)." --Fritz S. (Talk) 21:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Collaborations/Backing bands

Over at Talk:Grateful Dead discography, me and a user are trying to determine how to classify Dylan & The Dead. The Grateful Dead were Bob Dylans backing band during this tour and the album was released as part of Dylans contract and from his label (Columbia Records), so I felt this should be made to reflect a Dylan album, much like Neil Young with Crazy Horse (band) on Everybody Knows This is Nowhere. The other user wants to add it to the Grateful Dead discography and as part of the chronology. Any thoughts? Thanks! -- MOE.RON talk | done | doing 18:59, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I would put in both discographies. Like you said, it was Dylan's show, so it qualifies as his album, but the entire Dead played on it and their name appears in the title, so it should go in theirs as well. I wouldn't put it in the Dead's chronology, though, because they were just the backing band, and the record didn't include any of their songs (IIRC). But then I prefer to have only studio albums, and major live recordings in the chronology, while I think discographies should be complete. -Freekee 02:04, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Live albums and compilations...

  1. On live albums, do we still write who wrote the songs?
  2. On compilations, do we write the origin of the songs like in this article?
  3. Another question, which is the best term to use? CD I, CD 1, Disc I, or Disc 1? Or is it something different altogether?

Thanks in advance. — Prodigenous Zee - 14:53, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

  1. Yes. No. Maybe. I think it's preferred, even though I didn't do it here. (That's not a live album - MightyMoose22)
  2. I like to do it like this. I didn't do it here, though.
  3. I use "Disc one" "Disc two." Sometimes I go nutty.
==Track listing==
===CD track listing===
====Disc one====
====Disc two====
===Original LP track listing===
====Side one====
====Side two====
====Side three====
====Side four====
====Side five====
====Side six====

--Fantailfan 15:24, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

  1. I'd say yes. See Live Cream I and II.
  2. Yes, but Best of the Beast is an extremely long-winded way of doing it. See Strange Brew for my preferred method. It's a lot easier when they're presented in chronoligical order, as on 20th Century Masters.
  3. Disc one, Disc two etc.
In fact, just look at Those Were the Days, it uses all of the above at one point or another. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 17:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
Here's my thoughts:
  1. Yes, as above
  2. I think that looks a bit too busy. The way I usually deal with that can be seen at A User's Guide to They Might Be Giants. It's similar to Strange Brew which is linked above, but without the footnotes. I just have a separate section that has a list that has Tracks x,y and z are from Album (2006). Of course, it's easier when dealing with a greatest hits, for a rarites or b-sides compilation album, it's a little more complicated, that I will handle like at The Bad the Worse and the Out of Print using a table
  3. As above, Disc one, Disc two etc.
Joltman 16:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Recat discussion of Category:Comedy recordings to Category:Comedy albums

Box sets..

So, there's this box-set which contains three albums. Each one of these albums have their own Wikipedia article. What I want to know is what goes in the 'Current album' section in the infobox (for the article on the album in the box-set)? Am I right in putting the box-set as the current album?

One more thing, box sets are italicised just like album names? Thanks in advance. — Prodigenous Zee - 14:29, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Well... I did it this way for Rykodisc's 4-disc Elvis Costello box 2 1/2 Years. I put it chronologically in order of his other releases and called it a compilation. Perhaps unnecessary details. More comments welcome. --Fantailfan 14:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
In my case all of CDs are new and never released before... — Prodigenous Zee - 05:39, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
Depending on how much of a body article each album has... If not much, then I'd put all four together on a single page for the box set. Otherwise if there's significant details about each album, then I'd put the box set page in the regular chronology and have the article for the box set discuss the box set in general and clearly link to the four component albums. With each component album on a separate page, I'd use the regular chronology to display the box set as current, and the previous album and next album (non box set albums). Then I'd add a second chronology box and list the artist as the box set title (even though it doesn't make sense to say Box Set Name Chronology) and the albums in proper order would be the prev/curr/next albums mentioned. Maybe instead of mentioning the year, mention which part (1-4) of the box set the album is. Hopefully you followed that, but at the same time, I'm not an expert with this project ;) Hope that helps. ~Gertlex 03:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I think that's the best thing to do. Thanks for your help! — Prodigenous Zee - 02:26, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

quick request for help

Someone who knows how to fix these things, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong at The Reputation (album) regarding the reviews in the infobox. Any help? --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:22, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. But they still miss links... --Fritz S. (Talk) 18:34, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
I gave up on tracking the links down 'cause I got frustrated. I'll grab 'em now, though. Thanks for the help. --badlydrawnjeff talk 18:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)


The Beatles

The Beatles is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 15:12, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Style issues

Capitalization of foreign-language titles

The issue of foreign-language albums isn't really addressed in the "Style" section, which is a shame. Many langages differ significantly from English in such style issues as how to capitalize things like titles.  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 20:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)


I found a leg to stand on. Over the weekend, I rooted out my copy of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers — The fourth edition, so not the most recent, but these things still don't change much in the 11 years since this one was published. Well, the long and short of French capitalization (section 2.8.1, if you want to go check) boils down to the following, for which a basic familliarity with grammar terms will be helpful:

  • In prose, French capitalization is very much like English capitalization (though I've taken enough semesters of French to tell you that anyway). Major exceptions include
    • the pronoun je and its pre-vowel form j', meaning "I"
    • names of months (septembre, janiver, avril)
    • names of days of the week (today is lundi, or Monday)
    • names of language (le français, l'anglais)
    • adjectives derived from proper nouns, even though proper nouns are still capitalized (Je suis américaine. But in referring to me in the third person as "the Yank", you would say l'Américaine.)
    • Titles before proper names
    • The words rue (street), place (square), lac (lake) and so on, in place names.
  • For titles — albeit the titles of books and the like, not songs — I'm told to capitalize the first word and all proper nouns. There are some differences of opinion discussed here, but some of them are minor, and others I haven't seen at all.

So this is what I found. If anyone wants clarification, or a distilation of other languages, let me know.  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 14:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

The issue of title capitalization rules in different languages isn't really addressed anywhere in Wikipedia as far as I know. It would be useful to have a guideline such as this one. Jogers (talk) 18:18, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I agree that it would be very useful to have just such a guide on and for Wikipedia. As it is, I ended up referring to a guidebook. The catch with sending everyone running to their local guide is that guides vary. Just the one guide said there are differences of opinion. So it would be a lot simpler to have a single thing that said, "This is how we handle foreign-language capitalization."  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 20:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

On: people not following the guidelines

Why is it so difficult for people to understand the procvesses of categorization? I've run into yet another editor (ExplodingVivi) who vehemently refuses to follow the project guidelines because she wants to color her album infoboxes "her own way". I've already tried talking to her, but she might benefit from the guideance of others as well. --FuriousFreddy 17:39, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

A technical solution might be best. Have the colour rendered not based on by-hand input from the user, but based on a "type of album" field. I don't have a sense of how complicated that would be, though. Jkelly 17:43, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
That was actually being discussed up there, I'm not sure how close to realisation it has gotten as of yet, though. MightyMoose22 >Abort, Retry, Fail?_ 17:46, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for Category:Uncategorized albums

I've noticed whenever sorting Category:Category needed and patrolling New Pages that there are always a large number of albums in need of categories. In order to help those of us who are trying to clean up there (and yet aren't so interested in this topic), would anyone object if I made this category? It would be quite helpful in keeping the "front lines" cleaned up, and would allow members of this project to have a good category to work on. Aside from reducing the distraction on the category needed list, this would also allow members of this project to keep a better eye on articles for notability, hoaxes, etc (i.e., you're the experts, ya know?) --SB_Johnny | talk 13:00, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I decided to just be bold, and made the category. Here it is. SB_Johnny | talk 13:43, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
It seems a good idea to me, thank you.--Doktor Who 23:03, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Original Research question

If an artist posts information to an article concerning one of his pieces, is that considered original research and hence verboten? Fantailfan 16:21, 6 September 2006 (UTC) Expanding on the theme. The policy is, "Articles may not contain any previously unpublished arguments, concepts, data, ideas, statements, or theories. Moreover, articles may not contain any new analysis or synthesis of published arguments, concepts, data, ideas, or statements that serves to advance a position." Even if the artist had not previously publish the information regarding his piece, but it is rather "in his head," so to speak, is that original research? Fantailfan 16:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

If the information was not published it is not verifiable. Jogers (talk) 16:47, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm working on verifying that the artist is the artist, and perhaps he can post it to his website once that is determined. Then it fills both requirements. Fantailfan 16:50, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Update - I have confirmed the posting is by the artist. Fantailfan 17:40, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
Pardon me for jumping in here, but I don't see how Fantailfan's personal testimony can be considered verifiable evidence of anything. Even if his/her "proof" were cited, it should at least be subjected to the same tests of reliable sources that any other evidence is. Am I missing something here? ~ Jeff Q (talk) 19:03, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
The article in question is Avenging Annie. The user is the Andy Pratt, no question about it. Fantailfan 20:16, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
That isn't even an album... -- W guice 21:18, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

But it is a work by an author/composer commenting on an article concerning a song he made... rare occurrence I think! Anyway, end of "controversy" - Steven G. Johnson moved the article to the discussion page. Fantailfan 20:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

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