Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 2

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Albumbox template

I've picked up the work of LarryGilbert and made a new albumbox template which is here: Template:Albumbox. An example of how it looks and how it works can be seen in the talk page: Template_talk:Albumbox. What do you think of it? Should it replace the existing tables? --DragonFire 22:24, 28 July 2004 (UTC)

I personally don't like it. It takes up extra space, and seems to be aesthetically lacking. I think we should just stick with the current template. --[[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 01:43, 29 July 2004 (UTC)

Echoing the above comments I think it seems to be larger without having much more reason to be and I also don't particularly like how the reviews are separated by a gap. I don't think it is hideously ugly or anything but think that the current version is slightly better. I do like that you were able to design a template for it, though. This is something that I have always wanted and seems very useful, especially if we ever want to make changes to all the album boxes. I would encourage you to design a template for the current album box. If you don't, I'll likely try, but I'll be out of town for a few days. I would think it should be easy to modify the one you made to match the current album box. (I hope I didn't come across as rude or unappreciative; I just feel that your version isn't any better than the current version, except for the fact that it is a proper template). Good luck. --Benjamin Goldenberg 06:12, 29 July 2004 (UTC)

I've modified the template so that it looks like the current albumbox, with the exception of the gaps between reviews (see here: Template_talk:Albumbox). I can't seem to find a solution for the gaps, using templates. --DragonFire 18:31, 29 July 2004 (UTC)

There are issues with template parameters that need to be resolved before we can consider switching to using it. The key problem is piped links (there are a couple of others but it's been a few months since I was playing around with getting a template to work). --RedWolf 23:30, 9 August 2004 (UTC)

Actually, piped links seem to be working now, so it might be time to give the template idea some serious consideration. --Lee (talk) 10:56, 10 August 2004 (UTC)

Ok, stealing heavily from the taxoboxes, I've thrown together a new albumbox template, with the results viewable at Template talk:Albumbox. It's basically just a tidy-up of DragonFire's, but the only visible difference now between the template and the current box is the location of the reviews, which are now at the bottom. It consists of 4 distinct parts Template:Albumbox, Template:Music review header, Template:Music review (& Template:Music review2), and finally Template:Albumbox end (which consists solely of </table>). Basically, each one just needs to be written down in turn, without the need for an extra enclosing table, i.e. there's no gaps between each template call like before. Since the problem with the piped links is resolved (see the Q link in the template), and the image problem can be worked around by using the full syntax (including resizing), what do people think about switching to templates? --Lee (talk) 19:53, 10 August 2004 (UTC)

I would definitely like to switch to using the new template. However, I think we need to put it through some more rigorous testing to make sure it will work for all possible cases. Also, it would be nice if we could switch over the old album boxes to using the template, so we could make global changes. Does anyone know if this would be easy to do with a bot? --Benjamin Goldenberg 00:22, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that the new template uses HTML table markup and not Wiki table markup. Is this how all the issues are bypassed with using templates and tables? I seem to recall now one issue where if I used wiki table markup, I could not break up the infobox using multiple templates because the server would auto-append a table end tag at the end of template containing a table start marker. In any case, we need to do some extensive testing first to make sure it can handle some more of the complex info boxes with multiple CDs, producers and any other quirks. The test site should be good for this stage. If that goes well, then I agree with migrating to the new template. As for using a bot for migration, it might be doable to write such a bot in a manageable amount of time. We have quite a few people on the project though, so I don't think it would take all that long to convert them manually, although a bit tedious I suppose. --RedWolf 01:48, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be better to test the new template in subpages of Wikipedia: WikiProject Albums, such as Wikipedia: WikiProject Albums/Template test, because the test wikipedia gets reset every time they install a new version of MediaWiki. It would be nice to be able to use these tests in the future in case we need to test other changes to the template. Before we decide on an official location, I think I will do some tests on my user page. --Benjamin Goldenberg 05:32, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

I have started testing the template on this page User:Bgoldenberg/Album Template Test. It looks good except for one major difference. The template puts the chronology in the middle instead of at the end. I personally think it is much nicer and more useful if the chronology is at the end. Does anyone know if this can be fixed without making a third template for the chronology?. Also does anyone know of some more complicated album boxes; I've been searching but can't seem to find anything very complicated. --Benjamin Goldenberg 06:04, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

Try The Wall, a two CD album with multiple release dates, track times for each CD and an album link that requires a piped link for disambiguation. --RedWolf 06:23, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

I don't see an easy way to have multiple release dates or multiple track times. I have used a piped link in the other tests, for a Rolling Stone review and it worked fine, so I would imagine it would work fine with an album link. Maybe someone, such as one of the authors of the template could comment on the proper way of going about this. --Benjamin Goldenberg 06:31, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

←According to the Details section on the project page, you should only include the earliest date / track time in the albumbox, but then, since it was me who added that in, I'd hardly call it definitive. That would be one solution, however. Another would be to not break those entries into separate parts, just have "released" and "length" parameters, but then you would have to duplicate the yearreleased anyway, for use in the chronology, and you'd also risk the whole sec/s issue again. A third (and the best I can come up with) option would be to have two extra parameters "releasedmore" and "lengthmore", say, which just sit in their respective table cells after the other parameters, but are forced blank for all cases where they are not needed, so for example on American Beauty it would look like

...
 dayreleased=[[November]]| yearreleased=[[1970]]|
 releasedmore=|
 ...

whereas for The Wall it would be

...
 dayreleased=[[November 30]]| yearreleased=[[1979]]|
 releasedmore= (UK)<br>[[[December 8]] [[1979]] (US)|
 ...

That puts a little restriction on the format, obviously, but it should be doable. I'll test it in a minute. --Lee (talk) 09:35, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

I've put a comparison up at Wikipedia: WikiProject Albums/Template test of The Wall albumbox against the template (with the added parameters). Not much between them, except for the whole chronology bit. --Lee (talk) 10:13, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

The problem I see is that it we won't be able to change the time format on the albums with multiple lengths by just changing the template. I suppose this probably isn't a big problem since there won't be many albums with multiple times. The obvious change would to make two parameters, lengthmoresec and lengthmoremin, howeveer this might be overkill since we would have to write it on every page. Just a thought. P.S. I am moving my template tests to the project page, Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Template test --Benjamin Goldenberg 18:33, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

I'm suddenly reminded of the Sweetheart of the Rodeo albumbox, one of my own ill-begotten creations. Three separate track times in that box. --Lee (talk) 19:30, 11 August 2004 (UTC)

I tweaked the box for The Wall a bit but otherwise, now looks good to me. I think we might be ready to start using the new template. --RedWolf 03:52, 16 August 2004 (UTC)

Well, I gave the new template a go and have noticed a few minor issues:

- since the release day and year are separate parameters, when they are displayed together, the comma after the day is not displayed (if using MMM dd, YYYY date format in preferences). Why not just combine into one parameter?

- if there is no next or previous album, will end up with a strange looking [] displayed in those locations. --RedWolf 04:13, 16 August 2004 (UTC)

I like the new template, but I think that the chronology should remain at the bottom, below the professional reviews. It works nicely as a menu, and menus usually are most useful as footers. --Acegikmo1 04:17, 16 August 2004 (UTC)

I agree with you, as stated above. Unfortunately, I think the only way to do this with the current template features, is to make a third template for the chronology. I suppose this may not be a large problem, but it does make things more complicated. Does anyone else know of a better solution. (I don't know too much about the templates.) Other than that, I think it is probably ready to be put in to use. --Benjamin Goldenberg 04:57, 16 August 2004 (UTC)

Does anyone object if I were to merge the release day and year into one parameter (e.g. releaseDate)? Also, one other issue I've noticed is that if a page uses the new template, the image description page for the album cover will *not* list the page as linking to the image. --RedWolf 21:27, 16 August 2004 (UTC)

The only problem with having a single releasedate parameter is that is you end up duplicating the release year information for use in the chronology. --Lee (talk) 22:34, 16 August 2004 (UTC)

What's the status on the template? I have about 5-6 album pages I'd like to do today or tomorrow. Should I use the template or copy the code from WP:ALBUM? --Nadavspi 18:37, 29 September 2004 (UTC)

Check out Template:Album infobox. --ed g2s • talk 23:52, 14 November 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Wiki Syntax and List of albums

There are about 15 items from the List of albums on WikiProject Wiki Syntax (at this page). Since you all are interested in this area, I wanted to let you all know about this. Maybe one of you could fix these? --JesseW 05:04, 17 November 2004 (UTC)

Done. --Lee (talk) 10:26, 17 November 2004 (UTC)

Great! Thanks! --JesseW 15:47, 17 November 2004 (UTC)

Music Collaboration of the Week

I would like to announce the introduction of the Music Collaboration of the Week, which aims to coordinate our efforts in improving a music-related article every week. Please come help us decide on the first article to be chosen! --Tuf-Kat 04:40, 19 November 2004 (UTC)

Questions

I just stumbled onto this "project" while looking at an Alex Chilton article I had added a sentence to that mentioned an album. Somehow the album name has a link (leading to a disambiguation page for "Live in London" albums) although I do not recall putting that link in the sentence. Now, what I'm wondering is, am I supposed to make a link on every album I name in a music article? The Live in London album for Chilton wasn't particularly one of his best albums; I just happened to mention it to explain what he was doing during a particular time period. If one looks searches albums named "Live in London" at allmusic.com, you will find that there are scores of albums by that name. Should all have their own album page and be part of the disambiguation page for Live in London? I think for now I will remove the link in the Alex Chilton entry to that album name unless I learn from you folks that you want every album mentioned to be discussed in your wikiproject albums section. Also, I saw on the Live in London disambiguation page that a Strokes album that seemingly was not even released is listed and has its own page! Why??? Do you really have space to list every album that was never released? --Bebop 04:09, 26 November 2004 (UTC)

For well known bands that have been around for many years, if an album doesn't currently have an article, it likely will eventually. For more obscure bands that have only been around for a few years, or only released one or two albums that never had any success or those by garage bands don't usually end up with an article (especially garage bands). Normally, one doesn't create articles for live or compilation albums but again, long standing bands such as Pink Floyd and Rush basically have articles for all of their albums, studio, live and compilation. As for disambiguation pages for albums, if there are multiple albums by the same name, the convention is to either disambiguate using the format: album name (YYYY album) or album name (band name album). Even if AMG lists several albums by the same name, I don't usually bother creating a disambiguation page if none of the other albums are by any known bands (or at least any that I recognize!). --RedWolf 07:28, 26 November 2004 (UTC)

Random note: there's also a cute page at List of sets of unrelated albums with identical titles -- although they specifically discourage listing titles like "Live".... (There's also List of musicians with multiple self-titled albums and List of sets of unrelated songs with identical titles....) And no, I'm not following you around Bebop, I just happen to have this page on my watchlist too! --Catherine\^talk 17:06, 26 November 2004 (UTC)

Just to follow up on the naming conventions I listed above, I originally used album name (YYYY album) because this format followed the conventions used for disambiguating films and some bands can have really long names which can make the page name rather long for my tastes. With the advent of categories and specifically the albums by year categories, I have now tended to use the other format album name (band name album) although I sometimes drop the "album" at the end. --RedWolf 21:58, 26 November 2004 (UTC)

Use categories for "Needs Infobox" entries?

See Wikipedia talk:Wikiproject Albums/Needs infobox for a possible template & category usage... please comment and improve. --Catherine\^talk 06:53, 27 November 2004 (UTC)

Chart positions?

Is there a standard for how to show chart positions? The most common format seems to be to use a fixed width font, as in

1993    Today            Modern Rock Tracks           No. 4

There's been a discussion on Talk:Today (song) about whether it should be a table instead. Personally, I'd prefer a list in this case. Does the Project have an official recommendation?

Also, is there a recommended way to get album cover images besides scanning or photographing a physical copy? I noticed that the Pisces Iscariot cover was taken from Amazon.com. This can't possibly be legit, can it? --Dbenbenn 01:40, 7 December 2004 (UTC)

I don't like the non-proportional font for chart positions. For one thing, it appears to be a straight copy and paste from one of the various music sites that show this type of info. If there's only one row, it looks awful wit the default style. Verbalizing the position is much better IMHO. Tables would be much better than the above style being used currently on a lot of album pages. --RedWolf 06:51, 8 December 2004 (UTC)

I used a template...Ops..

Well I changed the box for a new infobox, called Template:Original Studio Album. I think we should really start discussing using thisoe kinds of templates in wikipedia. Because the article gets less cluttered and easier to edit, because it gets easier to change templates as it's easy to change skins, because we would make wikipedia more machine readable. Well, of course there are some problems but all could have a turnaround.

Only then I discovered the discussion about the Template:Album infobox. Well, sorry for the double work I just done. But still, There should be more thinking on how those templates work. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.17.55.125 (talk • contribs) 18:37, 23 December 2004 (UTC)

Hey, every little bit is a chance that we might find a trick to make the things work ideally! There are some links at the top of Template talk:Album infobox that lead to earlier discussions on infobox templates, seeing what went before might save you some hair pulling (maybe not too much, I'm still pulling out mine after reading it all). --iMeowbot~Mw 19:13, 23 December 2004 (UTC)

Music Wiki

wouldn't a project like this be better at MusicWiki? --134.117.152.179 02:11, 20 December 2004 (UTC)

That would be a fork, which is generally a bad thing. --Tuf-Kat 02:57, 20 December 2004 (UTC)

I did take a look around recently, and simply couldn't see a reason to mirror content there, let alone move. I don't object to the project, but its purpose is unclear. Does it address a need that Wikipedia can't (or won't)? Maybe it does offer something unique, but I couldn't find it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IMeowbot (talk • contribs) 03:13, 20 December 2004 (UTC)

I knew about it several months back and have looked at it but I really can't see the point of making a copy of everything here onto there. AFAIK, those who set that site up did not even approach this project with the idea of doing so. Not that they had to but it kind of makes sense (at least to me) to get a consensus from a group of people who have probably made the most contributions to the music articles on Wikipedia. --RedWolf 05:28, 20 December 2004(UTC)

There are some points at MusicWiki Wikipedia does not cover. Please, take a look here to see these points and some feedback from both, Wikipedia and MusicWiki users. --AlissonSellaro 17:09, 27 December 2004 (UTC)

So, MusicWiki is a fork but will allow POV content or other information unacceptable to Wikipedia? I really think the people who setup the site need to write up a mission statement as to what the intent of MusicWiki is and what differences it will have versus Wikipedia. Having some responses buried in a talk page about the goals of the site is not the best way to defend against criticism. I'm not going to contribute to MusicWiki if these goals are not clearly defined. I guess one thing MusicWiki could have that Wikipedia no longer has is the complete list of songs from all the album pages. --RedWolf 18:31, 27 December 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestions, RedWolf. We will try to implement them. By the way, I would like to say that MusicWiki has just created a mailing list for project discussion. Interested contributors may subscribe by sending and e-mail to project-request@music-wiki.org with "subscribe" (quotes must be excluded) as subject. --AlissonSellaro 14:36, 2 January 2005 (UTC)

MusicWiki's Mission Statement is on-line now. Please, take a lookt at it. We are also devoloping a FAQ article, so potential contributors cand figure out main differences between MusiWiki and Wikipedia. --AlissonSellaro 12:54, 5 January 2005 (UTC)

Hooray for title standardization

Whose bright idea was it to have Johnny Cash's first live prison album under "At Folsom Prison" but his second under "Johnny Cash At San Quentin"? --Paul A 00:09, 6 January 2005 (UTC)

Single album categories

I've just added some text about the consensus regarding creating categories for artists who only have a single album. I didn't want to mess up the main page with these links, but the discussions can be found at:

• Category talk:Ashlee Simpson albums
• Category talk:4 Non Blondes albums

—Preceding unsigned comment added by David Johnson (talk • contribs) 11:39, 6 January 2005 (UTC)

Article format changes

I propose two changes to the article format:

1. Record Label in the infobox should be simply displayed as Label using a piped link (i.e. Label). First, this would make it consistent with Record producer being shown as Producer. Secondly, I see record and label ending up on separate lines in a lot of infoboxes, which to me, doesn't look great.
2. Change the Track listing header to Tracks. I can see it's a list so why tell me something that's obvious?

--RedWolf 04:26, 29 December 2004 (UTC)

I agree with #1. I have recently started doing this. I don't think #2 is a good idea. It seems that "Track listing" is a common term. Google shows almost 2 million hits for "Track listing". --DCEdwards1966 05:19, 29 December 2004 (UTC)

Agree with #1, but not #2. I think that Track listing is more helpful in a table of contents than Tracks would be. --Tim Ivorson 11:44, 29 December 2004 (UTC)

Agree with #1. I'm neutral, leaning towards agree on #2. It is obviously a list, but "track listing" is the term almost always used, I think. --Tuf-Kat 11:59, 29 December 2004(UTC)

Okay, since there was no objection to #1, I have changed the infobox accordingly on the project page. --RedWolf 03:32, 7 January 2005 (UTC)

Green Day - Kerplunk

On the talk page for Kerplunk, it asked for the article to be split. So I turned it into a disambig page, also pointing to Kerplunk (album). I tried to find all relevant links and changed them to point to the specific album page. Hope you don't mind, just thought I'd let y'all know. --AlbinoMonkey ^(Talk) 04:25, 7 January 2005 (UTC)

Category:2000s albums on CFD

Category:2000s albums was listed on Categories for deletion on January 2, 2005 with only two comments received which recommended that Category:Albums by year by subcategorized by Category:2000s_albums, Category:1990s_albums, etc. with the relevant children moved to those new subcategories. Although CFD notices were placed, I doubt few in this project noticed. Since most in this project would be affected, I strongly recommend you make your recommendations known on CFD as soon as possible. The normal 7 day voting period has ended but I will add a note to extend it to allow project members to cast their votes. --RedWolf 04:41, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

I suggest that Category:Albums by year be moved to Category:Albums by date and that Category:2004 albums, etc. should be subcategories of Category:2000s albums, rather than of Category:Albums by year. --Tim Ivorson 13:02, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

My vote was twice removed from categories for deletion. In case it stays deleted, could you count one extra vote to keep? I'd just put it back again, but Wikipedia pages aren't loading reliably for me today (and they rarely load quickly), so it would take a while for me to do so. --Tim Ivorson 22:49, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

I've worked out what happened. It was an edit conflict (the user who removed vote changed the time of their comment). I don't know why there have been problems today. This doesn't usually happen for edit conflicts. --Tim Ivorson 23:07, 16 January 2005 (UTC)

I've got it to stay there this time. --Tim Ivorson 13:41, 17 January 2005 (UTC)

Request for opinions on Talk:Selling out

This is somewhat off-topic for this page, but the opinion of folks knowledgeable about the music scene would be appreciated on Talk:Selling out. An anon and I are disagreeing about whether to include a long list of bands who have allowed their music to be used in commercial advertising. He considers it relevant since such bands are sell-outs; I consider it off-topic and POV. More voices are needed to establish a consensus. Thanks. --Isomorphic 18:58, 4 February 2005 (UTC)

Without having read the discussion yet, my first thought is that if the anon wishes, they can make a "List of bands whose music has been used in commercial advertising" or some similar article name. Selling out could have a "see also" link to that, with no editorializing on how linked the topics may be. --Infrogmation 19:10, 4 February 2005 (UTC)

EP's and Singles in Chronology

Should EP's be included in an album chronology? I'm working on articles for Millencolin's EP's, but I don't want to insert them into the chronology if they aren't supposed to be there. Should I even include a chronology section in their album box? thanks --Mattingly23 18:01, 27 February 2005 (UTC)

I would normally list an EP with studio albums with note to say it is an EP - like EP Title (EP). They fit into the album chronology in the infobox too. --Moochocoogle 18:24, 27 February 2005 (UTC)

What about singles? Do they belong in the chronology in the info box? --Mattingly23 22:57, 27 February 2005 (UTC)

No, they don't. There's a special infobox for singles at the songs project (see my singles topic above) and that include a singles chronology. --Moochocoogle 00:55, 1 March 2005 (UTC)

Time inconsistencies

I was just editing the page for U2's War and I noticed that the times for the songs and album were much different than the ones I had. I bought the album from iTunes and my files are about 5 seconds shorter than those found on the page (which are also those found on allmusic). I don't believe that the songs from iTunes are necessarily any shorter than CD ripped files, since I checked the songs on London Calling against the copies in the iTMS and they're the same. I don't have a copy of War however to check the real times. What should we do in this situation? I have left it as it was for now but my opinion is to use the times I have (after all, allmusic's been wrong before). --FilthMasterFlex 07:35, 4 March 2005 (UTC)

The difference is probably just the leading and trailing silence. This isn't even always counted the same way on CDs, and variations in counting can be expected for an older album like War that was released when LPs were still commonplace. --iMb~Mw 08:01, 4 March 2005 (UTC)

A very good point, which is made even better by my finding a promo vinyl copy of the album, which lists suggested cuts. The times the record label suggests are the ones listed on the page. So there it is. --FilthMasterFlex 23:18, 5 March 2005 (UTC)

Changes to the album infobox

Although I appreciate the effort being taken by Drak2 to alter the main album infobox for this WikiProject, IMHO the previous version seems like a better looking and tidier one, we should use back the old one. Is anyone with me here? --Andylkl ^(talk) 12:01, 25 March 2005 (UTC)

I'm torn on it, really. It's far easier to alter this one and it makes for a smaller page size, but I like how the old one looked. --~~ Shiri 15:29, 25 March 2005 (UTC)

My first question is, where did Drak2 announce his intentions to make major changes to the look of the infobox and requests comments before doing so? --RedWolf 17:22, 25 March 2005 (UTC)

He never did, he just went ahead. I noticed it when he did it a month ago, but nobody really made an issue of it. --~~ Shiri 17:51, 25 March 2005 (UTC)

The code for the new infobox is indeed much cleaner and easier, and the new look is cleaner too IMHO. It's true that Drak2 should have said something about making such a major change, but yes, nobody's brought it up until now. --mako 06:04, 26 March 2005 (UTC)

Infoboxes for music DVDs or videos

I'm working on improving the Dream Theater article, and I have gone through all their albums adding Infoboxes to each, but I'm unsure of what to do when it comes to music DVDs or VHS videos released by a band (for example DT's Live in Tokyo or Metropolis 2000). Currently I'm just recycling the album Infobox and changing the colour to differentiate it from the albums, but that Infobox contains some unnecessary information for a DVD (for example, producer, which isn't the same in the sense of an album) and could do with some extra fields. Is there a standard way of dealing with music DVDs, and if not, should there be? -- plattopus (talk) 18:36, 30 March 2005 (UTC)

HAHA, we had the same idea, at roughly the same time too. I guess I'll just add my support for such a standardization. I was looking at the infoboxes that are used for movies, but they, too, have things like producer, director, etc. that aren't really appropriate for a music DVD. So yes, I think that there should be a standard way of dealing with music DVDs. The album infoboxes would be the best place to start. Add a new colour for them, and perhaps a few extra fields for things like audio commentaries, 5.1 surround sound, multiple angles, and whatever else is relevant for music DVDs. --Durga2112 19:16, 30 March 2005 (UTC)

Great minds think alike ;) -- plattopus (talk) 19:19, 30 March 2005 (UTC)

Only American Singles

A very annoying thing I find is that when the singles and their chart positions are listed underneath the album, ONLY American ones are listed! I can include all the UK Top 40 ones, but then there's that annoying Billboard (North America) tag above the table. What do you suggest I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ultimate Star Wars Freak (talk • contribs) 18:13, 7 April 2005 (UTC)

Just make another box but change the tag, or extend the box. I'm not sure if there's a standard way to do it. I know there are albums with chart info outside of the US and Canada, but can't find one right now. (I seem to recall someone adding Australian charts to a number of articles, perhaps only by Australian bands) --Tuf-Kat 21:40, 7 April 2005 (UTC)

List of albums

According to the database dump of April 6, 2005 there are 4,160 album pages that have {{Album}} on their talk page. I can create a list page with links to all of them if people are interested. --RedWolf 05:22, 12 April 2005 (UTC)

Is there a way to add them to the List of albums by name? That's supposed to be a list of every album in the 'pedia. --Tuf-Kat 21:28, 12 April 2005 (UTC)

That would be difficult as that list is by performer and not by album name. I know SQL but by no means an expert. --RedWolf 04:06, 13 April 2005 (UTC)

Protocol for stubs

I was wondering what the protocol is for obscure bands that have only a couple even obscurer albums, all of which are stubs with little chance of gaining much more substance. Would it be more desirable to merge two album stubs with the artist stub in hopes of one meatier article or leave them as they are? Although probably applicable in other circumstances, the band specifically in question here is the Moog Cookbook and the two albums are The Moog Cookbook and Ye Olde Space Band: Plays Classic Rock Hits. --Krash 03:27, 19 April 2005 (UTC)

Metacritic?

How appropriate is it to include Metacritic reviews in an album sidebar? I personally think it provides a better opportunity for judging new albums than a handful of links to regular reviews. When I added sidebars to articles on two recent albums (Crimes and ...Burn, Piano Island, Burn), I included a Metacritic link under a section entitled "Averaged Reviews". Does anybody have better ideas about how to handle this sort of thing or disagree with me on including it? --Words to sell 09:50, 1 December 2004

One nice side effect of listing the individual reviews is that the verdicts will survive broken external links. IMHO the Metacritic average would be useful as an additional line item in the review box but not a replacement for what is done now. --iMeowbot~Mw 11:04, 18 December 2004 (UTC)

I think it's better to use MetaCritic only for providing a "meta-link" about paper reviews not available online (my example on Furious Angels), the same way links to Buy.com's reports are used. Averages aren't useful because they mix sources you trust and sources you always disagree with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.228.60.174 (talk • contribs) 12:01, 19 April 2005 (UTC)

Template:Album infobox

About 30 albums are using this template for their infoboxes, and it has some nasty cosmetic issues (it's awfully wide). What's the best course for dealing with these? Fix the template, or edit the articles and try to make the template go away? --iMeowbot~Mw 07:35, 18 December 2004 (UTC)

I'd prefer the template to be fixed, but we don't really need it. I haven't ever used it. I think that it's nice because it looks easier to put into a page than the normal infoboxes. --Tim Ivorson 15:48, 18 December 2004 (UTC)

OK. In the discussions from this summer, there were some concerns that there might be unusual text that would get in the way of using a template. What I'm thinking to do is steal ideas from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Albums/Template_test to give Template:Album infobox the expected look, and point people here for the boilerplate (in a big comment or something) if it doesn't work. Does that seem reasonable? --iMeowbot~Mw 20:03, 18 December 2004 (UTC)

If you can make the template work that would be great. I used the template on just one album (My Favorite Headache) but the existing template just has too many problems with it, partly due to limitations in the Template mechanism. I really don't like the workaround solutions others have used. The most common one is breaking up one template into several helper templates. IMHO, that's just a hack. Templates really need to be "fixed" to support optional parameters but the usual response to that is they don't want to make templates seem like programming. --RedWolf 20:16, 18 December 2004 (UTC)

Hmm. I'd have bought an argument that overly complicated macro/script stuff might make the servers sweat too much, but the programming thing is weird. Wiki markup already has that "programming" feel to it 8) All right then, two steps: cosmetic issues first to deal with existing articles (band aid applied --iMeowbot~Mw 11:24, 19 December 2004 (UTC)), better functionality after that. (I've already seen an album have its infobox reverted rather than reformatted over this, and want to do the expedient thing to keep information from getting buried in histories.) --iMeowbot~Mw 10:16, 19 December 2004 (UTC)

The template works great for me with a different writing of the pipes, and a little formatting hack using comments for keeping all values in column and avoiding BR. I've added a proposition about using it with source and result on the Template talk:Album infobox --213.228.60.174 12:08, 19 April 2005 (UTC)

Merging cells in the chronology

How do you do it with this newfangled infobox for the first and last albums? I'm too used to using "colspan=2" with the old ones. --~~ Shiri 01:26, 23 March 2005 (UTC)

Rather than merging, I feel visually more useful to mark the first cell of a chronology with symbol " [ " , the last cell of an open chronology with " . . . " and the last cell of a closed chronology with " ] ". Which means the first and only album of a live author has its three cells like

[

First Album

. . .

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.228.60.174 (talk • contribs) 12:19, 19 April 2005 (UTC)

Lyric excerpts

In writing the article Autobiography (album), I've been fairly liberal in using lyric excerpts in discussing the various songs (in addition to liberally quoting critical reviews, cited). But what is the feeling on doing this? Is it discouraged, or is fine to use excerpts in this context? --Everyking 22:59, 20 November 2004 (UTC)

I guess I should've asked a question about a template or a category, bet I'd get an answer then. Anyway, I went ahead and nominated it as a featured article, because I think it ought to be fine. Those who read this are encouraged to vote and raise any reasonable objections they may have. --Everyking 06:37, 22 November 2004 (UTC)

I've been quoting lyrics very liberally on Furious Angels (10 to 15 verses for each commented song) in a condensed format intended to provide the gist of a song using concatenated lyrics. I think it's Fair Use since it's still an excerpt, in the context of an album overview or analysis, and the concatenation itself is a form of analysis of the song's topic. --213.228.60.174 12:27, 19 April 2005 (UTC)

Category for soundtracks?

Hey Guys, I just noticed something troubling and I didn't know if I should bring it up here or on WP:CFD; I generally have luck going through wikiprojects though so I'm trying this first. I noticed that there are both Category:Soundtracks and Category:Soundtrack albums. Soundtracks has more entries and seems more polished, and that term seems more appropriate. Does anyone have any problems with me going through and recating all the "Soundtrack albums" articles, and deleting the category? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 15:30, 21 April 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to blast Category:Soundtrack albums then. Also, Soundtracks doesn't belong in cinema necessarily because it has tv show and movie soundtracks too. I think I'm going to eventually create three subcategories, Category:Movie soundtracks, Category:Computer and video game soundtracks, and Category:Television soundtracks. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 14:37, 29 April 2005 (UTC)

Albumbox models

As far as I know, there are two alternative 'looks' for albumboxes. There is one using ordinary wiki markup (like in Murmur (album)), a template following it (Template:Albumbox) and another, different template Template:Album infobox. The latest one is the ugliest and the clumsiest. Its heading blocks snap before the borders of the box, which looks rough. Its reviews section looks sketchy and is horrible to edit. The another template has also drawbacks, like the wrong placement of the chronology section. I like the ordinary wiki markup box best. It also looks clearest to edit. I know it doesn't have any central control system for its look, but I don't think that it is a big drawback compared to the other problems. Now I am curious of who decides which albumbox model you advertise in the project page because I think that you have chosen the worst one available. Actually the section in the project page is more than an advertisement, it looks like a recommendation or standard. --Hapsiainen 22:57, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Earlier Release

I just entered a new article for Telluride Sessions, an only album by a bluegrass supergroup. I have the 1998 re-release of the 1989 album (both were on CD and the earlier on vinyl as well). When searching the Internet for reviews, I discovered that the 1989 release had a different cover and a slightly different title: The Telluride Sessions. I'm not sure how to indicate this information in the article, especially in the infobox. Any suggestions/edits would be appreciated. --Acjelen 06:40, 27 April 2005 (UTC)

The re-release of Pink Floyd's Relics had a different cover although it was based on the original cover. The original cover is used as the infobox cover with the re-release cover underneath the infobox. --RedWolf 05:53, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Singles

Do people agree with me that singles are more correctly a subcategory of songs than of albums and should be covered by the songs project instead of this one? Right now it is covered by both. The infobox in the songs project is actually tailored especially for singles (as singles are more well known than 'album tracks') and the boxes for other types of song are derived from that. --Moochocoogle 23:32, 16 February 2005 (UTC)

I think that singles should stay, at least for the ones that are not apart of a full length album. For example, Aphex Twin's Windowlicker is a single, but it did not appear anywhere else on a previously released album. Another example on the top of my head are the Black Flag singles, such as Louie, Louie (later rereleased on the compilation The First Four Years), Annihilate This Week, and I Can See You. --Jivi 08:21, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Album cover information template

I was kinda getting sick of writing it in all the time, so maybe we can start using this template. Use the link to actually see the template. Working example would be:

{{Album Image |
  Name      = "[[In Bloom]]" |
  Artist    = [[Nirvana (band)|Nirvana]] |
  Type      = [[Single (music)|single]] |}}

--WB 08:17, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

copy control album releases

I believe this is the right place to ask for help in tracking down albums that are released under copy control format. I created a category for albums released under copy control and other related information... Category:Copy_control. I also created a template to be put on pages of such albums... Template:Copycontrol Good luck in hunting down copy control logos in album covers. Note that this is only for the "standard" copy control format a super project can be created to track down releases in other formats alike. How about a subcategory for artists whose music has been released under copy control? Should the albums be moved to a "copy control albums" sub category? Any other ideas? --Easyas12c 20:14, 6 April 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure the same album is released under copy control in all countries. Also there are several non-CD formats. --Secretlondon 21:46, 1 June 2005 (UTC)

A new list needs populating

I've created a new list, List of albums which include 20 or more tracks. If anyone knows of such albums, please contribute. -- Grue  06:59, 4 June 2005 (UTC)

Are compilations included? Even if they weren't, the scope of the list seems too broad. You'll see that when the list keeps growing. --Hapsiainen 10:12, 4 June 2005 (UTC)

2 pictures for one album/single, etc.

How would you place two pictures in the album cover box? The new infobox tenplate kind of restricts that.. --Madchester 03:26, 11 June 2005 (UTC)

My suggestion would be placing the original or most commonly used album cover in the infobox, and place the other picture in the article body. Just my 2 cents... :) --Andylkl ^(talk) 06:25, 11 June 2005 (UTC)

You can also combine two pics into one, putting one under the other with Photoshop or some other tool. -- Grue  07:06, 11 June 2005 (UTC)

Corel PhotoPaint it is! --Madchester 06:52, 12 June 2005 (UTC)

What about EPs categorization?

I need to categorize some EPs, but I see we don’t have categories as we do for singles, albumes, greatest hits, etc. I have seen that some website refer to EPs as singles, so I thought it could be possible to cagegorize them just like that, but Ii’m not sure. So... What should I do in these cases? Regards, Luis María Benítez 23:07, 24 June 2005 (UTC)

The trouble with categorising EP's as singles is that currently singles are a subcategory of songs. EP's are generally more like albums than singles in that they do not have one main track and then supporting tracks. EP's are currently covered under albums and are listed as albums in discographies. I think they are often categorised as singles because of their running time - making them eligable for singles charts instead of albums charts. --Moochocoogle 16:58, 25 June 2005 (UTC)

Split an article?

Thanks for the answer. I have published an article about Rokk í Reykjavík, which was a documentary broadcasted on the Icelandic TV by 1982 and later released as a VHS and a double vinyl compilation.

The VHS features short interviews with the musicians and some concerts. The compilation is exactly the same, but with the exception of the interviews. Even further, the covers have slight differences.

So, I was thinking in extending the original article adding the VHS information and its cover. I also have a full list of credits. What do you think? Is it possible to categorize this article as a film and album at the same time or should I split its content into two separate articles? Please, let me know. Kind regards, Luis María Benítez 22:18, 26 June 2005 (UTC)

Tracklisting and times

After my edits to the two Gorillaz albums were reverted, I would like to suggest that the times in the tracklisting for the WikiProject be amened and improved. Please see MCMXC a.D. or the reverted articles in question ([1] and [2]) for the suggested format and the talk page for the reason. --Andylkl ^(talk) 15:18, 28 June 2005 (UTC)

Track listing into Albumbox?

I haven't thoroughtly thought about the pro-s and contras of doing so, but therically the track listing is a technical part of the album, as length, label or chronology. Actually it should be a part of the infobox, because it is important but is not formally an article (or even a part of an article). If there's some additional information to add to the track listing, that should be done in the article with some prosa and avoiding the "listing" form like for example translations of Reise, Reise or descriptions at Strange Little Girls. This would allow to add some information or a summary of the song article, if any.

It should be one column for track number, one for the track song name and one for the length in m:ss or m' s".

First disadvantage: The box may take more space and in articles lacking any actual article (substubs with box) it may look certainly empty. But that could be an extra motivation for editors and fans to add text and facts about the albm, like trivia, cover art descriptions for blind people or extra information about it, album case formats and description, releases, album tour, easter eggs, history, styles... Well all that sort of things that make an album article top class.

Also, I'd maybe remove the reviews from the box, because not all albums have reviews and it's actually not a physical part of the album itself, but rather more or less objective critics about it that, in my opinion, should go in the article (which also would allow quoting comments like it's done in several album articles).

I've seen the template and I don't think it could cause big problems for backwards compatibility.

Well I just wanted to drop this suggestion. I'd be pleased it was taken into consideration and was properly matured and discussed. --KeyStorm 22:10, 15 June 2005 (UTC)

Anyone? So may I add it to the specs? --KeyStorm 22:39, 29 June 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... I'm sympathetic to the idea of removing the reviews section; this should perhaps be discussed separately. But I'm not convinced the track listing should go in the box. The box should place the album historically and seems to do so quite succintly. --Flowerparty 23:43, 29 June 2005(UTC)

An emphatic NO from me. It would clutter up the infobox unnecessarily. Not only that but there are some really long song titles out there (e.g. "Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together In A Cave And Grooving With A Pict") which would likely make the infobox look even worse. The infobox is already getting a bit long in the tooth and adding what could be 50 more lines to it (consider double albums) would really make it unpleasant. --RedWolf 23:51, 29 June 2005 (UTC)

Inclusion of catalog numbers

There has been a discussion about the inculsion of catalog numbers within the album infobox on Talk:Gorillaz (album) and I thought it would maybe be useful to have a general discussion about that here... I personally don't think catalog numbers should be listed in Wikipedia at all, as I don't see what's the use of them in an encyclopedical article, but apparently some poeple do (even though I haven't heard any arguments supporting that, yet). --Fritz S. 15:46, 28 June 2005 (UTC)

I think we should distinguish between original catalogue numbers and current catalogue numbers. The former is purely of historical value (and could, for that matter, go with the original releasing record company, even if it might not be very useful anymore when the company's defunct and/or the original pressing OOP).

The latter, of course, is every bit as relevant as the ISBN number with books, making it easier for the reader to get ahold of the record itself, and I'd be very much in favour of it if there were such a thing as a ISBN-like standard number for records. Trouble is, of course, a record may be released in many different countries by many different record companies under many different catalogue numbers, which leaves us with either a(n unfair) choice to include only a few of the catalogue numbers, or a cumbersome list in each album entry of all known catalogue numbers, some of which may be current and some of which may be OOP. --Curt Woyte 11:58, 29 June 2005 (UTC)

I agree that inclusion of the original catalogue numbers is relevant for historical purposes. For instance, the original numbers for the first issue Beatles or Stones albums. Also, inclusion of those numbers also means that they are undoubtably OOP so that would have to be an oversight in that distinction. I also agree with you that current release info should be included because it could guide the reader to find a copy, and that is where the encyclopedic value comes in because they would have the proper knowledge to find a specific version, as many albums now are coming out available in many distinct variations, such as CD, DualDisc, etc. --Cbing01 21:06, 29 June 2005 (UTC)

The question once you decide to have catalog numbers in the article is, what catalog numbers to include and where in the article. As Cwoyte pointed out, it would be unfair to list only one current number. I think the Gorillaz albums currently list numbers for Japan, the US and the UK, but the albums have basically been released all over the world...

Also, I think these shouldn't be included in the infobox, because there are so many. Maybe we could have a table further down in the article in a section called Catalog numbers? --Fritz S. 09:05, 30 June 2005 (UTC)

Agreed, I have no problem with the inclusion of catalog numbers, I simply think that the infobox is more for quick reference, and that the numbers belong in some other table or section as you describe. --Amigadave 17:27, 30 June 2005 (UTC)

I am beginning to see the points raised by my fellow editors. I think that as some of the Infoboxes (particularly both Gorillaz albums, as stated before) we need to reevaluate what constitutes the "original" release date and label, catalog info. Continuing to use both these albums as examples, I think that the original date would have to be the British one as the primary members are British. Therefore the label and catalog numbers should reflect that release date. This is just my first thoughts and some of the other editors may not agree, so let me (and everyone else know). Thanks, Cbing01 19:42, 1 July 2005 (UTC)

I added a "release" box to the end of the Let It Be... Naked and The Capitol Albums, Volume 1 articles. Let me know some opinions. --Cbing01 20:24, 1 July 2005 (UTC)

I think your release box is great. I would move the Format column before the Catalog number column, but apart from that, it's perfect. --Fritz S. 09:31, 2 July 2005 (UTC)

Please, make any changes you feel would enhance the box. That would be a good move. --Cbing01 17:16, 2 July 2005 (UTC)

Take Penacilin Now

Need a bit of help with this article...namely, is there any way I can get the "chronology" section off the infobox, since it's only a one-off label compilation and thus has neither an "album before" or an "album after"? I can't seem to figure out how to do it. Thanks. --Bearcat 06:39, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

The only way I can figure out to do it, is to go the template page and edit it, copy the table code, paste it in your article and remove the code for the chronology section. You'll have a lot of ugly table code in the article instead of the quite clean template code, but it'll do the work. --Teklund 11:21, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

What about promotional albums?

A band I'm interested in (Rustic Overtones) has released several promotional recordings which weren't ever offered for sale (but, they still exist and can be purchased from eBay). How should they be categorized? What about singles that are only released to radio stations? --Ottergoose 15:00, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Add them under a new category "Promotional recordings", explaining how they were released. --Gika 17:10, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

So, for each page created for the promotional recording, the info box's next/previous titles should be other promotional recordings? That's what I was getting at... --Ottergoose 15:48, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

It's up to you. Some people include even singles and EPs in infoboxes of regular albums. Personally, I would use a separate chronology for promotional recordings, as you suggested. --Gika 18:10, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

EP link in template?

When a CD is described as an "EP" in the infobox, the "EP" is often linked to EP. This no longer redirects to Extended play. Is this link specified in the template, or does the person adding the album infobox specify it? (Sorry for stupid question - not sure I understand how the template works!) --Bobbis 00:59, 5 July 2005 (UTC)

The link is specified by the user. If you still find some wrong links, you can correct [[EP]] to [[Extended play|EP]]. --Gika 18:13, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Lyrics link on the albumbox

Is is possible to add the lyrics link to the albumbox? The way I see it, it is a part of the album and it does not belong in the external links section where misc other info should be placed. Take a look, for example, at the albumbox for Demons and Wizards and how I've formatted it and tell me what you think. --DB0 12:02, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Album infobox

Just asking this here, as this page appears to get a lot more attention than the album infobox talk page itself :)

When using the infobox, is there any way to prevent some of the categories showing up for which I don't have information, or will there always have to be the question marks showing the missing data? --Mallocks 21:40, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Once you have created the infobox in your article from the template, you may remove the items and question marks that you don't have the info for. However, this makes it more difficult to add them later. --Gbeeker 21:21, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

How to deal with bootlegs?

I noticed there are some articles about bootleg albums (such as Nirvana's Outcesticide I) on Wikipedia and I was wondering if we should come up with a new color for the infobox, or just use the same as for official box sets, etc. It might also be useful to create a category for Bootleg albums... --Fritz S. 11:04, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

I have a problem

When publishing articles for albums, or replacing the album info boxes I always find problems because something looks not the way I wanted. For instance: I put the catalogue number of a strange record and it is not displayed on the info box, but you could see it when editing the article! (see this example: Mjötviður Mær)
When I don’t have the image cover, I can’t use the info box because there appear some HTML coding (or whatever) highlighting the missing image (see this example: Live in Reykjavik). I don’t know what I’m doing wrong here or what I should do to correct further mistakes. I have a lot of work which has been deferred for the fear of doing more damage than a good job. I hope there’s someone who could help me out. Regards, Luis María Benítez 20:17, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Your problem is in the use of the template. The current template is very strict and forces you to include a picture; hence the policy which says to include Image:Nocover.gif when you don't have the cover. (See the fixed Live in Reykjavik.) If you don't like this you could copy the code from the Template:Album infobox page and leave out the cover that way, but that's a bit messy. Can you not find a picture anywhere?

Also, the template will only allow you to include the things which it specifies, which explains your trouble with Mjötviður Mær. If you want to include a catalogue number you have to cheat. Instead of,

  Length      = ?? [[minute|min]] ?? [[second|sec]] |
  Label       = [[Eskvimó]] |
  Catalogue number      = ESQ 2 |
  Producer    = ??? |

you need:

  Length      = ?? [[minute|min]] ?? [[second|sec]] |
  Label       = [[Eskvimó]]<small><br/>ESQ 2</small> |
  Producer    = ??? |

...Hope this helps. --Flowerparty ^talk 20:43, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answer. Now I will get back to the move and make all necessary modifications. Kind regards, Luis María Benítez 23:16, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Why Should the Fire Die?

This article needs lots of tender loving care. --leigh (φθόγγος) 19:18, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

I did what I could with it. --Gbeeker 20:30, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

Deletion list

Hi folks,

I just wanted to let you know about a new list of deletion debates related to articles on songs and albums. You can find it here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Songs and albums.

If you find this list useful, please help maintain it by adding new items or archiving old ones. Thanks!

Oh, and please feel free to join WikiProject Deletion sorting. We need all the help we can get.

Cheers,

--Visviva 15:15, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Split EPs/Albums

Is there any available or planned method for dealing with split releases (e.g., Like a Virgin EP by Harkonen/These Arms Are Snakes) in the infobox template? In particular, any suggestions on dealing with the seperate chronologies? Will the additional chronologies have to be added manually? --Rynne 02:43, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Conflicting style conventions

Mel Etitis seems to be working MoS edits on album articles on music album articles that are ultimately in conflict with the guidelines set in place under Wikiproject Albums] criteria [3] Unless there's been a policy change, the current conventions should take precedence for these types of articles. --Madchester 14:19, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

The Template as it stands is out of keeping with the Manual of Style in two respects, but there are a few other problems (MoS and others) concerning the Album-project style:

1. The only problems with the template itself, though admittedly fairly minor, are:
   1. It links the artist name twice.
   2. It capitalises "chronology".
2. The examples (see above) concerning its use include:
   1. Linking months, etc. (what relevance has October, say, to most albums, much less Summer? Most date-year links, such as March 1980 are red-links, and again don't seem relevant).
   2. Two styles of timing are used: one used in the text is fairly standard ("mm:ss"), the one used in the infobox is not ("mm min ss sec") — it not only uses non-standard abbreviations, but unnecesssarily links them. Wikipedia:WikiProject Songs uses the former in the infobox too, which is surely preferable.
   3. A hyphen is used to link dates instead of the en-rule (&&ndash;).

Most problems in articles actually come from people ignoring the Project guidelines, or copying out-of-date versions of the template from other articles, or editing according to music-journalism norms under the (often very strong) impression that they're set out in the Project. Articles on singles are in fact much, much worse, but this is again mostly because editors are working with out-of-date templates and with editing prejudices unrelated to what's in the WikiProject. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:12, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Can't argue with that. I was bold and fixed the "chronology" thing. The double artist link is more difficult. --Flowerparty ^talk 19:51, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey I've read through the albums page, saw you noted "the chronology thing" so perhaps this is a good place to bring it up Flowerparty - I've seen albums and movies listed in both ascending and descending orders (starting either with most recent or least recent) - at least with films, I think makes more sense to start with most recent, but again I've seen articles list them both ways. Is there a "correct" way? (And if you answered that here or elsewhere I apologize but again I can't seem to find the answer. --Barrettmagic 20:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

You're talking about discographies, right? The "chronology" is horizontal, see Template:Album infobox. --Flowerparty ^talk 21:03, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Chart Trajectory

Uh, speaking of things that are fugly, what is with the chart trajectory seen on a lot of album (and song) articles. For an example, see Jagged Little Pill. 1) I'm not even sure if this info is useful to anyone but 2) if it is, there has got to be a better way to display it without screwing up the page width and stuff. At least on my firefox browser, it looks horrible. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 17:07, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Title dispute over album most widely known as Led Zeppelin IV

(Left-to-right: Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, Robert Plant)

Obviously Led Zeppelin IV is not the actual title.

• Some editors contend that the actual title consists of the four symbols depicted in Image:Zoso.svg
• Others believe these symbols (each of which represents a band member) are merely artwork, intended as obscure signatures perhaps, and that the album has no official title.
• If somebody can prove it has no official title (which does not equal "no textually rendered title"), it should be moved to Untitled (Led Zeppelin album).
• But even if we do concur that the intended title of the album is, in fact, , the plot thickens. What would be the most appropriate facsimile title (within wikipedia/unicode technical limitations)? I would suggest Zoso due to the uncanny appearance of the first symbol (that of Jimmy Page) and the fact that "Zoso" has no other possible meaning. But such a transliteration seems likely to offend astrology/magick enthusiasts (who will be happy to inform you that it represents capricorn, saturn, etc., and not letters of the alphabet by any means). However, the other proposed surrogate title, Four Symbols, seems too wtf-ambiguous IMHO.
• It appears that most of the usual sources list it as Led Zeppelin IV, and are therefore of little help. So perhaps this is the best title due simply due to its prevalence of use?
• I figure if no consensus can be reached, the article and its two dozen redirects should be moved to the (willfully unitalicized) "Led Zeppelin's fourth album" with a notice stating that the official title is a matter of dispute.

If somebody else could step in here I'd appreciate it. --Freakofnurture (talk) 11:47, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

P.S. Where is User:Jimmy Page when you need him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freakofnurture (talk • contribs) 11:51, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia policy is to give the best-known or "most recognizable" name, not necessarily the officially correct one. --Wahoofive (talk) 17:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Comment on style

Which looks better, be honest. The infobox for Paranoid or the infobox for Dirt? I think the Paranoid one looks better. --Redwolf24 19:50, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

They look pretty similar to me: both rather unattractive. Perhaps you're referring to the dirt on the project page? --Flowerparty 19:55, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Neither is using the proper album infobox template... And I don't really see any notable difference between the two, either. --Fritz S. 19:58, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. Both are ugly; the latter is cleaner however. --madh 23:41, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Colored Review Listings

I propose this change: how about using colored text with reviews? Such as making their rating text a green, black, or red color corresponding to the review score. Obviously, green being positive, black being neutral, and red being negative. --Sdornan 05:24, 25 April 2005 (UTC)

Who are you that is proposing this? Nevertheless, I vote no to having different colors for reviews, it would be too distracting. --RedWolf 05:57, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a Rotten Tomatoes thing... --Madchester 00:46, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Done well, the different colors would actually look very nice. Better than the infobox colors we have now. --madh 23:46, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Albums listed for deletion at Articles for deletion

• 20 arias de opera (AfD discussion)
• 21 Favorite Arias (AfD discussion)
• Caruso 2000 (AfD discussion)
• Caruso in Love (AfD discussion)
• Caruso in Song (AfD discussion)
• Caruso-A Legendary Performer (AfD discussion)
• Complete Recordings Vol. 7 (AfD discussion)
• Complete Recordings Vol. 9 (AfD discussion)
• Complete Recordings Vol. 11 (AfD discussion)
• Complete Recordings Vol. 12 (AfD discussion)
• Enrico Caruso (album) (AfD discussion)
• Enrico Caruso Vol. II (AfD discussion)
• Enrico Caruso Vol. III (AfD discussion)
• Greatest hits of Enrico Caruso Vol. 2 (AfD discussion)
• His Finest Performances (Caruso) (AfD discussion)
• Memories of Caruso (AfD discussion)
• The Caruso Edition Vol. III (AfD discussion)
• Spotlight on Enrico Caruso (AfD discussion)
• Tenor of the Century (AfD discussion)
• The Complete Caruso Vol. II (AfD discussion)
• The Great Caruso (album) (AfD discussion)
• Verdi Recordings Part. II (AfD discussion)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Uncle G (talk • contribs) 09:54, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Greatest hits

According to the first rule of this page, "Unless there's extenuating circumstances, greatest hits and compilation albums don't need an article." This hasn't really been followed since I put it there a very long time ago, and it irks me because I don't really see how your average greatest hits album could ever be much more than a track listing and a few other details -- I'd rather combine all the greatest hits albums by artist into a single article. Thoughts? --Tuf-Kat 17:53, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree somewhat. But I think if an artist has only one compilation album, it should get an article. If they have several Best of... albums, these can be combined as one article, especially if they follow the same naming scheme (e.g. Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. 1, 2, and 3 might be combined as sections of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits even having been released decades apart). Might an exception be made for a Hits album which also contains a significant amount (3+ tracks, perhaps) of previously unreleased material? --Freakofnurture (talk) 06:39, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

There is a difference between artists who have lots of different greatest hits albums - and those who produce one greatest hits album as a career finale with unreleased tracks, singles etc. The latter should certainly get articles imo. We clearly don't want to have an article on every Marilyn Monroe compilation. --Secretlondon 05:38, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Caruso recordings (various articles) --Wahoofive (talk) 23:27, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

I came upon the page for In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, which seemed to be about both the song and the album. It didn't have an infobox or much about the album, so I split it into In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (song) and In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (album) and added the infobox to the album page. Now I'm sort of having second thoughts though, as to whether the song warrants it's own article, or that information should be part of the album article. Anyone have any input? --Foxmulder 00:55, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

As Iron Butterfly are widely known almost solely for that song (though there are obviously other fans, I have another question: How much information is available in the pages on their other albums? If In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (album) has significantly less/different content than their other album pages, I'd recommend the song and the album pages be merged. That recommendation is based on my interpretation of common sense, not on any particular Wikipedia rules, and I certainly don't have a strong opinion one way or another, but here's another consideration. --134.241.113.30 13:08, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Big Star's first album

The main Big_Star page has no link to any page on #1_Record. Meanwhile, the infobox on Radio_City_(album) links back to the previous album, #1 Record, which, as you can see, looks for the nonexistent "1_Record" section of the Radio City page. There should be an article on the first album -- if only a stub for now -- called "Number_1_Record" or something like that and shown in article text as "#1_Record". I've searched for it before and come up with nothing, and the question I raised on Talk:Big_Star has no definitive answer yet, with one user in agreement with me. Having no experience in this matter I thought I'd come here and ask you all for feedback... or for someone who also likes Big Star and knows Wikipedia in and out to make a stub : | Thanks. --134.241.113.30 13:37, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Chronology section

The Beatles chronology
[[:Image:RubberSoulUK.jpg|50px|Rubber Soul (1965)]] Rubber Soul (1965)	[[:Image:Revolver.jpg|50px|Revolver (1966)]] Revolver (1966)	[[:Image:Pepper's.jpg|50px|Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)]] Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

Would it be possible to have the chronology links as thumbnails of the coverart? Something like (for Revolver by The Beatles): {{{Ifdef{{{Last cover={{{alt}}}}}}}|[[image:{{{Last cover}}}|50px|{{{Last album}}}]]<br>{{{Last album}}}|alt={{{Last album}}}}}

Any thoughts? --Tokle 09:02, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

My thoughts: It would be possible, and feasible even, if we enforced a policy of giving each image of an album cover exactly the same name as the article about the album, the task would be a lot easier. You could set the template up to say...

<center>

[[Image:{{{lastalbum}}}.jpg|50px]]<br>

[[{{{lastalbum}}}]]

</center>

...and then on the Revolver (album) page:

| lastalbum = Rubber Soul |

... but the cover image would have to be Rubber_Soul.jpg. Is there no easy way of retitling images? --Freakofnurture (talk) 09:34, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't think there is an easy way of retitling images. And a proccess like that would be extremely time-consuming anyway.

But with my suggestion you would only need two more parameters; {{{Last cover}}} and {{{Next cover}}}. And adding that line to the template would not, I believe, cause any problems with the existing infoboxes already in use, since if the parameters {{{Last cover}}} or/and {{{Next cover}}} are not present it would just use {{{Last album}}}/{{{Next album}}} in the way it is currently used. In this way we keep the date as well. I am not an expert in writing code, but I recon it might work... --Tokle 13:48, 26 August 2005 (UTC) (my bad. it didn't work. I was not really thinking straight. --Tokle 20:11, 31 August 2005 (UTC) )

I have created the template Template:Album infobox 2 to create the effect described above in the chronology section. --Tokle 10:58, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Centering Album names and such

Untitled

Forgive me if this has already been brought up, but I have been observing that there are inconsistencies in the centering of the album name and the "Album" by "Artist" below the album cover. Some have it centered, while others do not. Is there a way for these things to be automatically centered, because it would be a monumental task to go through the many albums that Wikipedia has and center them all, and I know the rule of thumb is not to use HTML? --Cumbiagermen 22:10, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Album redirect

Discussion is occurring at Talk: Album about Album redirecting to Album (music), at the moment it doesn't. --Commander Keane 18:05, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Moot. All the links are done now, and I plan to put this on my list to be sure new ones don't pop up. -- BD2412 ^talk 19:26, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Album_infobox_2

Template:Album_infobox_2 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at Wikipedia:Templates for deletion#Template:Album_infobox_2. Thank you. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:35, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Dispute — opinions?

I've been trying to tidy articles on albums and singles, working through them in a sort of semi-random, follow-the-links sort of way. I frequently meet with aggression and belligerence from the articles' "owners", but I'm currently involved in one dispute that has wider implications. I've been tidying the Beach Boys' album-articles, and BGC is mass-reverting all my changes (as "vandalous"). The edits involved are mainly in the infoboxes, including unlinking seasons and months, removing duplicate links (such as multiply linked years), and converting hyphens to m-dashes, all in line with the MoS. None of that's controversial — but he's also adding to some of the articles' infobox-chronologies the covers of the various releases (see, for example, [4]). I can't find this anywhere (it's not in this article, for example), and I don't like it (it's fiddly, and adds nothing useful except additional uses of "fair use" images, which we should surely be keeping to a minimum), but is it in fact an official or semi-official part of the WikiProject? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 16:03, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

The addition of album cover pictures in the chronology is MOST helpful in that it gives the dissenting page surfer another way to recognize an album they may be searching for, not knowing the title but the image. They're also very small and are not obstructive at all. They also add to the quality of the pages. Furthermore, all Beatles pages are laid out that way [5] - by someone else - as are other band articles, and as "album infobox 2", clearly if the template exists it must be valid. So I know I'm not the only one who feels that this is a beneficial addition to the album infoboxes. Perhaps THIS page hasn't been updated to incorporate this new format... There is no logical reason to not have them, and "I don't like it" on Mel's part is a poor excuse to delete my work when no consensus has been reached yet. That, to me, is the work of a power trip admin. Wikipedia is an objective forum, not one that caters to personal tastes. Other users should get to decide before someone - who clearly feels they have a monopoly on those pages - engages in ruthless deletions simply because they "don't like it". --BGC 13:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Mel. I just don't see what the album covers add. The template's existence is not proof that it is valid, because anyone can make a template just as easily as they can make an article page. Putting the album covers in the box is legally dodgy under fair use and doesn't help anyone find anything -- I can't imagine anyone would be unable to remember the name of an album but still remember the album cover clearly enough to recognize it in a tiny thumbnail. All it does is make the box bigger and the page take longer to load, even for me with broadband and undoubtedly even more for people with dial-up. --Tuf-Kat 16:15, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I'm on dialup, and the diference in load times can be significant sometimes. It's the fair-use problem that most concerns me, though. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 17:27, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Two reasons to keep the images:

1. because images are cool; and
2. because Mel is on dial-up

--Anittas 23:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Notability Criteria for Songs

I have added my suggestions on this matter on the Wikiproject talk page. As I discuss, applicability of redirecting to albums in all cases is discussed. --Capitalistroadster 09:44, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Remix albums

A question here, should remix albums be considered as compilation albums and be given the darkseagreen infobox colour or should there be another seperate colour for remix albums? --Andylkl ^(talk) 17:00, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Certainly an interesting question. Yeah, off-hand I think it would fall in "other compilations", so that would indeed be darkseagreen. Just from reading the remix albums article, it doesn't seem as if those albums are so commonplace as to have a pressing need for a seperate color/category. --Liontamer 20:55, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Links to reviews

User:BGC has been removing the review excerpts from albumboxes, which link Buy.com or Metacritic as their source. (See this and several other R.E.M. albums. [6], [7], [8], [9]) I've read from the project guidelines that they are OK, if the official source is not available online. BGC thinks that they are pointless. I think that their purpose is just to briefly describe, what kind of reviews an album has recieved. We have been reverting each other several times. I'd like to make sure that people here widely accept the use of Metacritic and Buy.com links. I'd like to hear other opinions and comments to stop this edit warring. There is also discussion about the disagreement in my talk page. BGC removed the discussion from his own talk page very quickly. [10] --Hapsiainen 18:50, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, my talk page is my talk page and I cleaned house to remove old posts. Yours was one of them. And I wouldn't classify something that's been removed a day later "quickly". Secondly, after writing "I don't think you deserve that star!", perhaps taking it out makes you look better. I could easily re-instate it so others can see your aggressive nature if that makes you feel better.

Now to the main issue..... Every Q Magazine reference you've put either has no link whatsoever (as in Green), or leads you to their home page with no mention at all of the albums in question. Therefore - a pointless link. As for your other ones that go straight to buy.com, you're merely reading a one-line excerpt of an entire review - usually the best thing about the album. It does not allow for the other comments that the reviewer may be making (i.e. the negative ones). Secondly, by sending us straight to an CD order site, you are promoting the Buy.com site over amazon or tower. In other words, whether you realize it or not, you are promoting Buy.com on Wikipedia - an information-based site. And for what? One line out of, likely, a multi-paragraphed review? That's why it defeats the purpose and is pointless. --BGC 21:20, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with the links. Ideally, we'd be able to link to every actual review of the albums, but since that isn't possible, we do the next best thing. If amazon or tower had similar reviews, we could link to them as well, but afaik, they don't do that. We link to buy.com because it's a source for the album's rating, and we must cite our sources. I guess I just don't really see the problem here. --Tuf-Kat 23:56, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

We really should avoid linking to e-tailers like buy.com or amazon.com. If possible, Wikipedia should refrain from becoming a co-marketing partner of companies on the Internet. Adding links to ordering sites is basically a free referral (something companies usually pay money for- ad banners, etc). However, reviews do add some interesting information to the infobox and provide a quick way to compare how different work from artists was received. I think reviews should be added if there is a linkable source that is reputable and not an ordering site. That criteria will also naturally limit the number of reviews that are added to the infobox (more than 3 reviews seems excessive and redundant to me). --Chevan 03:41, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

All the links to Q reviews that I added, used to work once. Some of them are still working, but BGC removed them as well. They don't always display properly, though. I took away the links that didn't work.

I think that it is sensible to only use those reviews from Buy.com that have a number of stars, a grade, or something similar, which is impossible to distort. If I have ever added other Buy.com links, it was a mistake. There is also Metacritic, but it has only reviews of rather recent albums. 3 reviews isn't definitely enough. It can't give a reliable overview. If the albumbox grows too large because of many reviews, they have to be moved elsewhere.

This has nothing to do with this disagreement, but I still have to say it. I have noticed an annoying habit: people remove broken review links and reviews without checking, if they are now available behind a different URL. The structure of a website may have changed. I have readded such links, but that was months ago. --Hapsiainen 08:37, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

When someone comes to an encyclopedia looking for information the basic assumption is that they are looking for facts and thoughtful analysis on the significance of the article. Linking to reviews is really a convenience factor. As I mentioned above, although there are benefits to having reviews linked, Wikipedia should not attempt to have an exhaustive linking nor should it participate in marketing for resellers and e-tailers.

Fundamentally, I would say that Wikipedia could actually do without the infobox links to reviews as they are inherently subjective and POV (an album is not inherently good or bad and the general critical consensus may end up being at odds with the actual album sales). It seems better to have someone write good copy about the album and support their assertions with citations to the reviews (but I realize that that is considerably more work that placing a link in the infobox). Also, as User:Hapsiainen mentioned, links to reviews can change if the structure of the destination website changes. --Chevan 14:01, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

External reviews are allowed to be subjective and POV. We link to them to attribute opinions to the people who hold them. Ideally, a brief overview of all the reviews would be in the box with a few paragraphs highlighting the major points from critics in the text. I don't understand why linking to buy.com is different from rollingstone.com -- they're both profiting off the link, yet we include them because they have information that we want to be available for the reader. I can understand your thoughts on getting rid of reviews from the box altogether, though I disagree, but if we're going to have them, we can't just pick and choose the three we like best, or the three that come from companies whose business practices we prefer or whatever. --Tuf-Kat 16:11, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

Your points are well taken. I suppose to me the difference between rollingstone.com is that they receive their revenues from banner ad placements on their freely available content, whereas buy.com receives their revenues from sales of products. As User:BCG pointed out, linking to buy.com is Wikipedia essentially endorsing one sales channel over another (say amazon.com or even yahoo! music). As Wikipedia is a pretty popular site on the Internet, that kind of preferential treatment doesn't seem insignificant to me.

Reviews just seem problematic on so many levels, but I don't think their use is going to go away. My position is to basically limit the source of reviews to those websites that are not a sales channel for the actual album. --Chevan 16:59, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

A sound policy which should extend to the All Music Guide, which is a sales channel that provides an overwhelmingly favorable set of "reviews" for the merchandise it is hawking rather describing in any sort of a detached fashion. --Monicasdude 09:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

Are there any other websites than Buy.com and Metacritic that have a large collection review summaries? If there isn't, linking them isn't preferential treatment. If we are going to abandon the review links because they get broken sometimes, why we have external links at all in Wikipedia? There is no difference.

Buy.com's excerpts are not their own creations unlike the reviews in Allmusic.com. Therefore Buy.com can only manipulate them either by choosing the most positive reviews, or picking the most favourable phrase out of some review and publishing it without a number of stars or a grade. We can get rid of the former bias by finding some other reviews. The later can be avoided by not trusting the mere quoted phrases from Buy.com. --Hapsiainen 14:34, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

My issue is not with the concept of external links, I brought it up only as another reason why reviews are problematic. I went back and reread User:BCG's original post and quite frankly I have to agree with him on all points. Adding reviews that are unlinked or link solely to the site's homepage is directly at odds with the requirement to cite our sources. This only exacerbates the fact that reviews are POV and not factual.

I see a review's value to a Wikipedia article as being a guidepost about how well an album was received and how that perception has stood the test of time. However, I believe it is a convenience and not extremely important when compared to the facts presented in an album's article, because a review is again subjective. Sales figures tell the real story.

My sole concern here is preventing Wikipedia from ending up becoming an unwitting marketing arm of online e-tailers. Online marketers are becoming very smart about how to sell products and this is one of the tactics to differentiate themselves on the web-marketplace. I'm sure I'm becoming redundant now but I believe that if we can't find a source of reviews that are not a sales channel then I think we should remove all reviews completely as I see their value-add being marginal. --Chevan 16:49, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

←Reviews are the most important part, IMO. Sales figures are irrelevant to many people -- the best albums barely sell at all! Unlinked or home-linked sources don't violate Wikipedia:Cite_sources anymore than using print sources that not everyone has access to. I've suggested before not using allmusic, since they virtually never say anything bad about anything, but we can't just stop using websites that try to sell stuff (note that I'd be fine with not using allmusic because of the poor quality of their site and reviews, and not because they sell stuff for profit). If a website has something useful, we should link to it; judging which websites to link to based on our opinions of their business practices is POV. --Tuf-Kat 17:21, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

So it sounds like what we need is a source of reviews that is objective and ideally not a merchant. Deciding not to link to e-tailers is not making a frivolous judgement based on a certain business practice or model (it's not a bias). Wikipedia is a non-commercial endeavour and as such should avoid participating in commerce explicitly or implicitly. Although an album review from a commercial site is interesting it actually "dumbs down" the credibility of Wikipedia because the system essentially becomes a salesman for whatever merchant (allmusic in this case) we link to. As another matter of point, the style guides recommend not linking to merchants.

Also, when you say "the best albums barely sell at all" I'm not sure what you mean and in fact I feel like that is at the heart of the matter. What does "best" mean? If we're saying an album is critically acclaimed then that should be written in the copy about the album and use references to those sources. Linked reviews seem to be an ambiguous signpost on this highway of articles... I think we would be better served without them. Let's do it... "write". --Chevan 18:20, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

For those seeking a website which has multiple reviews of each album, but isn't commercially affiliated with any company - there's rateyourmusic.com. It doesn't have formal reviews or paid reviewers (users sign up for free to submit ratings and reviews), but it doesn't try to sell anything and the most popular albums have hundreds of reviews, cancelling out anomalies. --Jacj 19:15, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

You read the style guide selectively. Notice "unless it applies via a "do" above." I don't understand what you mean by ambiguous signpost. I agree that the reviews in infobox add value remarkably, more than sales charts. Even if you don't get it, don't start removing them.

I appreciate that I can see which magazine writes what, not someone's idea of "general" opinion. People seldom share the same idea of what kind of reviews an album has received. They read different newspapers, remember unreliably etc. It must be really acclaimed newcomer or a well-known classic album, until people have the same impression. --Hapsiainen 19:41, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I was getting a bit flowery with my language.. sorry. What I meant by "ambiguous signpost" is that a critical review is one person or group's subjective take on the value of an album. Whereas sales numbers are a definite and concrete valuation on, at least, the popularity of an album, a review is just a kluge- somebody's opinion on the value of an article. Because of that, I really think people should just cite reviews in the body of the album copy.

You're right about the "do" portion of the style guide, but even then it's listed as "May be ok to add"... not exactly a mandate. Fundamentally, though, I'm solely concerned about maintaining the non-commercial integrity of Wikipedia. --Chevan 21:37, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I've started to think more negatively about the Metacritic and Buy.com links in albumboxes, but I have a new, different reason. When people see such links, they may think that the link leads to the actual review. Then they follow it and become disappointed. Now I am thinking, could the Metacritic and Buy.com links be in the references section. When there would be a link to either of them, one would instead make a link to their anchors in the references. Still, I see a potential problem. People could remove Metacritic and Buy.com links as blatant advertising, unless they were properly informed. --Hapsiainen 21:38, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Discographies - do we have a style?

It would be nice to have an agreed style (or styles as may be necessary) for discographies. The List of discographies leads to a number of pages that suggest we're currently making it up as we go along. Personally I like David Bowie discography but I'd understand that some bands attract people who desire more detail. --bodnotbod 05:08, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

The Manual of Style gives guidance on Standardized appendices, but we are lacking a guide like Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) for bands (or any group of people, for that matter). Personally, I prefer simplicity. --Jkelly 06:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Hyphens

The use of hyphens before track times is odd (nothing's being hyphenated) and looks a bit messy to my eyes. There's no standard on album covers, but a quick survey suggests that the commonest approach is brackets of one sort or another, and the second-commonest a different typeface (especially bold italics). I'd prefer the brackets; any comments? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Hyphens look good to me. A quick survey of whom/what? Other web sites? Absolutely not to bold italics. --RedWolf 05:07, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I think simply putting the time in italics after looks good, no extra characters needed. --Nabber00 05:34, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

A survey of album covers... Why not to bold italics (it's not my choice, but it would still be nice to have a reason; consensus is difficult otherwise). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:04, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I'd probably go along with that (my own first preference is for brackets, which make sense, and is at least a very common if not the commonest way of doing it on albums). But could you not revert articles until we've come to a decision? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:04, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

I have always thought that it is a dash that is written as a hyphen. I have never had problems with it. I think it would potentially awkward-looking to use brackets, because the article may already have the song authors in brackets before the track length. Italics and bold text look like emphasizing the track length more that the song title. So I like the hyphen best. But one could also use an en dash surrounded by full spaces. It is more correct than hyphen. --Hapsiainen 00:28, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to stick with the current standard on the main page until we reach a consensus on a new one here. Isn't that how you said we should do it on another issue? I am requesting that you do not revert anything that uses this standard at this time. If you must, it requires an explaination as to why you are deviating from the standard. Otherwise it is a free for all for everyone to format things as they like while it is in discussion. --Nabber00 02:41, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

DrippingInk spent a good deal of time editing two album articles in good faith; to revert all his (and my) work on the basis of a standard that is under discussion, and which seems likely to change is at best discourteous. I'm unsure of the status of this project page; my understanding was that it's not Wikipedia policy (as is capitalisation in titles) — have I got that wrong? --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:59, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

If it were a dash at all, I'd prefer an em-rule. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:59, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

It must be a dash. From A List Apart: "The em dash (—) is used to indicate a sudden break in thought." and "Some typographers prefer to use an en dash surrounded by full spaces instead of an em dash."

I would use en dash with spaces, because an em dash would glue not very related words together. (However, I admit my cultural bias: I am accustomed to typography, which practically never uses m dashes. "Both European and Anglo saxon typesetters do in fact separate words by close to a full em length in this situation, but the European style is to leave a bit of white space around the (shorter) dash while the Anglo saxon style is to cover the full em length with a correspondingly longer dash instead." [11]) --Hapsiainen 12:28, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

If Nabber00 is going to continue reverting the edits on a couple of album poages, it would be nice if he at least didn't write in his edit summaries that I had given no reasons, in light of the discussion here. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 09:15, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

If it is not an official standard, it is still a de facto standard, since most albums seem to use it. --Nabber00 02:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

Does anyone oppose recommending to use en dashes instead of hyphens in track listing and personnel sections? Please say it in next couple of weeks. Otherwise I'll change the official recommendation. "Use an en dash (–) rather than a hyphen (-) as a dividing horizontal punctuation mark. You can add it by writing &ndash; HTML entity to the edit box. If you think that this is too difficult, you can still use a hyphen and hope that someone is going to change it into a dash. This holds true both in 'Track listing' and 'Personnel' sections." --Hapsiainen 18:17, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

←I think this idea of using an en dash for track times is rather gross. An en dash is used as a substitute for the word "to" when specifying a numeric range (look it up on wikipedia if you don't believe me! ;-) If we must use a dash, an em dash would be typographically correct - however, as others have pointed out, a common practice on album sleeves is to use a different font. This is more elegant as it avoids cluttering the list with unnecessary typography, which looks fussy and distracts the eye from the information. For HTML rendering, I'd vote italics as the easiest to implement and nicest to read—having the track time as italics immediately makes it look like less important info to the eye, you can more easily skim over it unless you are interested. --feline1 16:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Requesting opinions on style

I know I've mentioned this before, but no one responded. So, I'm asking again, I've a suggestion about amending the times listed in the tracklist in this format:

1. (01:23) "Song Title" (John Doe)
2. (12:34) "Song Title 2" (Jane Doe)

I've come across (and started to use it myself) on some album articles using this proposed format. So be the comments in favour or not, I'd appreciate it if anyone here can give some opinions about this style. Regards, Andylkl ^(talk) 12:29, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Isn't the song title more important than its length? So I am against your proposal. --Hapsiainen 12:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Imho, both should be equally important, but the proposal is also based on cutting down clutter and simplifying tracklists. User:6 provided some good points on this idea (see here). Btw, Placing the length before the title doesn't mean altering the importance of either one, where did that idea come from? --Andylkl ^(talk) 13:00, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

If you're concerned about the song lengths lining up properly, you could put them in a table. The song length doesn't look right coming before the title.

1. "Song Title" (John Doe)	(1:23)
2. "Longer Song Title 2" (Jane Doe)	(12:34)

But then again, that has that weird white background, and it would be a big hassle to type out for all track lists, probably. --Dalkaen (talk) 18:12, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

People read English text from left to right. According to your proposal, they would first face the track length before its name. But when people read track listings, they search songs more likely by names than by track lengths. Also, your proposal assumes that the user views Wikipedia pages with a font that has fixed number width. If the font isn't such, the impression of columns is lost. --Hapsiainen 20:16, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Title before length has been the standard form on album covers/tracklistings for about 50 years. There's no good reason for defying that convention. --Monicasdude 23:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

I'll note my agreement with both Hapsiainen and Monicasdude. --Jkelly 23:59, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Just registering my agreement with Hapsiainen and Monicasdude (and so Jkelly). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 18:41, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your feedback. :) --Andylkl ^(talk) 09:49, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it is absurd to put the track times first. It is not the way things are done on album sleeves, for obvious reasons (the track length is a tiny detail that most music listeners are not especially interested in, unless a track is unusually long or short). --feline1 19:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Publisher = Label?

Does the publisher = the label of the CD? --Dangerous-Boy (talk) 18:57, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

no, it does NOT, they are completely different things! The record label owns (or has paid for a license for) the sound recordings on the record. The publishing company owns the (mechanical) copyright on the musical compositions (songs) which have been recorded. --feline1 19:44, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Track Title Format

We need a section that contains general guidelines for a song title format after a discussion about an Avril Lavigne album. I've come up with some guidelines based on this and the CDDB policy.[12] Please discuss the following:

• Track titles should be listed as they appear on the first release of an album unless:
  • They appear in all lower case letters, all capital letters, or there is a discrepency. In this case, an alternate reliable source should be used that does not use that naming convention (ie. an official website). If none exists, standard language rules apply.
• Remember, don't correct a deliberate 'misspelling' by the artist.
• If a track has no title, specify "Unknown" as the track name. If the track has no title, and no audio, specify "Blank" as the track name.

--Nabber00 03:33, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I haven't really followed the specific Avril Lavigne debate, but I think normal capitalization rules should apply except in unusual circumstances. If a song is deliberately all lower-case for example, because the musician chose for it to be that way, then we should follow that. The vast majority of the time, I doubt the musicians/songwriters really care very much themselves, so we should follow ordinary english rules (capitalize first letter of first word, and first letter of all words that aren't prepositions, conjunctions or articles). --Tuf-Kat 21:45, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

That has been discussed on the Avril page a little. The problem arises in determining what the artist wants. How do we know? There needs to be some authoritative source, which I try to outline here. --Nabber00 04:32, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Should the word is be capitalised to Is? It's a verb, but to me it is a minor word in a title! Someone has moved the album God is in the House to God Is in the House and I was wondering if there was a convention. Thanks, Marky1981 22:36, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Internal articles, prepositions and conjunctions are the only words that should not be capitalized in a title. --Gika 23:59, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

That was me. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions#Album titles and band names. --Flowerparty 09:17, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Printing track titles in BLOCK CAPITALS or all lower case is generally a decision taken by the record sleeve designer, an issue of presentation and appealing typography, FOR THAT SPECIFIC PRINTED CONTEXT. It surely not appropriate to continue to use this in a different context such as an encyplopedia article. (Would we also print an artist's name in block captials becuase they were listed on an album sleeve note that way?) The only exceptions I can think of would be where there is a particular artistic point or meaning involved in that particular spelling/typography. I had (and lost) this argument, for example, with the band Neu!, for whom I argued their block capitals and exclamation mark "NEU!" was a deliberate Pop Art device, and important to reproduce, but others disagreed. The compromise was to use conventional typography but to add an explanatory note to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Feline1 (talk • contribs) 19:50, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Dividing Side A/B Tracklistings

Should the tracklistings of albums which were originally released on vinyl or cassette tape be split halfway down the list to indicate which songs were on Side A/B? There are many records where the fact that a song ends Side A or begins Side B is a noteworthy aspect of the release - something which is often lost with newer CD versions. --Burn the asylum 18:44, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I would say that if it is notable, mention it in the article. But I vote to not split up track listings for A/B sides. --Cholmes75 16:53, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I consider album sides to be an important aspect of the track listing. Album sides represent the way in which an original work of art was first released, and in many cases the juxtaposition of the side one/two split is as important as the track order. Abbey Road is an excellent example. And even if not specifically intended by the artist, the split was most certainly an integral part of the listening experience due to the effort required to manually flip the record, and the pause experienced in listening. In that way, the side one/two split can be considered along the same lines as acts of a play or opera. Of course, this juxtaposition has been largely lost in the CD age, including on vinyl albums that have been subsequently re-released on CD (although a number of CD-only albums make an explicit effort to divide the album into artificial "sides"). However, for albums released before the CD age, the inclusion of sides in a track listing is consistent with Wikipedia's encyclopedic nature — if a reader wants to merely find out a track listing, this can be gleaned easily from the album's Amazon listing, but the division of sides (an important historical and often creative component of the album) can be more obscure and is thus a valuable addition to an encyclopedic entry. --Bjhtn 04:54, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Unreleased Sessions

Is there any policy about unreleased sessions? I've come across this issue a couple of times, and it might make sense to have some stance about this. In particular, I've come across this issue with Dave Matthews Band's Lillywhite Sessions and a panoply of Ryan Adams' albums (The Sweden Sessions, 48 Hours, Destroyer, and The Suicide Handbook). I'm sure there are more out there and there will certainly be more in the future (if any major artist abandons a session, it will surely make its way onto the Wikipedia). --Weebot 05:44, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Discographies?

Also posted at Wikipedia talk:Guide to layout:

Can we get a consensus on discography formatting. The general standard way to do it in the past was to simply list the albums, the year of release ,and possibly a chart oposition or two. But now, we have articles like Mariah Carey albums discography and 50 Cent which seem intent on including album cover artwork, and multiple facts about the album. Such a system is image-heavy and slow loading ,and can also very quickly take over ap age for any act with more than four or five albums. It also only works if you find album cover artwork for each and every album (which may not always even exist). What should be done about this? --FuriousFreddy 20:31, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

I just went over this at Talk:The White Stripes. --Jkelly 00:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Putting it on the Project frontpage might be a good idea, though. Give it more of a stamp of approval.

Also, a minor suggestion: Sometime in the future they're might want to be an outline for artist pages (if that falls under the auspices of this Project) a la the article body for albums. I'm not sure if the breaking down of artists simply into their history is that great an idea, as it makes for lengthy articles and the bio tends short-change or assimilate other relevent information, like, say...how influential the artist/band is and where they fit into certain cultural trends. Just a thought. --Weebot 01:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

PS I found this, and it might help: Wikipedia:Filmographies and Discographies --Weebot 01:54, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Weebot, thanks for finding that. --Jkelly 02:40, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

The lack of discography guidelines in this WikiProject created a myriad of designs and formats for each article. My personal opinion is that if it doesn't impede the main article in any way (album covers are a different matter altogether), it's alright with me. I'd prefer having album covers on it if it's possible though, but consistency is the keyword. --Andylkl ^(talk) 06:48, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think it was a lack, so much as having them buried somewhere in the FAQ. I updated the project page with the link now. In any case, I maintain that album covers in the discographies are a bad idea. Both because it encourages displays of layout skills that turn encyclopedia articles into marketing brochures and because of Fair use concerns (see Template:Fair use and Template:Album cover. --Jkelly 07:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Including album covers become a problem when an act has more than, say, five albums to their name. You end up with long listy articles. I agree with the "marketing brochures" thing: it seems only fans format discographies that way, in tribute to their favorite musciians (something we're not supposed to be doing here). --FuriousFreddy 16:04, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

I Might Be Wrong, among others

Just curious, what do we categorize Live EPs as in regards to their infobox color? EPs or Live albums? --Weebot 01:14, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

I guess it could go either way, but I'd give them the "live" infobox — my reasoning being that since we assume "album" to mean "studio album" unless specified otherwise (with the "live" infobox), we should likewise assume "EP" to mean "studio EP" unless specified otherwise. --keepsleeping say what 01:29, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

alright, then..for clarity, would there be any objecttions to me chaning the style manual to say "Live albums" to "Live albums and EPs" for the color-coding? --Weebot 02:04, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Good point. And I wouldn't object at all if it read "Live albums and live EPs". --Jkelly 02:36, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Madchester, do you have any objections to this? --Weebot 06:48, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Why do you consider I Might Be Wrong a live EP? It's 44 minutes (Pablo Honey is 42) and 8 tracks long, which more than qualifies for being a live album. --Jiy (talk) 21:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

First, the time is wrong (I just fixed it). That time was carried over from the Amnesiac infobox, so Pablo Honey is still longer. Second, Radiohead releases large EPs anyway...My Iron Lung has the same amount of tracks, and Comlag is nearly as long as I Might Be Wrong (as a point of comparison, both Comlag and IMBW are longer than either Strokes album). Thirdly, it has been refered to as such by others. It's debatable, yes, but the scant track listing and Radiohead's history of releasing long EPs would square this away with those rather than as a full album, in my opinion. --Weebot 08:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

"I Might Be Wrong" was billed as an EP by the distribution company, it carried an EP pricetag. --Tokle 13:58, 22 October 2005 (UTC)