Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 17

message: Discussions continue at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content.  A current discussion is going on regarding the addition of the following to WP:NONFREE policy under the heading "Examples of unacceptable use":
:"A CD cover, album cover, or boom [sic] cover used to illustrate an article about the CD, album, or book, when the article does not justify this by reference to attributes of the cover art. The mere fact that a picture has been placed on the cover of an album to sell it is not enough.
Supporters of this statement feel they are simply clarifying policy, detractors feel that they misinterpret policy [disclaimer, I'm a detractor].  The argument seems to depend upon what one deems to be a "significant contribution" of an image to an article.  If you have an opinion and have yet to join the discussion, you may want to take a look. -MrFizyx 16:16, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Update. Debate on when policy should or should not allow the use of Album images is continuing at WT:FREE.  One proposal is that covers should be allowed for identification only in the context of critical commentary of that item (the underlying album), not for identification without critical commentary, together with the strong recommendation that "If the artist, design company or photographer that created or designed the image is known, they should be clearly indicated in the article; if the image has a particular relevance to the underlying work, this should also be discussed"; but without such discussion being an absolute mandatory requirement.
Others still want to go further, and prohibit "A CD cover, album cover, or boom cover used to illustrate an article about the CD, album, or book, when the article does not justify this by reference to attributes of the cover art".  Debate is continuing.
=== Special explanations advisable for Album cover images larger than 300 x 300 ===
Either way, on a different aspect of this issue, both by the law and by the policy, cover images must be of a resolution no greater than the minimum necessary to achieve the purpose for which fair use is claimed.   WP convention puts this at about 300 x 300 for album covers used in infoboxes.
But there are a lot of album cover images out there that are larger than this.  It is likely that sooner or later, someone will make a sweep through the album cover images category to find all images larger than 300 x 300, and, perhaps, automatically replace them with smaller ones.
If there is a particular reason for a particular album cover that an image of only 300 x 300 will not do the job, it is strongly advisable that someone adds an explanation of this onto the image's media page, to say why it should not be automatically replaced with a smaller one.   For example, :Image:Beatles_-_Abbey_Road.jpg might justify a larger image, to illustrate Paul's bare feet and other details specifically commented on at Paul is dead.  The fair use rationale needs to explain this: "Exceptionally, an image larger than 300 x 300 is appropriate because..."
Sorry for all this legal crap, but it is something we have to deal with, and some people have got a real bee in their bonnets about.  From our side, we need to just make it go away, with as little collateral damage as possible.  Jheald 08:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I'm sorry, but I fail to see where a guideline actually specifically mentions 300px. You've said it's wp convention, but I can't find any Wiki reference to the fact. As to the legalities, they vary based on the country of origin. In the UK, the Fair Use laws are different and here in Australia also are very different. In the USA they're the toughest of all, but here in Aus, they're pretty simple and lax, in the UK they're tougher and so in accordance, the items released from Australia have looser requirements to be referenced. I'm not saying this to contravene or dodge the Wikipolicies, but am simply saying that the actual laws really don't have a lot to do with it, as long as it passes general internet copyright procedures, and I don't know a country in the world that has copyright and fair use laws as strict as those here on Wikipedia. As I pointed out on the tag for the cover of Chasing Mississippi, if you were to actually print something at 600px², you'd end up with an image less than 4cm² (2'²), which is tiny, (just) less than a third of standard printing size, and the proposal of 300² would mean that were one to print it, it'd exactly an inch (that is, 300DPi is standard commercial printing definition). Now the purpose of Fair Use is to provide that something cannot be replicated in such a way as to take from the artist/copyright holder's capacity to earn from it, in short. If I'm printing something at that size, there's no way loss or damage could be attributed on account of its quality, because even though on a computer monitor it shows rather large, their printing ability is terribly lower than the resolution of a regular album, and less still than a Record cover. --lincalinca 09:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I think for ones more than 300px we might consider making a second image copped just showing Paul's feet. It would work better in the article anyway. Secretlondon 17:16, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage of Non-free album covers 

message: Either way, on a different aspect of this issue, both by the law and by the policy, cover images must be of a resolution no greater than the minimum necessary to achieve the purpose for which fair use is claimed.   WP convention puts this at about 300 x 300 for album covers used in infoboxes.
But there are a lot of album cover images out there that are larger than this.  It is likely that sooner or later, someone will make a sweep through the album cover images category to find all images larger than 300 x 300, and, perhaps, automatically replace them with smaller ones.
If there is a particular reason for a particular album cover that an image of only 300 x 300 will not do the job, it is strongly advisable that someone adds an explanation of this onto the image's media page, to say why it should not be automatically replaced with a smaller one.   For example, :Image:Beatles_-_Abbey_Road.jpg might justify a larger image, to illustrate Paul's bare feet and other details specifically commented on at Paul is dead.  The fair use rationale needs to explain this: "Exceptionally, an image larger than 300 x 300 is appropriate because..."
Sorry for all this legal crap, but it is something we have to deal with, and some people have got a real bee in their bonnets about.  From our side, we need to just make it go away, with as little collateral damage as possible.  Jheald 08:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sorry, but I fail to see where a guideline actually specifically mentions 300px. You've said it's wp convention, but I can't find any Wiki reference to the fact. As to the legalities, they vary based on the country of origin. In the UK, the Fair Use laws are different and here in Australia also are very different. In the USA they're the toughest of all, but here in Aus, they're pretty simple and lax, in the UK they're tougher and so in accordance, the items released from Australia have looser requirements to be referenced. I'm not saying this to contravene or dodge the Wikipolicies, but am simply saying that the actual laws really don't have a lot to do with it, as long as it passes general internet copyright procedures, and I don't know a country in the world that has copyright and fair use laws as strict as those here on Wikipedia. As I pointed out on the tag for the cover of Chasing Mississippi, if you were to actually print something at 600px², you'd end up with an image less than 4cm² (2'²), which is tiny, (just) less than a third of standard printing size, and the proposal of 300² would mean that were one to print it, it'd exactly an inch (that is, 300DPi is standard commercial printing definition). Now the purpose of Fair Use is to provide that something cannot be replicated in such a way as to take from the artist/copyright holder's capacity to earn from it, in short. If I'm printing something at that size, there's no way loss or damage could be attributed on account of its quality, because even though on a computer monitor it shows rather large, their printing ability is terribly lower than the resolution of a regular album, and less still than a Record cover. --lincalinca 09:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I think for ones more than 300px we might consider making a second image copped just showing Paul's feet. It would work better in the article anyway. Secretlondon 17:16, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Special explanations advisable for Album cover images larger than 300 x 300 

message: Prompted by this change, I think we should have a guideline for how to delimit (and capitalize) genres. Commas and  are commonly used as delimiters, slashes more seldom, and now asterisks. For consistency with existing articles, I think we should pick one of the two most common delimiters, commas or . Related to this issue is the fact that most genres shouldn't be capitalized, per WP:MUSTARD#Capitalization, which is a common mistake. I propose we choose commas, because that makes the capitalization more obvious, and is consistent with Template:Infobox musical artist. Therefore I propose we change this text:
:;Genre: One or more music genres, for example, "Rock" should link to Rock music, "Alternative" should link to Alternative rock, "Punk" to Punk rock, and so on.''
to this:
:;Genre: One or more music genres, delimited by commas. Genres should be linked (piped linked where needed), for example, "Rock, pop" should link to rock music and pop music respectively. Note that most genres aren't proper nouns, and shouldn't be capitalized, but the first genre in the list should be. ''
It's a bit of a repetition from WP:ALBUM#Disambiguating links, but I think that is warranted. Any objections? --PEJL 20:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Commas should be fine: more line breaks just make the infobox unnecessarily tall. Also, there should really be as few HTML tags as possible. –Unint 21:24, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I second the use of commas... vertical lists just look bad when the rest of the entries in infoboxes aren't separated the same way. The change looks good to me. ~Gertlex 15:30, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Done. Thanks for the feedback. --PEJL 23:01, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Delimiting genres 

message: I am unsure if this has been discussed here recently. Is there a particular reason that the endash is used to divide the track name from the track length? This may be an idiosyncratic use of an endash; usually an emdash would be used for this sort of function—see, for example, WP:LIST#Definition lists. I bring this up here because there are now discussions under way at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Hyphens and dashes in the MoS to replace some dash guidelines with this draft. --Paul Erik 16:26, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Disclaimer, I've only glanced at the new guideline and not looked at the discussion. What would be the alternative to using spaced en dashes as we do now? Unspaced em dashes? The proposed new guideline seems to disallow spaced em dashes, which are acceptable in the existing guideline, so that wouldn't be an option. Spaced en dashes seem to be an acceptable alternative to em dashes in both the old and new guidelines. --PEJL 16:55, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: The guidelines have been updated, and they now explicitly say to use spaced en dashes in track listing and credits sections of album articles. --PEJL 13:11, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The endash in the track listing 

message: Hi,
Is it customary to have a nav box for between songs on the same album. Specifically, I'm talking about this TFD for Template:Mutter. --ChoChoPK (球球PK) (talk | contrib) 10:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No.  There's the artist temp box already, for released singles.  A temp box for a specific album is not needed, as unreleased singles usually do not have their own page anyway. —  « <FONT COLOR="#ffa500">h</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ffa000">i</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff9900">p</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff9300">p</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff8c00">i</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff7f00"> </FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff7000">i</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff6200">p</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff5300">p</FONT><FONT COLOR="#ff4500">i</FONT> » 10:45, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

text: For what it's worth - here are two examples that I have noticed: Blackbird (song) & Charlie (song).  It's not common, but when there's an article for just about every song on an album, it seems to be a good idea.  Putting the info in the infobox look better than a template at the bottom of the article, in my opinion.--Fisherjs 12:55, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Help requested 

message: I've noticed recently that Sputnikmusic has been placed on wiki's list of non-professional review sources, with the description: "As a matter of policy, reviews from these review sources are not considered professional, and should not be included in album infoboxes."
Rather than make any unilateral changes, as an editor at Sputnikmusic I'd ask you to reconsider this position, as Sputnikmusic's staff review section is recognised as a professional source by a number of media outlets, bands and record labels, who've cited and reposted our reviews on their sites and in literature. Reviews are also tallied by Metacritic, who draw from the staff list exclusively.
We would be happy to assist in removing any non-staff reviews which are cited as professional in other articles, as it has never been our policy to include them thus, but we'd urge you to reconsider. Perhaps Sputnikmusic could be included on the professional listing with a disclaimer urging contributors to verify that it's written by a staff member ("STAFF" will appear beside the authors given name on the page).
Anylayman 22:58, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry about that, I didn't recognize the distinction between Sputnikmusic's staff and non-staff reviews. It seems very reasonable to include the staff reviews among the professional reviews. I'll update the non-professional list to only exclude non-staff reviews. --PEJL 23:28, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I had already removed about 70 Sputnikmusic review links before this was brought up, of which I've now restored the ones which were staff reviews (only about 30), a sign that we need to keep an eye out for non-staff reviews being added in the future. --PEJL 19:27, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Is there a quick way of making the distinction between the two? Like, other than physically going in? (like based on the link to the review) I am a member of Sputnik and have left my 2 cents there a few times, and have never seen anything that at a glance appears to be anything different from anything else (maybe I've been looking at the wrong reviews). --lincalinca 06:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Not AFAICT. --PEJL 16:21, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The only indicator right now is that the author's name has "STAFF" written beside it and is catalogued under the staff section of the site. I can make enquiries about a separate url structure however. Anylayman 07:39, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sputnikmusic's placing on non-professional list 

message: Should distributing label be included in Labels line in an album's infobox? Daniil Maslyuk 07:55, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:ALBUM#Details says that only the original label should be included. Does that answer your question? (I don't know exactly what you mean by distributing label.) --PEJL 19:31, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't do it. For any given album that's distributed all over the world there would be far too many such labels. –Unint 02:14, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Can I get you to clarify your question? If I understand what you're saying, some artists are distributed by different companies internationally (such as Jive Zomba being distributed here in Australia by BMG until they merged with Sony) or do you mean where an album has several labels attached (such as Room for Squares having Aware records, Columbia Records and Sony BMG all attached, because they're all participant in its creation etc)? In that case, I'd do the latter, but not the former. Generally, I'd just attach anybody who's (a) in the article AND (b) actually funded the album and done initial local distribution. --lincalinca 06:24, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Labels 

message: Please see this article which contains dummy statements at the top of the "Track listing", "Credits" and "Chart positions" sections, whose only purpose is to hang references on. That seems suboptimal. Firstly, do we need to source these pieces of information? I ask because I looked at some FA album articles, and only some do this, and then only for some of these sections. Assuming we do, is there a better way to do this? Hanging the references on the headings doesn't work well. For tables the references can be attached to one of the table headers, such as the "Position" header in that example, or to individual table cells, but that won't work for lists. Thoughts? --PEJL 00:04, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Any FA article that doesn't would not be there I's day because other references throughout the page would provide the information, because this information itself is doubtlessly some of the most importance information to be included on the page/in the article of all. --lincalinca 06:09, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sourcing lists (specifically track listings and credits) 

message: ::If the David Byrne album is clearly more likely to be searched, it should not be retitled. There should be an  template leading to a Uh-oh (disambiguation) page. I'm not a fan of Byrne so please don't expect me to be biased toward him — I just think that album is more likely to be looked up.
::This has been discussed before, and is consistent with disambiguation precedents. Several (I think 3) albums are entitled "Rush", but Rush (album) goes to the Rush debut, with a dab. / edgarde 23:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Disambiguate where necessary is the general rule, but the David Byrne album is one of his least successful releases. Another thing to note is that his page has the redirect tag and it goes to uh-oh (expression) which server to explain the expression and act as a disambiguation page, which is not good enough. The disambiguation page should be the base page (uh-oh) and the others should all stem from that. It's just common sense. --lincalinca 01:18, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Byrne album should not be retitled

message: Please refer to my comments on the discussion page of Sittin' on Top of the World.  Ikeshut 03:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sittin' on Top of the World

message: I've made quite a few changes and tidied everything up quite a bit.  All of the assessment related stuff is now at WP:ALBUMA.  I've also nominated this page for deletion, as it is missing loads of assessments, there is already a bot-managed assessment archive and the results of assessments are shown on the project banner on the article talk page.  Does anything else need to be done? Papa November 1 11:54, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessments 

message: Can someone confirm for me this is the right thing to do? No one's responding to the suggestion I left on Talk:ABBA, but the  template I left was quickly deleted, so I'm a little creeped about making this change. I would actually affect about 10 articles.
Relevant rules: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks), Wikipedia:Manual of Style (capital letters)
Trademarks should be written in a way that follows standard English text formatting and capitalization rules. If this isn't an acronym (and no one calls this group Ay bee bee ay), this needs to be changed in titles and and articles. / edgarde 17:47, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: But the article says that the group name ABBA is an acronym formed from the first letters of each group member's name: Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid (Frida). Jogers (talk) 18:01, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Even so derived, it appears to be a name, not an acronym. / edgarde 18:08, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It doesn't need to be pronounced ay bee bee ay to be an acronym. See NASA and NATO. --Fritz S. (Talk) 18:18, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Why on earth would you want to lose a perfectly good article name ("ABBA") and replace it with something unnatural and unweildy ("Abba (band)"). If it ain't broke, don't fix it - and imho it ain't broke! --kingboyk 22:00, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

text: It's probably best to just remove the tags, unless anyone has any better ideas. Escape Artist Swyer | Talk to me | Articles touched by my noodly appendage 09:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moving [[ABBA]] to ''Abba (band)'', per [[WP:MOS]] 

message: In my editing I ran across The Very Best of Rod Stewart which needs quite a bit of clean-up.  What I want to know is should this just be one article? The article actually discusses three albums - that is three seperate physical packagings.  Technically, The Story So Far:... was realeased in the UK as one double-album.  The other two albums were released seperatly as Vol.1 & 2 and only in the US. However it's not just a split double-album.  There are songs on the US discs that are not on the UK double and vice versa.So my question is should this be one, two, or three articles?  I was hoping that someone more experienced than myself could help me with this and possibly provided examples of how this has been handled in other cases. (Sampm 04:35, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Most Beatles and Stones albums in the 60s had different track listings for the US and UK - they are always discussed in the one article so you could have a look at them. For a more recent compilation example there is The Singles Collection (David Bowie album)‎ - though it's very basic. Cheers, Ian Rose 08:26, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  How should this be handled? 

message: Now that the assessments page is up to date and I have received no negative comments, should we start to implement the A class?  Personally, I think it is a fairly useless classification as the guidelines for assessment seem like a vague intermediate point between GA and FA.  If we decide to use it, can we decide on some project specific rules for articles to put on WP:ALBUMA?  How about something like:
An A-class article must:
* Have passed the GA review procedure and meet all B-class criteria
* Completely describe the album, including all relevant sections from the following:
** Background and history (may be separate sections)
** Significance
** Recording, production and marketing (may be separate sections)
** Musical style and lyrics (may be separate sections)
** Critical reception and aftermath (may be separate sections)
** Artwork (may be separate sections)
** Chart performance
** Accolades
** Singles
** Any other notable information relevant to the album
* Be of an appropriate length
* Be well written
* Have a well written lead section
* Be fully referenced, with all references as footnotes in the correct format
* Have no copyright problems.  All non-free media files must have proper fair use rationale
Any suggestions? - Papa November 1 00:17, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It is rather useless, considering that it's not essential to be a GA to be awarded A class, which I find bizaare. Anyway, your list is good and comprehensive, but I can't help but feel there's something else that should be there. --lincalinca 10:56, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Is this based on any actual articles? Can we see what an article which meets those criteria looks like? Looks a bit overloaded to me, and some very fine Featured Articles don't cover all that. --kingboyk 16:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Please add to that list: "Should describe the contents of the inlay(s), in particular whether the lyrics are included in the inlay". Gronky 14:48, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Trivia imho. --kingboyk 16:53, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: FYI, this suggestion emanates from Template talk:Infobox Album#Can inlay info be added? Such as lyrics. --PEJL 17:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. With so many pressings around the world, I personally think such information is trivia unless there is something extraordinary to mention (the typeface of 1987's cover, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band's printed lyrics - apparently a first in the UK, and so on). Looks like you agree? --kingboyk 17:22, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I do (although my response over at Template talk:Infobox Album was specifically about including it in the infobox). --PEJL 18:03, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text: The list is based on sections found more than once in the current featured album articles.  I said "relevant sections" as it is not intended to be definitive.  There's probably a better way of specifying it, if anyone has any suggestions! Papa November 1 15:43, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  A class review 

message: I asked, and Alai delivered.  Updated lists can be found at User:Alai/wonkyalbum and the whole lot transcluded at User:Alai/wonkyalbumall.  If you're interested, help to whittle these down. Unless you are busy, of course, working on the current collaboration. --Fisherjs 10:53, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Update on tagged album articles 

message: One user is taking it upon himself to continually edit a stub album I created, Manos (album), adding a template to say that it requires sources.  My reading of WP:V suggests that only material likely to be challenged requires references.  How is a track listing such as an album stub likely to be challenged? I have no idea why he has taken it upon himself to continually do this to one stub album.
Do I need references? If so, WHAT? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Generica (talk • contribs) 
:See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 17#Sourcing lists (specifically track listings and credits). --PEJL 09:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hardly seems canonical though. Is this documented wikipedia policy? I mean, I can understand needing this to get FA status, but for a stub, seems over over overkill --Generica 09:24, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's a bit of overkill, but then again, it's likely to be challenged if it can't be sourced. It's almost silly to say that something doesn't need a source if it won't be challenged. Heck, people argue that the world is flat. We use documented sources to confirm even the finer, generally undisputed facts. --lincalinca 04:06, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stubs requiring sources? 

message: I've been fixing the links to Pitchfork reviews (they changed their URLs again?!?), deleting the star rating templates for reviews from sites that don't use a star rating system and adding the new Review-Christgau template where applicable. While I've been at it, I've noticed that quite a few of the Rolling Stone links point to a URL that has the text of the review, but doesn't indicate their star rating. Oddly, I've found that there's usually another page with the same text that does include the star rating. For example,  says "NO STARS", but  says . What to do, what to do? I could replace the "NO STARS" URL with the URL that includes the star ratings, but if they're in the middle of re-doing their URLs, this extra work may be a waste of time. Any thoughts/suggestions? --Sanfranman59 18:21, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It sounds like a glitch in their system. Perhaps you could contact Rolling Stone and ask them if this is intentional. While we're on this subject, some articles actually list the reviews as "Rolling Stone (no stars) link". I don't think this is appropriate, as we have a guideline for what to do for reviews without ratings (use a descriptive word or nothing), and because saying "no stars" may give the impression that the album was given zero stars, which I assume is not what they meant. --PEJL 18:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to contact them, but their "Contact us" page doesn't really have a link for questions about the web site. I'll just pick one of the others and see what happens. I agree with your point about "no stars". When I come across this, I'll remove that text. --Sanfranman59 19:13, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I've emailed RS. Assuming I get a response, I'll post it here. --Sanfranman59 19:32, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Don't forget that for some album reviews at RS the star rating is a "user rating", not the professional reviewer's rating. I don't think we should use a user rating. Cheers, Ian Rose 22:11, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Ian. Yes, I'm aware of that. The example I gave above refers to the RS rating. Both pages have the user rating, but only one has the RS rating. --Sanfranman59 23:44, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text: No response from RS so far. I'm not terribly surprised. Since they have the text of the review, I think I'll leave these links alone for now in the hope that RS fixes the problem at some point. --Sanfranman59 17:03, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Rolling Stone review links 

message: The guidelines at WP:ALBUM#Professional reviews say to sort the professional reviews alphabetically. It is unclear what that means for personal names like Robert Christgau and Piero Scaruffi. These are sometimes sorted by the first name and sometimes by the last. I can see arguments for both methods. Sorting by last name is the obvious way to sort personal names. On the other hand sorting by the first name brings greater consistency with the other review sources (which are in a majority) and is in my experience more common (leading one to assume that editors in general consider it to be the more obvious method). I'd like to standardize this as well, and am fine with either method being chosen. --PEJL 17:16, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been sorting on first. I'm not sure why. / edgarde 17:22, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Both methods make sense but I always sorted them by first names without even realizing the issue. Jogers (talk) 09:53, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's just decide to sort them by first name then. --PEJL 14:46, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

text: After probably going through a similar internal deliberative process as others, I've sorted by first name because that's the way the names are displayed. It didn't look right to me sorting Christgau's reviews as a C when the name is displayed as Robert Christgau. --Sanfranman59 17:07, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just realized that we have a similar sorting inconsistency with review source names like The Guardian as well. --PEJL 22:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Professional reviews sorting 

message: The text in the template says: "an attempt at building a useful resource", shouldn't it be "an useful"? Guirro 00:05, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Nope. "Useful" phonetically starts with a 'y' sound - "yoos-full" - so it gets "a" and not "an". (ESkog)(Talk) 00:06, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For this same reason, we should not say "an hospital," but should be "a hospital" though this seems to be fought at times. --lincalinca 09:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in template 

message: I've just updated the List4. Jogers (talk) 18:23, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've also added a list of album pages which titles contain an opening parenthesis without a space before it as requested by Fisherjs. If anybody knows how to make a regex that would allow me to make a list of titles that have an open parenthesis but not a closing one I could create this one as well. Jogers (talk) 19:24, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: \([^)]*$ --PEJL 19:34, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. They were only three of them. Jogers (talk) 19:52, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maintenance list update notice 

message: In reference to the details, it is said that Released "Should refer to the earliest known date." now If there are a couple release dates for different countries, can we list those other dates as long as it doesn't get too cluttered? -- Reaper  X 02:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I tend to list about 1-4 depending, but any more than that it should be a table on the page. If the info's just laid crappily on the page, and you an't be bothered making the table yourself, just chuch a  tag in there. --lincalinca 03:04, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It should refer to only the earliest date. There was some discussion about changing that guideline a while back, but no change was made. A table is a useful way to display multiple dates, which has the added benefit that it can also contain information about labels, formats and catalog numbers. See for example Kid A. --PEJL 03:57, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Release dates

message: I was just looking over the chronology section to try and figure out how to order many of the jazz albums I intend to enter into the encyclopedia. In jazz, unlike many other genres, recording dates are often as or more important than release dates. I want to know if the normal way of going about this entails going by release date or recording date. For instance, some albums like Hank Mobley's Another Workout was recorded years ago and not released until decades later. What is one to do in this kind of instance? Thanks. (Mind meal 09:06, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since one album may have several recording dates, including dates that span those of other albums, chronology can only be consistent if release date is used. Obviously recording dates should still be included in the article, if known. / edgarde 09:12, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you. P.S. - I am severely addicted to this place. Just when you think you've bored yourself silly applying yourself to one task, something else comes up. Albums sound fun. (Mind meal 09:18, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As well as dates, another issue to bear in mind with jazz albums is that many released before the mid-1950s were often repackaged compilations of material, some of which were tracks previously issued on 10" discs (typically three 10" discs worth of stuff spread over two 12") and some of which were left-overs from the recording sessions – as also happened with re-issues of albums on CDs.  I think the 1949 Charlie Parker album on Dial ('The Bird Blows the Blues') was the first 33⅓ 12" jazz album; at the time 12" format was considered something for the classical market and 78 rpm and 10" EP was dominant for jazz. Gradually the small labels, like Blue Note, made the switch and merged and re-released their 10" catalogue in 12" LP format. The long-play album, containing music intentionally created to be grouped together as a commercial release, is more a thing of the late 1950s and into the 1960s, e.g. Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, or especially his and Gil Evans' Miles Ahead. Ricadus 17:29, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The short version is to include the recording date and the release date autonomously in the infobox and make mention within the article of the difference or subsequent releases of the work. --lincalinca 06:40, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Chronology

message: Hello there. I just created a few categories, and intend to expand them. An example is my creation of :Category:Hard bop albums, which I have made so it appears in the :Category:Hard-bop musicians also, for further circulation. My question is how, if possible, one can make the name of the artist appear with the album title in these sections? Is there an easier way? I do not want to place :Category:John Coltrane albums in the hard bop album category, because not all albums by Coltrane are hard bop. See the problem? Any help would be great. (Mind meal 03:01, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: When artists deviate from their regular spectrum of music, then you categorise album for album. For instance, :Category:John Coltrane albums should be included in :Category:Jazz albums and :Category:Albums by artist, and each album by Coltrane should have :Category:John Coltrane albums but those that deviate from Jazz should be individually categorised as, for instance :Category:Hard bop albums. Just like Robbie Williams since not every RW album is a Swing album(like Swing When You're Winning), nor Pop (Like Escapology), nor Rock (like Sing When You're Winning) or even dance music (like Rudebox). All of his albums slant in a different area than each other so he should only have :Category:Albums by artist (and maybe :Category:Robbie Williams) as the parent cats of him. Does that help/make sense/confuse you further? --lincalinca 06:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, thank you for trying to clarify things further. I pretty much understand the categorization process as you just laid it out. My specific question was perhaps not as clear as it could have been. Say I categorized a Coltrane album under Hard bop albums. This category is bound to fill up with hundreds and thousands of albums by various musicians over time. I was curious to know if there was a way to format the categorization on their album page so that when the album appears in the Hard bop albums section, their name can appear after it. Also, I am not categorizing albums that fall into hard bop also under jazz, as hard bop is a form of jazz. Instead, I have created a :Category:Jazz albums by genre which is now on the :Category:Jazz albums page. I am curious also to know if there is a way to create a default :Category:Jazz albums by artist as well, so as to tidy up the Jazz albums page and make for easier browsing. Perhaps that last bit is overkill, though. (Mind meal 07:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't think you can add more information about category entries. That's one of the limitations of categories. Help:Category has more info. --PEJL 07:48, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I just think this is overcategorising to be honest, though I'd leave it to the floor to give any guidance on that, because I don't know of any specific guidelines that govern this (mind you, lately I've become a fan of WP:IAR). --lincalinca 09:29, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Making artist names show up in categories devoted to albums by a specific genre

message: Is there consensus on what to enter in the "type" field for such albums? (Mind meal 16:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know of any. One option is to use the most distinctive type, for example a live album by a tribute band might be categorized as "live", while a tribute album by a non-tribute band might be categorized as "tribute". Just use your best judgement, and consider also using the "Longtype" parameter. --PEJL 22:20, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Live tribute albums

message: Template:Infobox Album/HTML, Template:Infobox Album/temp and Template:Triptych Cover album infobox have been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the templates' entries on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --PEJL 22:00, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: TfD nominations for album infobox alternatives