Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 1

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Template/standards

Hey there,
I think this is a very interesting project and I've devoted some thought to how it might be done myself. The template you've outlined here offers pretty much the same information as each www.allmusic.com entry, perhaps even a little less. So I don't really think such an undertaking is all that useful. Wikipedia does not exist in a vacuum, and so I don't think we should try to duplicate what is already done, and done well.
What I do think would be useful, and if done well could be really fantastic, is an examination of each album from a slightly broader perspective. In the examination of each album, how about a consideration of its specific influences, specific followers, where it fits in its genre and what leanings it may have toward others, etc? With regard to the Funkadelic albums, I'd much sooner go to allmusic.com for that information than to these wikipedia pages, but allmusic doesn't have the kind of musical matrix information that I think could be really exciting.
What do you think? I'm up for more chat on this topic. --Tubby 01:20, 7 November 2002 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. I have added some of what you wrote to the above. The whole purpose of coming up with a template for Funkadelic stuff was because I know there are lots of info that should be in the articles--each song and album has specific traditions and like associated with it, but I don't know what they are. I was hoping it would draw in others who did have more unique information. I saved it here because the handful of albums that actually had an article in wikipedia seemed like the author didn't know what kind of information would be appropriate to put there, so this is meant as a list of ideas of things that could or should be in an article on an album.

If you are interested, perhaps we could try and accomplish some sort of depth in this field. Perhaps if we found a list of influential albums (many such lists exist), we could divide them up so that each one would get a thorough article. I think having info on recent music would bring a lot of new contributors to Wikipedia. --Tokerboy 22:52, 9 November 2002 (UTC)

Right on - good idea. There aren't too many newer albums that I could do a 'critical' study on, maybe some Beck or some Stereolab, but yeah, I think if we come up with one or two 'deeper' articles, we could compare them and then hash out some standards. It might be useful to begin with some musics we both have some related interest in. I'm really not that familiar with Parliament and its associated associations, or really much funk at all (my loss), so do you have some other suggestions? I don't feel qualified to tackle huge albums like Zeppelin IV or Sgt. Pepper or Dark Side of the Moon, even though I'm familiar with them, but there should be some middle ground somewhere. -Tubby 01:17, 10 November 2002 (UTC)

In general, newer albums will probably be more difficult because their impact can not be fully measured yet. Some of David Bowie's stuff was years ahead of its time, for example, and was dismissed as bizarre and stupid until it became a genre ten or fifteen years later.

I'm appended a quite long-list to the Talk page--it's obviously not something the two of us will do, so I am trying to advertise on the mailing list--I think we should each do two or three and add them to a list somewhere here (or on the Talk page), and then we can start discussing standards. -Tokerboy 21:03 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)

I've done Highway 61 Revisited, Aquemini, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted, Ziggy Stardust and The Violent Femmes. -Tokerboy 21:57 Nov 10, 2002 (UTC)

Please don't create edit links for every song. The vast majority of songs are not famous enough to warrent their own articles (not to mention the problem of finding info to fill these articles). Please also make sure italics and quotes are used where needed. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style. --mav 08:55, 11 November 2002 (UTC)

Excellent work on Highway 61 Revisited and Desolation Row. I'll check out the Violent Femmes later. I've got one quick suggestion so far: I would like to see some information on the structure of the album, like why the songs are in the order they are. That's a fascination of mine, so it may not appeal to others. I've started compiling some ideas on Paul Simon - Paul Simon, so they should be up in a while. -Tubby 00:16, 13 November 2002 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the order is always something terribly important, but that's a good suggestion. I'm adding it to the above (and revamping it). BTW, I see you are linking to the uncreated article on Paul Simon (album) for his self-titled. I think I agree that Paul Simon should be an exception, but please note that thus far (as at The Violent Femmes and Funkadelic, plus more that I can't remember) self-titled albums are on the same page as the band. Paul Simon's different because he's a person and not a band. Do you think this standard should be changed, or is Paul Simon an exception? (I don't have terribly strong feelings either way) —Preceding unsigned comment added by TUF-KAT (talk • contribs) 01:00, 13 November 2002 (UTC)

I'd lean more to having a separate page for a self titled album. It is an album in its own right after all. But yeah, it becomes a problem when trying to classify or arrange or list the album in some larger set. Having it on the same page as the band suggests that perhaps the band and the album share something or have some identity, when that may not be the case. Would you put The White Album/The Beatles on the main Beatles page? Probably not, cause the Beatles are so much more than that album, as good as it is. Anyway, that's my opinion. I'll write a little more about my opinions on structure later. Nothing serious though.. -Tubby 03:37, 13 November 2002 (UTC)

I think you've convinced me. I've created Funkadelic (album) and The Violent Femmes (album) and will do others as I stumble across them. -Tokerboy 14:25 Nov 13, 2002 (UTC)

In case you hadn't noticed, I've spent the last little while writing semi-stubs for musicians on the list with no article. I realized it just seems kinda silly to be writing articles on individual albums when Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye had absolutely no article. I shall return to albums soon. --Tokerboy 21:37 Nov 15, 2002 (UTC)

Standards/Goals

Is it time to work out some more standards or goals? Please feel free to comment on the Paul Simon article I've put together. Eventually I'd like to have a little something something about each song. Good work on those articles that you have written, at least the ones I've read are very well done.
I think some specific thing that I would like to see would be, say, on each album page, two links to other bands or artists that are similar in ways, but a few words on how they are different, and perhaps also a bit of a chronology to it. So, in a perfect world where every album is documented, one could travel back or forward or sideways, reading on one album page the description of related artists, finding stuff that may be more to their liking. However, this could lead to some repetition, with all albums pointing to only two other bands. -Tubby 21:50, 19 November 2002 (UTC)

What you've got on Paul Simon looks good. My only suggestion is to take the big chunk about one song and put it into paragraphs, one for each song or whatever seems appropriate. I had Aquemini set up like you, and I think it looked a lot better after I changed it (you may wanna look at the very first revision in the history). The analysis itself looks good, very informative.

I've added this to Ziggy Stardust. Tell me what you think of the format. I was thinking about making it a table, but that's tedious and probably wouldn't be that useful.

Precursors: T. Rex - Electric Warrior, The Stooges - Raw Power, The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico

Followers: Queen - Sheer Heart Attack, Mott the Hoople - Mott, The New York Dolls - The New York Dolls

I like this idea, though I suppose there will eventually be some serious disagreements about which to choose. I think aiming for three of each seems good too, though I'd hesitate to make it a rule.

I've gone ahead and made the section above a rough draft. Feel free to comment or make changes. The only thing I'm not sure about is linking to external reviews/listing something like "Rolling Stone: four stars; Source magazine: five mics" or something along those lines. What about amateur reviews? Do you have any ideas about how to handle this? --Tokerboy 23:27 Nov 19, 2002 (UTC)

Anyone can find a boat load of reviews on an album just through Google, but idf someone wants to put a useful quote from a review in the article, in order to emphasis a point, or even to offer an opposing alternative, I think that should be encouraged. Major reviews like Rolling Stone or whatever could or should have links, if desired.

Regarding the Followers/Influences thing, I think there should be some description of the differences and similarities between the two bands or albums. The more specific the better. For example, for Ziggy Stardust, if I didn't know T. Rex or Mott the Hoople, I wouldn't know why they were on the list, or how they were different from the Velvets or Queen.

This is a problem that allmusic.com has. I think we should actively try to avoid being like allmusic. We can't realistically hope to match what they do, so we have to be different, or provide more information on the albums we do cover.

The section above looks really good. When people start to get on board, there will definately be some order and regularity to the articles. -Tubby 14:54, 20 November 2002 (UTC)

How about:

<snipped what is now the example in the standard -- Ziggy Stardust>

Two possible concerns: 1: too much info; 2: this is inherently subjective--I can't prove any of the above -Tokerboy 03:31 Nov 21, 2002 (UTC)

Awesome! I think this is absolutely great. With this kind of extensive information, people could do lots of interesting things, like make a map of the progression of music, or rearrange their cd collection, or whatever. I think it would be even better if the release dates for each album were included.

Regarding your concerns:

1. It is a lot of information, but I don't think there's such a thing as too much info. What you've got here is extensive, but it's useful and compelling. Besides, it's a knowledge that a lot of people don't have. Probably only a few people would be able to write such a detailed article.

2. Good point. But, as far as I'm concerned, what you've written is right on. So there must be something that's "right" about what you've written, despite its subjectivity. I'm sure most people who know what's what would also agree with you. And if they don't, so be it, it would be a good chance to discuss these subjective issues and maybe develop an idea further.

I think if we were to try to add objectivity to these write ups, we would have to be as specific as we could. In order to actually make the link between Ziggy and T. Rex, the actual specific sound similarities would have to be detailed, whatever they may be. Consider the "woo-hoo" sound, which began in "Sympathy for the Devil", or earlier, and then also turned up in Blur's "Song 2" and the recent Sheryl Crow tune called "Steve McQueen", and probably other places too. What would those songs be like if it wasn't for "Sympathy for the Devil"? Would they even exist?

Obviously, this kind of meticulous detail is excessive, but I think that those kind of specific sounds do exist and can be tracked and followed. Kind of like a musical meme. Defining certain terms, setting certain characteristics and conventions to terms like "proto-punk" for example, would be especially useful. -Tubby 14:32, 23 November 2002 (UTC)

I think you're right on all counts. I doubt we'll have many problems with people disagreeing with something along the lines of what I wrote above (though I'm not sure Morrissey is officially a shoegazing or Britpop band), though I'm sure it will occur eventually and someone will make some absurd claim (Britney Spears is heavily influenced by Ziggy Stardust) but we can deal with that when it comes up. I also agree very much about specific sounds ("woo-hoo") being nice, and I'll add them when I can but I don't really know much about music itself, so I couldn't discuss the use of minor chords or Wilsonian harmonies or anything like that. Still, I'll do what I can. I suppose the best part of being a wiki is that if I don't know something, someone else can (and will) pick up the slack. I also think we need articles on genres like proto-punk--there aren't many right now and I'm not really qualified to write them, but I agree that it would be helpful.

Unless you have any other suggestions, I'll go ahead and officially declare the above as WikiProject:Albums Standards 1.0. It seems that we are in agreement on anything. (If you write an article on something that better fits the second category of articles, please replace what's there now because neither of the examples actually fit the recommendations--Bob Dylan and the Violent Femmes are not prog rock, dance music nor symphonic by any stretch of the imagination) --Tokerboy 21:53 Nov 23, 2002 (UTC)

Just a question in between: What about capitalization? I see you're using different methods. Sometimes every word is capitalized (like in Minutemen: Double Nickles On The Dime) and sometimes not (Midnight Oil: Red Sails in the Sunset). Shouldn't there be one choice? In the articles I started I capitalized every word, so Red Sails In The Sunset already exists. I capitalized only the first word of the songs mentioned in the article (though this might not be the right choice). --Dhum Dhum 22:31 Nov 23, 2002 (UTC)

The normal practice is to capitalize the first and last words and all other words except articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, but, or, nor), prepositions (for, to, through, and so on, and the to in infinitives. (And remember albums in italics, song titles in quotes , as "She Said" from Revolver.) PS, of course, if there's anything special about the title right on the album, you should copy the album. You know caMel cAse, allonewordlowercase, ALLCAPS, tricks like that. --Ortolan88 22:54, 23 November 2002 (UTC)

I've always capitalized "through" and "with" (and probably other conjunctions and prepositions), but if that's the rule I'll try and remember not to. Maybe if I get the chance I'll fix the talk page's list to reflect that, since many are probably wrong (don't blame me, though, I pasted most of it from various other sites). --Tokerboy 00:47 Nov 24, 2002 (UTC)

I lifted that from the Harbrace College Handbook, pretty standard. It says there used to be a fashion for capitalizing longer prepositions like before, between and through, but that is now considered old-fashioned. In fact, I just looked at the Little Brown Handbook which is pretty much the same as Harbrace and one from the 50s that says the longer preps should be capped. So, I think, the rule is pretty much as I stated it. --Ortolan88 15:49, 24 November 2002 (UTC)

Year in music articles

As you may have noticed, I'm fascinated by the chronology of music (and indeed of other things). So I've started a bit of a side project. See 1972 in music. On it I've basically just got a handful of the albums released that year, plus a little write up about Harvest. If this grows into other years and people include some specific innovations, it could develop into something pretty groovy. When does the first mention of punk come up, for example. I took the liberty of redirecting the 1972 link on the Ziggy Stardust article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tubby (talk • contribs) 22:38, 20 December 2002 (UTC)

Award listings

Allmusic now has a page for each artist listing Grammy awards and Billboard music chart positions. I think this could be very useful, and have added it to David Bowie as an experiment. I'd like suggestions on formatting, though--it was tedious to do what I did, and it still doesn't look good. I'd like a chart, but it would be time-consuming and difficult to do all that (I think). Does anybody have any ideas? Billboard tracks the US and, I think, Canada. Who does it elsewhere, and is there a way we could easily adapt this information for Wikipedia (If so, it should probably all be moved to a separate page like David Bowie's chart positions or something). --Tokerboy 05:03 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

Wellll..... Random thought:

• Year - Song or Album Title
  • Chart: Position

For example:

• 1986 - "You Give Love a Bad Name"
  • The Billboard Hot 100: #1
  • Mainstream Rock Tracks: #1

I didn't spend a ton of time thinking about this, but I thought I'd toss up a possible starting point.

The Allmusic data is in a simple format. It would be trivial to write a script or program to parse it and spit out the format decided on so we don't have to go through and do this by hand for that massive volume of data. (Somebody had better beat me to this, or else it's going to end up in C++ instead of something sensible like Perl ;).)

I also think it would definitely be a good idea to put this stuff on separate pages, unless we're dealing with an artist/band that has a very short list of releases. That chart data on the David Bowie page makes it unbearably long, IMO. --nknight 09:52 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

Agreed on all counts and I don't see anything wrong with your format, though I'd suggest the year should link to 1986 in music. I would write a script, but I couldn't do so if my life depended on it. --Tokerboy 19:45 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

Table alignment

I'd suggest aligning the table holding the album cover to the RIGHT, rather than the left. Left alignment is unusual, feels rather unnatural to me, and results in varying results across browsers which are all rather ugly. Mozilla and derivitives render as shown in http://www.runawaynet.com/~nknight/crushold.jpg (problem area highlighted to better show the details, like text on the image). Konqueror shifts all text as far as the end of the track listing on the Crush page to the right, which is equally ugly and disturbs the flow of the page significantly. Aligning to right results in http://www.runawaynet.com/~nknight/crushnew.jpg, which I think is far more attractive and natural, individual browser glitches aside. -- nknight 13:20 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)

Fine with me. I just arbitrarily picked a side. If right looks better, let's go with right. --Tuf-Kat 17:55, 10 March 2003 (UTC)

Image size

Is does not appear to be a set image size for the album covers. If there is what is it? - fonzy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fonzy (talk • contribs) 20:11, 15 March 2003 (UTC)

I get most of mine from allmusic.com, though I don't think there should be a set size. Some are real detailed and maybe should be bigger so the reader can get an idea for what's there (Sgt. Peppers) and some could be smaller and less intrusive because there's less to see (The White Album) or whatever. Tuf-Kat 20:14, 15 March 2003 (UTC)

Ok, What do we do if there is more than 1 album cover for the same version of the album? -fonzy —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fonzy (talk • contribs) 10:45, 16 March 2003 (UTC)

No reason not to include them both. Abbey Road has a couple pix from the inside cover, for example. If it helps to establish a social, historical or artistic theme relating to the album, it should be fair use, I think. (IANALAFVGR -- I am not a lawyer and for very good reason) --Tuf-Kat 17:04, 16 March 2003 (UTC)

Album Track List (moved from Village pump)

(was CD Track List)

Some CDs have noticeable cultural and/or historically significance, so it may be of interest to list all the tracks on the CD. But, is the complete track listing of every CDs of every non-garage band to be included on Wikipedia?

For example, all CDs of Blink-182 have Wiki-pages, created mostly by one or two anons. But except to the band's zealous fans, none of them is significant. The only Wiki-pages that link to them are just back the Blink-182 page, the members of the band, and a one-phrase mentioning in an "n-year in music".

Are they really encyclopedic (again, except to the fans)? --Menchi 18:11 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I don't think so, you don't think so, 99.9 percent of humanity doesn't think so ... but without a central authority, who's going to decide which CDs deserve such treatment and which don't? If people want to take the time to create such (IMHO) pointless folderol, it would be un-wiki of us to stop them. -- DavidWBrooks 19:42 4 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I think if a page on a specific album has some important information about that album, and not just the track listing, it is appropriate for the wikipedia. If it is just a track listing, it is most likely not important enough to keep. For example, who among us would doubt the validity of the extensive article on the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, which of course includes a track listing (and which many of the songs themselves appropriately have their own articles). But many albums in the wikipedia only have the track listings and that is probablly innappropriate. If you are going to add an article about the album, take the time to research that album, tell us a little bit about what was going on with that band at the time, etc. Because writing an encyclopedia is writing *about* something first, so should the focus of any article be *about* the subject. But wikipedia is boundless in size, and should be bursting at the seams with facts, so as *secondary* material, don't hesitate to include the track listing. - 209.112.170.183 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.112.170.183 (talk • contribs) 05:45, 5 June 2003 (UTC)

Remind me again, who judges what is useful? Even the barest of information such as track listing and release year is extremely useful to *me*. On the other hand, the Todd McFarlane article is completely worthless, to *me*. Whether something is "useful" or not depends ENTIRELY on who you are. And who exactly is it hurting by having the articles there? Wikipedia is not paper. --nknight 19:25 6 Jun 2003 (UTC)

m:Wiki is not a WWW incarnate. --Menchi 22:46 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

That doesn't appear to lead anywhere at the moment. --nknight 23:54 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

What not to include?

Other than garage/unsigned bands, what not to include? Nothing? Include all released CDs/albums? --Menchi 22:46 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Why are people so anxious to have set rules as to what should or should not be in Wikipedia? What Wikipedia is not seems (far more than) adequate as a guide.

If you're worried about information not being useful and effort going to waste when it's deleted, well, in my experience, it takes non-zero effort to come up with singularly useless information. It pretty much has to be intentional. If you aren't sure whether something is completely useless, it probably isn't.

Ask yourself this question: Would a dedicated Music Wikipedia whose goal is to be as complete as possible exclude whatever content is in question? If not, why do you want to exclude it from Wikipedia? I don't recall reading anywhere that Wikipedia should exclude knowledge that is too specialized. --nknight 23:54 16 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Fair use and album covers (moved from Village pump)

Is uploading an album cover "fair use"? My understanding of fair use is that it's not. Can someone enlighten me? -- ESP 00:10 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Some people seem to think it is. Some people seem to think "fair use" are just two words you put on an upload page when you can't get permission. Personally I can't see how it could be fair use. See my user page for an IANAL statement. --Tim Starling 02:46 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'd like to see a counterargument. I don't normally think any "fair use" inclusions are good for Wikipedia -- they make the work Discrinate Against Fields of Endeavor, and put us in a dubious state as to being "Open Content." -- ESP 04:23 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

For the album covers I've uploaded at least, you can just search for [[fair use]] in the image pages, and simply remove them. It doesn't impact on the use of any original work. --Jim Regan 04:37 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. Looks like I'm to blame for this discussion. Fair use seems to be OK, going by US law. Wikipedia/Wikimedia is/are non-profit, the images are 200px x 200px, and so not a substantial reproduction, and we're not going to have a negative impact on the market value of the album by using the cover art in an article about the album.

Would this discussion be here if I hadn't bothered putting in the details in the upload log? There are quite a few album covers on Wikipedia which don't have any copyright information, which is a breach of copyright law. --Jim Regan 04:34 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think you have to say "this is fair use" for fair use.

The problem with using _anything_ under the fair use doctrine is that it's not a single, clearcut rule. It's a collection of poorly defined exceptions to copyright. It's very much an edge case in copyright law (IANAL, btw). Some other points:

- Something that's fair for us to use may not be fair for downstream users to use. I'm not sure "fair use" inclusions based on being a non-profit for educational purposes are consistent with the GFDL, and they're definitely not consistent with the spirit of Open Content.

- The image upload page doesn't have a checkbox that says, "You assert that it's OK to upload this according to fair use." It says that you assert that the copyright holder is willing to release it under the GFDL.

- The images are an exact reproduction of the album covers. I don't think the size really matters.

- The images aren't really the subject of the article -- the album itself is. They're two different copyrighted works. This doesn't seem to be a case of scholarship about the work.

- They're not necessary. They sure make the album pages look fancy, but they don't really add all that much. Is it worth the hassle for the rest of the project to add these gray-area items? I don't think so.

My two cents worth. I'd discourage this stuff. --ESP 04:58 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Damn. This is an awkward message to reply to :) About the note about "fair use" - it makes it clear to downstream sources, if they're paranoid and states pretty clearly that the image is *not* under the GFDL. About fair use not being clear cut, laws aren't really made to be clear cut; there's always room for a judge's interpretation.

As for the covers not being the subject of the article, that's not entirely true. The artwork is part of the overall package of an album, and deserves some discussion. I haven't gotten around to it for most of the articles I've written, but I've never claimed to be finished with any article I've written. And I think that in some cases, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band or Abbey Road being the most notable examples, that the covers are as famous, if not more famous than the music on the albums, and so are (or should be) part of the focus of the article. I have no problem with shifting my focus in that direction if it makes people more comfortable.

As for the covers not being necessary... there's a lot of people trying to make the case that most of the album articles aren't necessary to begin with. Track listings aren't necessary, a list of people who made appearances on the album is not necessary. But they're part of the guidelines, and things that are nice to have in an article are generally looked upon as a good thing.

I'm sure I haven't reponded to everything you brought up, but my reply has become a little too verbose, so I'll end it here. -- Jim Regan 05:52 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Re: first point - That's fair enough, but fair use is specificly about exceptions, not the rule. w/r/t downstream: you're making more and more of the corpus of Wikipedia non-free, by a reasonable definition of "free" (such as the OSI definition). Including fair-use images makes Wikipedia less free for commercial and personal use downstream, and less free for people in other countries without the United States' fair use precedent. This probably shouldn't be done lightly, if at all. Our primary goal is to make a free encyclopedia.

Re: second point - I'd say it'd be necessary for any piece of copyrighted work that it be the subject of "scholarship" or "research". Just using the copyrighted work as a decoration for an article doesn't seem to come under the auspices of fair use. The fact that 100% of the work is included is also a bad sign.

Re: third point - Straw man argument. I didn't say that the album articles are wrong or bad. The question at hand is if the album covers in particular fall under fair use, and if they do, whether it's a good idea for Wikipedia to have them. I think they could be possibly argued in court to be fair use, but it's a stretch. And I think fair overuse is a bad idea for Wikipedia in general.

Re: last point - It's OK -- I think the subject is an important one. --ESP 14:19 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

But the exception is part of the rule; and an important part. As to making the corpus of wikipedia less free; that's if you take the wikipedia as a whole to be a single work, and fine, it is; but it's also a collection of individual works. Nothing makes it less free for personal use; personal use is given more leeway than any public use, commercial or not. I understand the OSI (or rather, DFSG) definition of free and non-free; and yes, a small percentage of my contributions have been non-free. And clearly marked as such. Which is within the guidelines set out on the meta page this page is attached to. And should those guidelines change, it'll be easy to track them down. Of a more pressing nature are the fair use images which have not even got copyright information attached. Our primary goal is to make a free encyclopaedia, but the secondary goal is to make it as good as possible.

To summarise, if the cover is just attached as decoration, there's a flaw in the article. A good album article; and there are few of them as yet; would discuss the package and circumstances of the album as a whole, including the packaging.

And I didn't accuse you of saying they were good or bad; I was saying that what is and isn't necessary wrt album articles is a somewhat contentious issue. I will be following the accepted guidelines until they change. I don't think it's "overuse" to follow the same guideline for a class of articles; if I was to provide a scan of the cover, back cover, liner notes, any poster which may have been included &c, then it would be overuse, but as it stands, I don't think so, the cover is, at most, 50% of an album's packaging; in these days of CD booklets, it's a lower percentage.

Agreed; any decision reached here could affect a wide range of article types, from postage stamps and coins, to articles about celebrities, works of art; maybe even cars etc. --Jim Regan 18:02 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Hmm. It seems Wikipedia:Copyrights recommends strongly against inclusion of images under fair use -- GFDL and public domain work being vastly preferred. And, of course, Special:Upload says, "I affirm that the copyright holder of this file agrees to license it under the terms of the Wikipedia copyright." Which isn't true for fair use uploads (although it's also not true for public domain uploads, either, since there is no copyright holder).

Maybe we should move this discussion to a more copyright-oriented talk page, then. I don't mean to be harsh, but having tons of copyrighted files that have to be deleted is going to be a lot of makework. --ESP 20:01 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

I'm currently tracking down all the album cover (and similar) images I've uploaded, and am placing them here. For some reason though, the "My Contributions" feature doesn't seem to have a record of everything I did (even yesterday), so it may take a while. I don't think it's going to happen though; it's not just album articles which will be affected, and this sort of discussion seems to come up every two or three months, and the status quo wins --Jim Regan 20:56 21 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Fair use of album covers

Hi,

can someone clarify the Fair use issue for me? I just uploaded a page about Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters album, and within a few minutes someone (anonymous) had come along and removed both the Album cover art and the Tracklisting and the List of artists on the album. I'd have thought that all of these would be covered under fair use, and I'm tempted to just revert to the previous version of the page, but I don't really want to get into a war with the other guy. If tracklistings and lists of personnel are really off limits, then the whole album project is stuffed, really.

Any thoughts?

PS A couple of images I uploaded for other albums just disappeared - for example Bitches Brew. The page for the image is still there - which proves the image was succesfully uploaded (and I could see it on the page for a day or so) but now that image is nowhere to be found. Has it been deleted (no record of this) or is this just a glitch?

PPS ( ! ) I like the idea of a table for the cover, but I don't think we need to put quite so much inro in it. Maybe just artist, year, label, genre, but leave the reviews and contributors to the body of the text?

Cheers Ben --Bwmodular 16:11, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

The track listing and personnel list is not even fair use, as neither can be copyrighted provided there is no expressive content in the organization. A list of songs in the order they appear and a list of performers in alphabetical order (or any other basic order) is not copyrightable, and can be reproduced on the wiki without issue. The album cover issue has been discussed numerous times, and the general consensus has been that it is fair use and is not a problem for the wikipedia. I have reverted Head Hunters. --Tuf-Kat 17:21, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

On the reviews, I think that the contributors can go, but I like the reviews. The other info is something that a thousand other sites put in some easy to find place (and for good cause, we should follow suit) but there is usually a dearth of genuinely useful information beyond those facts and a track listing. This is a way we can make Wikipedia stand out, by providing links to and summaries of professional reviews. The Abbey Road table is, indeed, a bit long, but the vast majority of albums will have fewer reviews than that and will be more like the same size as the Spears album. --Tuf-Kat 17:37, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

The disappearing album cover is probably a glitch and will be recovered. See the note at the top of the village pump. Tuf-Kat 17:44, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Table for albums?

What does everybody think about having a table for this series, perhaps something like (crappily cribbed from the taxobox/planetobox) the below. There seems to be a stray /table somewhere in there, but I dunno where. I had included a track listing, but decided that was too difficult and not very useful. I can't seem to make the top and bottom section ignore the fact that there is a third column in the middle one. --Tuf-Kat 06:49, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Centered images & slightly cleaned up your HTML. I'll be back to do more, but don't have time right now. --Jmabel 02:56, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Making better use of colspan, and nailed some more element closure issues; not finished though, there's still apparently some stray markup, although I'm beginning to suspect a wiki bug. -- Jmabel 07:48, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! Looks great! I'm now inclined to think that the "major contributors" bit should go, as it makes the whole thing too big, and I'd rather keep the reviews. --Tuf-Kat 07:54, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Why not put album LENGTH (min./sec.) in the table? --Juuitchan —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.237.35.122 (talk • contribs) 08:15, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Hmmm, our comments are appearing in the Abbey Road table. Help! I'm trapped in a table, and I can't get out! Seriously, album lengths might be good. --Tuf-Kat 08:23, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Culprit found: missing </small> tags in the Reviews sections. I agree that the box should be shorter. Do you want me to try converting the tables to wiki-table-markup? —Paul A 09:11, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Yes, please do!. --Tuf-Kat 17:21, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Done. —Paul A 04:06, 4 February 2004 (UTC)

Table issues

I can't seem to touch the table without breaking things. All I did was try and delete the "major contributors" section, and now both tables, our comments and the wikilinks at the bottom are all part of one giganto-table. Isn't there a firm way to just end a table? (/table would seem logical, but there's a gaggle of those already). --Tuf-Kat 17:47, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

The problem was bad nesting in the first table (the Britney Spears CD). I've redone them both using exclusively COLSPAN instead of nested tables, and handled the float-to-right problem with a clearly marked outer table and DIV. Boy do we need proper wiki markup for these boxes, or what? --Zack 21:19, 3 February 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, this now gives a lot more "grid lines" in the tables. I presumed that the reason for the nested tables was to get borders in some places and not others was precisely to avoid that, which is why I didn't change it when I made my edits earlier. (They don't look bad to me, I was just trying to help fulfil what I presumed to be Tuf-Kat's intent. This one-table approach should be less sensitive to minor coding glitches,though.) --Jmabel 04:55, 4 February 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I like it better this way too. I'd have done it that way if I knew how. --Tuf-Kat 07:13, 4 February 2004 (UTC)

Primo! BTW, feel free to call on me in the future if you need HTML help for wikipedia. --Jmabel 01:46, 5 February 2004 (UTC)

Infobox table colors

A lot of Wikiprojects use different colors in the table to mean different things (for example, plants, animals and fungi all use different colors, but the same table). I'm not sure this really has any useful application to this project, but is worth considering. Dividing by genre might be nice, but would probably lead to arguments (fill in band name here is not punk enuff for the punk color!), and I'm not sure it's worth it. I've also thought about having different colors for notable bands (for example all Rolling Stone albums could be blue, with orange as the default) but this is probably even less useful. Maybe by decade of release... --Tuf-Kat 03:49, 5 February 2004 (UTC)

Problem with one of the review sources

In the list of sources for professional reviews, can somebody find a homepage to link to for this site? http://www.acclaimedmusic.com doesn't work, and neither does http://hem.bredband.net. I can't seem to find any kind of main page or search function, and I need to go to bed. --Tuf-Kat 08:54, 6 February 2004 (UTC)

It's http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/, it turns out. —Paul A 09:06, 6 February 2004 (UTC)

Thanks! --Tuf-Kat 19:51, 6 February 2004 (UTC)

Lists in the infobox

After doing a couple more albumboxes (needs a better name...), I'm not sure including e.g. Rolling Stone List of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time is a good idea, even if it is an encyclopedic source. There's an awful lot of them, most are reproduced on non-official pages and could very well be mistaken or even totally fictional and... I hate them. --Tuf-Kat 19:51, 6 February 2004 (UTC)

Previous/Next album links?

What would you think of adding a [[< Previous]] album and [[Next >]] album link at the bottom of the 'taxobox', for those artists who have writeups for more than one album? Appropriately piped, of course, and removed if not applicable. Might be a nice way to browse through an artists work.

Could be done as text links at the top or bottom of the article text as well. Yust a thought.... --Catherine 22:02, 6 February 2004 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting idea. I'll add it to Abbey Road and see how it looks. --Tuf-Kat 22:14, 6 February 2004 (UTC)

Done, and I like the effect. I'm not sure there's any reason to limit it to cases when articles already exist for the other albums -- a prominent link might inspire someone to write it. In any case, the Abbey Road example treats the first column (Yellow Submarine) as a header and makes it bold automatically. How can I override that? --Tuf-Kat 22:23, 6 February 2004 (UTC)

I think I fixed it. What do you think? (The problem was using a "!" instead of a "|" to start the Yellow Submarine cell -- "!" tells it that it's a Table Heading, which it automagically bolds.)

I also made the album name text smaller, centered, and with a forced break (br) before the year. Does that work?

I've added infoboxes to Duran Duran (album) and Rio (album) already, BTW. --Catherine 06:01, 7 February 2004 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and changed the sample here to include the "Chronology" as well as a section for the producer". --Tuf-Kat 17:11, 8 February 2004 (UTC)

Release date and album length format

I have started using the format and have the following questions/issues:
- for the release date, what if the album is released on separate dates in different countries/regions, probably most notably the United States and United Kingdom? A number of Pink Floyd albums are like this, typically released in the UK first then the US. Should it only list the first date (which tends to be for the UK)?
- for the length, what about double albums? Should there be two lines with each line ending with the disc/record # in parenthesis? See The Wall for an example. --RedWolf 08:42, 14 February 2004 (UTC)

To the first question, I think the best thing is to only include the date of first release -- if we include the US/UK, why not Australia, Brazil and South Africa? It would become much too long. In most cases, aren't the release dates in US/UK roughly the same, within a few months to a year at most? Is the week-long delay in the US release of The Wall really all that important? Maybe we should include the country of first release on the date instead (as in November 30, 1979 (UK), and place the other releases somewhere in the article.

As to the second item, the first time I looked at that I assumed it was saying there was a difference in the lengths of the UK/UK releases... I suppose I agree that the two side lengths should be given, but I could go either way, really. --Tuf-Kat 09:02, 14 February 2004 (UTC)

Lists and compilation albums

Two issues:

Barring disagreement here, I am going to change the project to specifically disallow "100 Greatest Albums of All Time"-type lists, even if they are by a reputable source.

There has been little or no discussion anywhere on the wiki regarding the suitability of Greatest Hits or other compilations having their own albums. I am of the opinion that most should not, though Bob Marley's Legends, some box sets, that Pink Floyd greatest hits and probably some more could easily have an article. Discuss. --Tuf-Kat 23:43, 13 February 2004 (UTC)

It seems to me that some "100 Greatest Albums" lists are encyclopedic topics in their own right. For example, the topic of what has come and gone from Rolling Stone 100-best lists over time could be a very good way of looking at changing tastes in music. Or is this not what you are talking about? --Jmabel 01:04, 14 February 2004 (UTC)

I wouldn't exclude an album simply because it wasn't the original issue of the material involved. For example, Nuggets, a multi-band complilation, is arguably one of the most influential albums of all times, certainly more influential than the individual songs collected therein. Similarly, some of Roky Erikson's "original issue" albums are rather weak, and have not matched the sales or impact of the collection "You're Gonna Miss Me". --Jmabel 01:04, 14 February 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm not so sure that such a thing would be encyclopedic (it sounds like original research, but I suppose there's nothing wrong with collecting such lists on a single page -- except maybe a copyvio?), but that's not really what I'm talking about. I mean using such a list on the "reviews" section of the albumbox as at Back in Black. Many of the major music magazines have done dozens. Check out music.net, it's got sometimes dozens of chart placings for well-known albums -- I think that would clutter up the albumbox with notes regarding the subject's placement on obscure magazines' "100 Greatest Metal Albums of the 70s" list from years ago. --Tuf-Kat 09:13, 14 February 2004 (UTC)

Certainly, I support some compilations of various kinds having an article -- that's why I gave them a color for the albumbox. These albums are the exception, however, and many of the most famous bands have released dozens of greatest hits albums. Most could realistically never have any more information than a track listing, release date and label and I suppose, in some cases, chart information. There are some articles on bands that link to every greatest hits or compilation release ever to include the band's music. It seems highly unnecessary. Perhaps a single article with all the track listings and release dates and obscure info on compilations would be best. --Tuf-Kat 09:13, 14 February 2004 (UTC)

Aquemini

Well, I don't think any album articles are quite ready yet, but I'm going to try and get something, maybe Aquemini, there soon. Any other thoughts? --Tuf-Kat 23:52, 18 February 2004 (UTC)

Ummagumma

Just a q. What should be done for the Pink Floyd double album Ummagumma? It has 1 disk of live, and 1 disk of studio material. What should be done for the colours? --Fizscy46 01:46, 20 February 2004 (UTC)

I suppose have the first and third boxes darkturquoise and the second and fourth boxes orange. --Tuf-Kat 06:33, 20 February 2004 (UTC)

LP vs Album vs ... ?

I noticed in the header of the sample albumbox the listing "LP by Alice in Chains" -- noting that LP is linked to Vinyl record. Is this the standard format we want to use, given that records are rarely released on vinyl anymore? Should it just be "album"? If we're trying to maintain the distinction between LP and EP, we can still say "album by" or "EP by".... ? I'm not versed in the subtleties of music terminology, so please let me know if I'm off base here.... --Catherine 18:49, 27 February 2004 (UTC)

Yes, this concerns me as well, but I don't have an answer. --Tuf-Kat 18:51, 27 February 2004 (UTC)

An EP is syill considered a vinyl record. Same as the 1000 transistor Microchips of the past still being called microchips despite have 1 million+ per inch². Just have it say EP by {Insert name}, and have it link to vinyl record, unless someone has a better idea -- Fizscy46 02:59, 28 February 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that in most cases, we're not referring to vinyl records, at least not exclusively -- albums are issued and reissued in multiple formats, and we're not referring to a specific one. LP, as "long-playing record" seems to apply pretty specifically to an analogue disc record, and we should probably prefer album to describe a collection of musical tracks released as a unit. EP, on the other hand, describes something that has more tracks than a single but fewer than an "LP", and is still used in this context even though they're now almost always on CD rather than vinyl -- and who knows what they'll be released on 10 or 20 years from now.

I guess I'm just saying that the title we apply to the collected work should reflect the content, not the format it was released in. --Catherine 05:06, 28 February 2004 (UTC)

LP is actually a disambiguation page so will always require the pipe. In any case, I think "LP" should be changed to album as well. I have substituted CD for LP on a couple pages because I know LPs will/have never be released for the album. However, who knows what the future holds in store as to what albums will be released on. Album seems to be a good neutral choice although I'm open to other suggestions at this point. RedWolf 05:12, 28 February 2004 (UTC)

Yeah, this is a bit of a can of worms, huh? :-) Having worked in radio, my impression is that original recordings can fall under three general classifications today, regardless of the medium: "single", "EP", and "album". A "single" will feature chiefly one song, but it may (indeed, usually will) have more than one song on it (a 45-rpm vinyl record will have a B side, a CD single may have additional remixes, other unreleased songs, etc.). An "album" is a collection of different songs, usually totaling at least 35 minutes or so. An "EP" is in the fuzzy area in between—not as many songs as an album, but too many or too varied a list of songs to be called a single. Make sense? I think it's kind of subjective. But if, say, Rolling Stone and AMG and Soundscan all call it one thing, I think it's safe for us to call it the same thing. :-)

I do think we ought to figure out a standard way to indicate the media on which a recording is released, though—and especially when. Especially with older recordings, there can be vast amounts of time between the release of the same album on different media (vinyl... CD... cassette... 8-track... wire spool...??)

By the way, a bit of trivia. It was actually the advent of LPs that made the term "album" an anachronism. The original, true albums were big books where the pages were sleeves holding 78-rpm records! --LarryGilbert 02:44, 2 March 2004 (UTC)

Broader perspective

I think this is a very interesting project and I've devoted some thought to how it might be done myself. I don't think we should try to duplicate what is already done at other sites, and done well.

What I do think would be useful, and if done well could be really fantastic, is an examination of each album from a slightly broader perspective. In the examination of each album, how about a consideration of its specific influences, specific followers, where it fits in its genre and what leanings it may have toward others, etc? With regard to the Funkadelic albums, I'd much sooner go to allmusic.com for that information than to these wikipedia pages, but allmusic doesn't have the kind of musical matrix information that I think could be really exciting.

What do you think? --Arbitration Matter of Hephaestus 16:40, 14 March 2004 (UTC)

Note that the above message was written by Tubby and is in the archive. Feel free to add information on whatever you like of encyclopedic interest. --Tuf-Kat 18:05, 14 March 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki Album

I have created Template:Album to place at the top of talk pages for album articles. For those who don't know how to use the MediaWiki namespace, typing {{msg:Album}} will present the text at Template:Album. Feel free to revise the note, as I have no strong attachment to the wording. --Tuf-Kat 06:34, 22 March 2004 (UTC)

And I have added it to the talk page for every album on List of albums in the first and second sections (Numbers and "A"). Just in case anyone else would like to do the "B"s. --Tuf-Kat 06:47, 22 March 2004 (UTC)

Maybe this should only be added to talk pages for those albums that actually have the Album infobox? By doing that, we can see the actual list of albums where the infobox has been applied by clicking the "What links here". --RedWolf 06:54, 22 March 2004 (UTC)

That's a good idea, but could be difficult to enforce. (I've already placed it on several other talk pages, for example, with no infobox...) --Tuf-Kat 15:20, 22 March 2004 (UTC)

Why just those with the infobox? Maybe someone else will want to add an infobox if it's not there. —LarryGilbert 20:25, 22 March 2004 (UTC)

I've added the msg to a few albums that may not even be on your list of albums list - they are just linked to from the band. I have one concern about adding the infobox - it seems to require a fair use image, and it would be illegal for me to add that in the UK. If they are required than a US contributor will have to add them. I presume I should add the info box, and someone else can add the image. --Secretlondon 18:54, 25 March 2004 (UTC)

I've added the info box to Rammstein's albums - a US contributor will have to add a photo. --Secretlondon 20:08, 25 March 2004 (UTC)

Done, for all but Mutter. --Tuf-Kat 21:15, 25 March 2004 (UTC)

Thanks - I've done the three albums by The Housemartins now (writing about albums is light relief from normal wikipedia stuff). Should I make a list of ones that need pictures somewhere? --Secretlondon 22:43, 25 March 2004 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Needs cover? --Tuf-Kat 23:25, 25 March 2004 (UTC)

Needy Articles

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Needs cover
• Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums/Needs infobox

As there has been a suggestion that we list articles without infoboxes somewhere. --Secretlondon 20:31, 2 April 2004 (UTC)

Colors

Why has the color orange been chosen for studio albums? About 90% of the album articles on Wikipedia are about studio albums, so it would be better to use a more standard color (like black). --Acegikmo1 23:03, 25 March 2004 (UTC)

What colour should we use for mix albums? They are more than compilations of exiting material. --Secretlondon 10:15, 27 March 2004 (UTC)

I've taken the same colour for other soundtracks as used for movie soundtracks. I didn't see the need to differentiate between stage production soundtracks and movies. --Secretlondon 19:04, 11 April 2004 (UTC)

Tracking pages with infoboxes

In contrast to Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums/Needs infobox, I had an idea for how to track pages with albumboxes which would be pretty much self-sustaining. Create a new mediawiki page, say MediaWiki:Albumbox, but leave it essentially blank (with just an invisible html comment explaining it's purpose), then place {{msg:Albumbox}} in the first line of every albumbox like this

{| <nowiki>{{msg:Albumbox}}</nowiki> border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="225" align="right"

This won't affect the table provided the page is blank. Since almost everybody just takes an existing box as a template (and nobody touches the first line), new boxes would be linked automatically to MediaWiki:Albumbox.

Anyway, unless anyone objects, or has a better idea, or just thinks it's pointless, I'm going to implement this and start tagging all the albumboxes tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I get bored). --Lee (talk) 21:54, 2 April 2004 (UTC)

This is a good idea - as we could then check against list of albums and see which are missing. --Secretlondon 23:13, 2 April 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if this is feasible but what about extending that idea with replacing the entire first line of the table with the standard attributes.

e.g.

   {| <nowiki>{{msg:AlbumboxStart}}</nowiki>

the mediawiki page for AlbumboxStart would include:

    border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" width="225" align="right"

If the cell spacing needs to be tweaked or the width changed, it's a simple change in one file. Just a thought, as to how well it might work is open for debate. --RedWolf 23:33, 2 April 2004 (UTC)

I don't see why that wouldn't work. At least, it would be very obvious after tagging the first box if it works or not - in which case we can just blank the page and go with the first option. --Lee (talk) 11:55, 3 April 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've done all the albumboxes that link to Record producer. I know there there are a few boxes out there that don't have a producer section, so they still need to be hunted down.

Check here for the list. --Lee (talk) 13:14, 3 April 2004 (UTC)

Tried to follow the guidelines for Generation Terrorists by the Manic Street Preachers but don't seem to have table aligned as per the example template. if anyone could fix it let me know what I did wrong it would be much appreciated. --Scraggy4 02:37, 12 April 2004 (UTC)

Chronology Links

I noticed ScudLee has been going around fixing some of the existing album pages (thanks, by the way), and has let some people (including me) know that the Chronology section of the table is meant to be a back/forward section for albums rather than a listing of everything that the band has released. This wasn't clear from me from the main WikiProject Albums page and I was wondering if someone could add something in there to clarify this. Thanks! --Jrdioko 22:42, 12 April 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I've given it a shot. This is only based on what I do, though. Feel free to add or amend as you see fit. --Lee (talk) 23:20, 12 April 2004 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Thanks! --Jrdioko 23:43, 12 April 2004 (UTC)

Personnel

I was reading through the new formatting of this page (which is much clearer by the way, thanks Lee), and I saw that part near the bottom titled "Personnel." Shouldn't this information be on the band's article and not on the album page? Maybe you do need it just in case the band members are different for different albums, but I don't think "Personnel" is the right name. Also, in that case, what do you put on the main band's article (if the members are different for different albums)? Again I hate to create a mess with this standardization business, but I always like to see some sort of "format" that's recommended to use for all articles. Then again, I am mildly annoyed by the fact that every disambiguation page has a different sentence at the top ("Blah can refer to," "Blah has several different meanings," "Blah can mean one of several different things," etc., so maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine. In any case, I think personnel has to go unless that's the correct name for the members of a band. --Jrdioko 23:26, 19 April 2004 (UTC)

In most cases, the "personnel" is much more than a list of band members. The band members should be on it, of course, but many or most albums are recorded with the help of at least a handful of session musicians, plus producers, engineers, cover artists, etc. Also, a particular band member may be a bassist, but may also play the vibraphone or cow bell or glockenspiel on a particular song -- may be appropriate on the band page, but is certainly appropriate on the article page. See, for example, Aquemini, which has dozens of personnel, but only two are members of the crew OutKast (admittedly, hip hop is kind of a special case, because guest rappers and producers are so common). --Tuf-Kat 00:59, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

Ok, that makes sense. So is "personnel" the preferred term for such a list? I haven't heard that term used in that context, but I'm not an expert in music by any means so I was just curious if that is correct. Also, now I see that the list can be useful on a page where the personnel covers more than the band, but, back to my other question, what should be included on the ==Band== section of the band's article if different members produced different records, and is that the correct heading name. There isn't a Wikiproject for band pages is there (I looked around before but didn't see one)? --Jrdioko 01:17, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

Nope, there's no WikiProject for bands as of yet. Feel free to start one if it floats your boat. I'm not sure if personnel is the best word, but nothing else strikes me as more appropriate. Aquemini has separate sections for performers and technicians, so maybe that should be more standard.

Your other question (what should be included on the ==Band== section of the band's article if different members produced different records, and is that the correct heading name.) I don't really understand. If a band had a changing line-up, that should obviously be explained in the band's history. A list of band members should probably include all members, with appropriate notes for those which were not a part of the band throughout its existence. Bands with many line-up changes over the years might need some special format to make it easier to see who was a member when, but I'm not sure how best to do it. It has occurred to me that for such a band, a tabled discography with albums in colors depending on which lineup recorded it might be wise, but I've never implemented anything. All in all, I'm not sure there should be any policy on how to handle it, because the circumstances will be different for different bands. --Tuf-Kat 04:05, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

Sorry for the confusing question and thanks for the answer. I don't think I have enough knowledge on the subject to start a Wikiproject for bands, but it seems to me if albums and songs are being standarized that it might not be a bad idea to do the same for bands. Then again, there are so many different situations that could exist with bands (such as what you were discussing above) that perhaps a little variation and flexibility is a good thing. I just thought I'd bring up the idea. --Jrdioko 04:36, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

Albumbox colors

I've just added all of the album covers for michael jackson that were on the missing images list and entered them onto the relevant album pages. I noticed that some of the colours are set as darkgreen for the Albumbox on these pages and just wanted confirmation that the correct policy at the moment is for them to be orange???. didn't want to change them incase orange had now been switched to green as the standard colour. --Scraggy4 19:56, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

Orange is the standard color for "Original studio albums," but different types of albums are designated different colors. Take a look at the main project page for details. HTH, --Jrdioko 01:23, 21 April 2004 (UTC)

many thanks, I have now noticed my oversight. That's what happens when you work with blind people for a living, it sometimes rubs off. --Scraggy4 16:47, 21 April 2004 (UTC)

Are these colours sufficiently contrasting with the foreground colours for all viewers? I can imagine that readers with diminished eye-sight would have problems reading some of these texts on relatively dark backgrounds.--Branko —Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.109.232.171 (talk • contribs) 09:50, 23 April 2004 (UTC)

I was waiting for someone to mention this problem with the wiki colour boxes. As far as I aware my organizations policy is for all text to be made available in either Arial or Times New Roman with a font size of 16 as well as supplying audio and braille versions. All background colours should also be avoided if at all possible. Obviously very few articles are written with thought for the visually impaired (many older people also develop various vision problems which makes contrast a problem) in mind. The easiest solution is by making a text only version of the page available for all users to who this may be of help. --Scraggy4 19:08, 23 April 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Needs cover

After a message from user:Jrdioko on my talk page I was wondering if the needs cover page could be expanded to include other info. that users haven't been able to find, possibly in easy to use table form something like the following. --Scraggy4 11:23, 25 April 2004 (UTC)

band name	album name	cover	release formats	release date	recorded	length	label	producer	no. of reviews
Relaxed Muscle	A Heavy Night With...	ok	ok	ok	still required	still required	ok	still required	3

That sounds like a great idea. Move the /Needs cover to something more general (I can't think of anything great off the top of my head right now), and put all the albumbox info there. After a new article has been made, the user can go to that page, copy and paste the box, fill in the info, and then others can take it from there. The only problem I can see is if some of the more detailed information simply isn't available anywhere, but then whoever is working on it can just remove that entry. Suggestions?  — Jrdioko (Talk) 17:39, 25 April 2004 (UTC)

I have put a possible example of an album / single information required box on my user page from the list on the needs cover page. This would allow all song missing info to be in one place. I thought I found a different page earlier that was for missing info but I can't find it now (sort of explaining the problem and possibly confirming the need for info in one place.) It would also have to be explained on the album & song project pages. anybody have any suggestions?? --Scraggy4 00:32, 26 April 2004 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Album

I have turned the message at Template:Album into a hybrid opentasksbox and comejoinWikiProjectbox. Thoughts? --Tuf-Kat 20:18, 26 April 2004 (UTC)

It's funny, I'd just been thinking of doing an open tasks box (Great minds etc.). I hadn't thought of doing it on Template:Album, though. Interesting... It might need a little tweaking, especially once Needs cover gets fleshed out to include all missing info. It might also be an idea to mention Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums/Needs infobox|Needs infobox (which could probably do with filling up) as well. --Lee (talk) 20:55, 26 April 2004 (UTC)

I've now completed entering all of the albums (from List of albums) by bands beginning with 'A' that have some or all albumbox info missing onto my userpage. It didn't take very long and if you compare against the Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums/Needs infobox|Needs infobox you will see that just the letter A on my list is far longer than the whole of current Needs Infobox. I will continue to add B, C, D, etc so feel free to take info from my page or if you create a new page for the info let me know. Apologies if I am doing something wrong but it just seemed like it needed doing and I would like to track down all of the missing info. Help appreciated with this obviously. --Scraggy4 22:05, 26 April 2004 (UTC)

My problem with this is that very few albumboxes are complete, and by including pages without albumboxes as well, you're effectively mirroring the entire list of albums on a single page, but with vastly more information per listing. It's just going to be too unwieldy.

My suggestion is this, (this runs slightly opposite to how things currently stand)

1. Make Needs cover list only those pages without albumboxes (or covers obviously).
2. Make Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums/Needs infobox|Needs infobox list only those pages with covers (but no albumbox).
3. Move the page you're working on to Needs info (say), shift the info you've already collected on non-albumbox pages to the relevant page (cover/infobox) and restrict this page to just those pages with albumboxes (by using this list).

We can then, much more quickly, go through the rest of the list pages and sift the remaining album pages onto needs cover/infobox as appropriate.

This way we get a progression 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> complete, with different people able to work comfortably on different tasks. Plus the first two pages only need to link to the page in question (like they currently do), so the sizes shouldn't be too large. What do you think? --Lee (talk) 18:22, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi Lee, I would say that the

1. Wikipedia:Wikiproject Albums/Needs infobox|Needs infobox to only include those without either cover or infobox;
2. Needs cover to be renamed as Needs sleeve image to include those with boxes but without image;
3. and the third page to be Needs more info or Incomplete infobox to include those with boxes but info missing.

Some items would appear on links 2) & 3) but 3)would give a list of all incomplete boxes whereas 2) may include complete boxes except for cover and some incomplete without cover.

Another alternative I see is to have list 1) as above, and forget 2) as the fact the image is missing would be included in 3).

Whichever is decided upon these pages should be clearly directed from Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, Template:Album, Album, Music

I can also see advantage in adding options 1),2),3) or 1) & 3) and Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, Template:Album as a See Also from each artist/band individual page. This may seem a huge task but all it would not take long to copy and paste. I could see this encouraging many more people to become involved with adding the odd snippet of info here and there. I personally did not find the relevant info regarding the project that easy to find and not classing myself as the dimmest person in the world I expect a few others have had the same problem. I still feel that some clarity needs to given on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums page regarding formats Cd/vinyl etc that I mentioned previously.

Hopefully these lists will soon decrease in size as we, and hopefullly others, clean up the pages. --Scraggy4 22:34, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Well, it looks like we agree on what should be on 3, anyway. I'd suggest you pick a name and move it to a subpage sharpish (it reeeally shouldn't be in the main article space). I still prefer my suggestion (but then I would), because I see those three tasks - uploading an image, adding an albumbox, filling in missing info - as totally separate and distinct, and I'm more inclined to add a box to page with artwork already present (because I'm lazy). I do agree that under your system 2) would be redundant.

As for adding links to these pages, from Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums, Template:Album - definitely, absolutely, it would be pointless otherwise; from Album, Music - definitely not, articles should avoid linking into the wikipedia: namespace except where absolutely neccessary (I think there's a policy page on this somewhere). Same goes for the See alsos (this is also the reason why the list you're compiling needs to be moved). If they're linked to from Template:Album, then they'll be linked to from every album talk page, which is good enough. --Lee (talk) 00:39, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

New Skin

With the new skin, the albumbox is pushed to the top of the page instead of forming a bar on the right. What can be done about this? --Acegikmo1 01:17, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

For some reason, the parser isn't accepting the {{msg:albumboxStart}} in the first line of the table. I tried moving it to the template namespace, but that didn't help. Currently, the only solution would be to ditch the msg and use subst instead. I've been working on a templated version over on test (see Aquemini), but it's still a bit buggy. --Lee (talk) 01:29, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

It appears to be the skin's fault, not the album boxes', so why don't we ask the people who work on the skin to see if they can do anything about the skin to fix it? -- [[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 01:41, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

This is not the only project suffering this problem with the new skin. I believe any project using templates for their infobox/taxobox has also ran into the same issue. I think the skin needs to be fixed, rather than us trying for a workaround. --RedWolf 03:25, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

Not all of them are having problems. Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements seems to be doing fine. --Caliper 23:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

It's working for Elements because that project is not defining a table using a custom message. The Albums project uses {{msg:AlbumboxStart}} which defines a table using wiki syntax. MediaWiki 1.3 seems to be ignoring the parameters specified in the custom message which tell it to put a border around it and right justify the box. --RedWolf 04:24, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

A workaround for the MediaWiki 1.3 bug is to replace {{msg:AlbumboxStart}} with {{subst:AlbumboxStart}} as suggested by Lee. I have done that for The Division Bell for an example. The drawback of doing that is not only do all the album pages have to be changed but then if the message is changed, the changes will not be reflected in all the articles that have been updated to use subst unless the article is edited and saved again. I would say wait for a few days when some of the developers get back (I hope!) from the USA long weekend and have them fix the broken 1.3 parser. Of course, with the dozens and dozens of bugs reported in the last 2 days with 1.3, they might not get around to it right away. --RedWolf 04:36, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I have added a comment to an existing bug [1] related to use of tables within templates. --RedWolf 06:34, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

The developer seems to have ignored my comment when he fixed the original issue reported by the bug. So, I have opened a new bug: [2] --RedWolf 16:00, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

Proposed category schema

Fairly simple - two "top-level" categories "Category:Albums by artist" and "Category:Albums by year". Each album page is then placed into two categories, "Category:<Artist name> albums" and "Category:<year> albums", which are then placed as sub-categories into the respective top-level category. For consistency, the artist name should be the same as the title of their article (in terms of punctuation, "&"/"and", use of "The", etc.) minus any disambiguating terms of course.

Suggestions, improvements, refinements? --Lee (talk) 16:18, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

The album boxes look messed up now. They don't align to the right any more (I'm using the standard skin), and they aren't "boxed". I noticed this happened after the Categories were added, but it may be something else, like the {{msg:AlbumboxStart}}. Can someone try to fix this? --[[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 18:57, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

See my comments in "New Skin" above. I believe it's a bug in the MediaWiki 1.3 template mechanism. Other projects that also use a template to define a table have the same problem at the moment. --RedWolf 19:54, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

I added Category:Albums by genre. When using categories with album pages, the image or table must be moved beneath the first paragraph to get proper alignment. --Jim Regan 08:29, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I added a section, based on ScudLee's comments. The "Let It Be" comparison doesn't work at the moment because of the "Wikimedia Board Elections" notice at the top of each page, but that won't be there forever. --Jim Regan 08:53, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I think we should hold off for a day or two in doing the changes needed to implement Categories for all the existing album articles. There are currently 4 open bugs in SourceForge related to Categories. --RedWolf 15:51, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

The main one is 963343: Categories push right-aligned element left. As noted, we do have a workaround for it, so I don't think it's much of a problem. --Jim Regan 02:07, 1 June 2004 (UTC)

Schema Proposal #2

I don't particularly agree with the proposed category schema. If you use "Category:<artist name> albums", then what do you do with other articles that are not albums like those on songs? What about members of the group if a band or not a solo artist? What is wrong with just using "Category:<artist name>"? That way you can put all three of these types of articles into the category. I really don't see a need in creating separate categories just for the members of the group as I've seen some have done already. So, for example, I created Category:Pink Floyd to contain the members, the song articles and eventually the album articles. No need to go overboard in the first week of categories IMHO. We can always subdivide them later if it serves a useful purpose. At the moment, I don't think it would. --RedWolf 06:36, 1 June 2004 (UTC)

1. I don't see why "Category:<artist> Albums" cannot live together with "Category: <artist>. As much as I see it, "Category:<artist> Albums", "Category: <artist> Songs", "Category:<artist> Singles" should be all subcategories of "Category:<artist>". (as would, probably, "Category:<artist> band members" for a band and "Category:<artist> collaborators" for session musicians, producers etc.). "Category:<artist>" would be a category for articles which do not fall under any of specific categories.

1. We should also decide on hierarchy above "Category:<artist>" - should it all go into "Category: Musicians", or should there be specific subcategories created?

1. Additionally, should there be categories for albums which have charted, like "Category: UK Top 40" or "Category: US Top 200" or similar? --Asn 06:57, 2004 June 1 (UTC)

(I'm a bit too tired to explain what I mean properly, but I'll give it a shot). This is how I see categories working:

• Albums
  • Albums by year
    • 1970s albums
      • 1977 albums

        Never Mind the Bollocks

  • Albums by artist
    • • Sex Pistols
        • Sex Pistols albums

          Never Mind the Bollocks

        "Sid Vicious"

  • Albums by genre
    • Punk
      • Sex Pistols
        • Sex Pistols albums

          Never Mind the Bollocks

        "Sid Vicious"

• People
  • Musicians
    • Bass guitarists

      "Sid Vicious"

    • U.K. Musicians

      "Sid Vicious"

    • Musicians by genre
      • Punk musicians

        "Sid Vicious"

    • Musicians by band
      • Sex Pistols

        "Sid Vicious"

With categories laid out like this, if I know nothing about punk, but want to find out about the famous British punk album whose name I can't remember right now, and can't remember the band's name; but I can remember that their bass guitarist was famous, and I'll remember his name when I see it; I'll have a better chance of finding it through the categories if they are sub divided like this. If articles are left under-categorised, I haven't a hope. --Jim Regan 07:31, 1 June 2004 (UTC)

This is something I knocked up (partly in jest) on Wikipedia talk:Categorization, but it sort of matches with how I wouldn't mind things ending up.

                 /------------1970 albums--------------------Albums by year
               /                                                        \
             /             /--Rock and roll albums-----Albums by genre   | 
           /             /          /     \                       \      |
         /             /          /         \-------------\         \    | 
       /             /          /                           \         \   \
Let It Be----------/----The Beatles albums---Albums by artist-\--------Albums-\
                 /         \                    /              |                \
        John Lennon albums---\----------------/                 \                 \
                     \         \                 /----Rock and roll--Music genres   \
251 Menlove Avenue-\   \         \             /                       \             Modern music
                     \   \         \         /  Musical groups by genre  \---------\  \
                       \   \         \     /      /                 \                \  \
                         \   \         \  Rock and roll groups  Musical groups-----\   \  \
           /---------John Lennon-----\   \           /           /                   \   \  \
         /                             \   \       /    Musical groups by nationality  \   \  \
       /                                 \   \   /                    /                  \   \  \
John Lennon------The Beatles members---The Beatles------British musical groups             \-Music
  \   \                    \                                \                                /  
    \   \                    \                         United Kingdom                       |
      \   \                    \                          /                                 |
        \   \                   British musicians--British people--People by nationality   /
          \   \                   \                                   \                  /
            \  Vocalists-\   Musicians by nationality---Musicians------People          /
              \            \                           /    \                        /
            Guitarists----Musicians by instrument----/        \--------------------/

How does that compare/fit in with other peoples' ideas? --Lee (talk) 14:44, 1 June 2004 (UTC)

Great. Much better than my example :) --Jim Regan 18:35, 1 June 2004 (UTC)

New Template

The Template namespace initialisation script has gone around to the album articles and changed the album boxes. They are no longer aligned to the right, and they are missing their borders. This needs to be fixed soon. --[[User:LGagnon|LGagnon Talk]] 19:39, 3 June 2004 (UTC)

That page does not exist. The infoboxes have been broken since the upgrade to MediaWiki 1.3. There seems to be a bug in 1.3 where it will ignore table tag parameter values in a custom message/template. I reported it as a bug in SourceForge [3] on May 31 and no one has even bothered to assign themselves to it yet. One solution is to do what we did in the Mountains project by editing the article and replacing:

{{msg:AlbumboxStart}}

with

{{subst:AlbumboxStart}}

I have already done this for Pink Floyd albums. --RedWolf 22:01, June 3, 2004 (UTC)

Ultimately, I'd like to see AlbumboxStart and AlbumboxEnd done away with in favor of a new Albumbox template that can just be filled in using parameters. I made a first attempt (see Template:Albumbox), but it needs work. In particular, there needs to be a good way to include multiple reviews in the albumbox. Maybe make a Template:AlbumboxReviewItem that can be fed multiple times into the "reviews" parameter or something. Perhaps a better plan will emerge once we all get more experience with the template system. —LarryGilbert 16:39, 2004 June 4 (UTC)

I had a crack at this a while back on the test wiki, see Template:Albumbox and Template:Review, with the results shown on The Fat of the Land. Unfortunately, with the current problems with images and piped links, parameterized templates aren't really tenable at the moment. --Lee (talk) 16:59, 4 June 2004 (UTC)

Yes, a parameterized template would be the best solution but like Lee, I also ran into similar problems when I tried to make one for the Mountains project. Until this solution works, using subst seems to be the simplest workaround for now. What I have been doing is when I add categories to an album page, I also implement this workaround. --RedWolf 17:26, June 4, 2004 (UTC)

I noticed that Wikipedia:WikiProject Countries has started using a parameterized template for their infoboxes. See Belgium It seems that they have worked around the image bug by requiring a certain format for their images and then generating the name in the Template itself. See the coat of arms and flag on their template, Template:Infobox Countries. It seems to me that this might be a good step to take anyway, to standardize our album cover images. Perhaps something like Image:ArtistAlbumNameAlbumCover.png (e.g. BobDylanBloodOnTheTracksAlbumCover.png). The main problem would of course be moving the old images to the new format, which wouldn't be necessary unless we used the template. What do people think? --Bgoldenberg 19:53, 4 June 2004 (UTC)

They get away with the use of images because they use the {{PAGENAME}} variable (= WikiProject Albums/Archive 1 for this page) rather than a parameter, so the file names, for us using their method, would have to be Blood_on_the_Tracks.png, or worse, say, Insomniac_(album).png or even Everything_Must_Go_(1996_album).png. Not impossible, but maybe not desirable. And we'd still be stuck on the piped links. --Lee (talk) 22:39, 4 June 2004 (UTC)

I realized that they used {{PAGENAME}}, but I forgot that this is often not just the title because of disambiguation. This now seems like it would probably be too much trouble. I still think that it might be worth standardizing the name of album cover images, though. This would make it easier to link to album covers without specifically looking up the image and generally simplify things. It would likely be too much work with too little benefit to convert all the old images, but perhaps we should adopt a standard for new images, such as my earlier proposition, ArtistAlbumNameAlbumCover.png (e.g. BobDylanBloodOnTheTracksAlbumCover.png). Of course, the exact standard doesn't really matter, just that a standard is adopted. What do other people think of this idea? --Bgoldenberg 023:34, June 4, 2004 (UTC)

The problem with trying to specify a naming convention for album cover images, is that there's the issue of bands with long names and/or albums with long names (especially the latter). I tend to use the full name of the artist but there are exceptions and I like to use underscores in the names. If the album name is quite long, I tend to abbreviate the words in the name. On the album cover image page, I link to the album page. I've uploaded the vast majority of the album covers myself that I use in articles so I really don't have a problem with locating the cover images. --RedWolf 06:49, June 5, 2004 (UTC)

Promoting n/a

I would like to promote "n/a" instead of "???" for those fields without information.
Let me know what you think and if that can be implemented to the standard table. --KeyStorm 21:49, 26 June 2004 (UTC)

Well, n/a is ambiguous. Someone not familar with the project standard wouldn't know for sure which was meant. I would agree that the ??? should be changed to something else but n/a doesn't seem to be the best solution.--RedWolf 03:03, June 29, 2004 (UTC)

British chart info

Everyhit.com is a searchable database of chart entries in the UK. This may be useful for people. --Secretlondon 22:56, 1 July 2004 (UTC)

Very useful and very interesting, thanks. Lots of nice trivia and award sections too. --Bwmodular 08:13, 2 July 2004 (UTC)

Quantity of articles

This is just for interest but:

• Every article with album tag in
• Every article with albumbox tag in

I think there may be a maximum cutoff so there may well be more... --Secretlondon 22:31, 28 June 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't it somehow also include all subst:AlbumboxStart? --KeyStorm 11:20, 2 July 2004 (UTC)

Using "subst" causes the system to replace the text in the article with what is currently in the template. Once the article is saved, the template reference is no longer in the article. We were forced to use subst to fix the problem caused by the MediaWiki 1.3 upgrade which broke right alignment of the infoboxes. --RedWolf 16:48, July 2, 2004 (UTC)

And isn't there any way to fix that? Since I'm seeing most tables without borders and wrongly aligned while using the original AlbumboxStart. Should we maybe use both AlbomboxStart and subst:AlbumBoxStart in the table parameter line? Or what's better, couldn't the subst template include the original AlbumboxStart? Sorry if I sound picky or annoy with stupid questions, but I'm new here and I'd like to do things the best way possible while helping to somehow inprove what we already have. --KeyStorm 09:11, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

I played around with using a template for specifying the year of an album which would automatically add a [[Category:yyyy albums]]. Unfortunately, trying to use a template parameter for a Category link fails miserably. See AlbumYear on test for the dreadful result. --RedWolf 22:00, July 3, 2004 (UTC)

Compilations in chronology

Should compilations be included in discographies and in the last section of the album boxes? --Auximines 13:02, 1 July 2004 (UTC)

Some say that articles for compilation albums are not needed, while others feel it preserves the consistency of the discography. The album boxes for Pink Floyd and Rush albums include links to the compilation albums. For legendary bands, there's probably a bigger push on providing articles on the compilation albums. For those bands who have released just a few albums and then their record label releases a greatest hits album, I tend not to create articles for that case. There's no hard rule that says you shouldn't create articles for compilation albums or link to them in the album infoboxes. --RedWolf 21:55, July 3, 2004 (UTC)

Sec vs. S

The 'sec' wording on the albumbox was recently changed to 's.' The 'sec' wording already exists on the many album pages that exist, and that form corresponds with the 'min' used for 'minute.' I've changed the 's' back to 'sec' since I believe continuity is important unless there is a good reason to change something like this. If there was a reason that this (and the other albums pages) should be changed to 's', I apologize for reverting the edit and feel free to remake it with a note here explaining why the change was made. Thanks! --Jrdioko 04:11, 14 April 2004 (UTC)

Some of the albums by Rush were also changed from 'sec' to 's'. However, I have found no explanation for this change. In any case, it should have been discussed here before making such a template change. If one is going to change 'sec' to 's' why not change 'min' to 'm' to be consistent? I agree with your revert Jrdioko until this issue has been discussed. --RedWolf 04:49, 14 April 2004 (UTC)

I think this is part of a wider attempt to standardise to official SI abbreviations. I agree with you though, it doesn't look right next 'min' which can't be changed to 'm' ('m'=metre). (This change has been made to a lot of album pages). --Lee (talk) 10:52, 14 April 2004 (UTC)

Once I thought about it I realized the change was probably a switch to SI like Lee said. Maybe since changes have already started to be made we need to discuss it here and come up with something final that can be applied to all the new and old pages. 'Sec' could be avoided by simply putting something like 38:42, but that seems much more confusing than '38 min 42 sec.' It would be nice to use SI, and I'm usually someone in support of standardizing things like that, but '38 min 42 s' does look strange. What does everyone else think? Any ideas? --Jrdioko 15:10, 14 April 2004 (UTC)

The options: (as I see them)

1. 38 min 42 sec -- A wholesale revert and damn the standards.
2. 38 min 42 s -- Bring everything into line with style but end up looking odd.
3. 38 m 42 s -- Looks ok, but there may be problems with m = metre.
4. 38:42 -- meh.
5. 2,322s -- Maybe not...
6. Other.

I'm stumped. --Lee (talk) 16:14, 14 April 2004 (UTC)

Given those options, I would choose #4 and then #1. The others just don't work for me. Since we don't use the min and sec stuff for the individual track times, I don't see it as a big deal if we drop it for the "Length" in the infobox. However, for some double and triple albums, we are talking a couple of hours which would then tempt many to probably want to use hours, minutes, seconds unless they give the times for each CD or disc. Would it really be an issue for people if we just used mm:ss instead of mm min ss sec? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RedWolf (talk • contribs) 01:10, 15 April 2004 (UTC)

I would tend to think that to avoid future SI conversions switching all the album pages from whatever we decide here that the original "mm min ss sec" doesn't work. "mm min ss s" really does look weird and "mm m ss s" I'd say definitely can't be used. I'd say go with mm:ss, but that is a little confusing as to what is minutes, seconds, and hours, especially if some albums are longer than an hour. You could do something like 76:43 in that case, but that's even more confusing. I'm stumped as well. I'd say "mm min ss sec" is the best looking and least confusing, but I'm afraid that would result in future SI changes. Not that it's absolutely vital that we stay standarized with this, but it would be nice. --Jrdioko 23:26, 19 April 2004 (UTC)

Actually, I think with the upcoming template namespace (which is live at the test pedia), it will be as simple as changing a MediaWiki page to update the format of infoboxes. --Tuf-Kat 01:01, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

That sounds like a great idea, would you mind passing along the URL to that infobox project? I haven't looked around much at the test site. --Jrdioko 01:20, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

See this edit window for an article on Belgium using a countrybox template. I'm not sure where the Template namespace is discussed in detail (somewhere at meta, but can't find it now), but my understand is that a page called Template:Albumbox will be created and at an article (say Abbey Road), one need only type:

{{Template:Album
|Title - ''Abbey Road''
|Cover - Image:AbbeyRoad.gif
|Format - LP
|Band - The Beatles

And so on, thus automagically creating an infobox. (as the Belgium link above shows, the markup is somewhat more complicated than I wrote it... not sure why, exactly). So, that's the gist of it all. Now that I think about it, however, if the "min" "sec" notation is in the box on the right, it might not be considered part of the template by the computer, and would thus need to be entered individually on each albumbox, but there's probably a way to avoid that. --Tuf-Kat 04:24, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea to experiment with when it is released. --Jrdioko 04:36, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

←Strangely enough, I've already been playing with this over at test. The template is at Template:Albumbox (there's also Template:Review for the reviews). The code (from Aquemini) looks like {{Albumbox| Title=Aquemini| Artist=OutKast| Type=Album| Artwork=Aqueminicvr.jpg| Released-day=[[September 28]]| Released-year=[[1998]]| Recorded=| Genre=[[Southern rap]]| Length=74:47| Record label=[[La Face]]| Producer=[[Organized Noize]], [[Babyface]] and OutKast| Previous=[[ATLiens]]| Previous-year=[[1996]]| Next=[[Stankonia]]| Next-year=[[2000]] }} There's also a hidden Color (and Alt-Color - for dual types like Ummagumma) parameter, which I cheated with by making it default to orange. Length should probably be split into two though, min and sec, to make format changes easier. Unfortunately, I had to do a bit of a kludge to get the reviews in. I am very open to better suggestions on that score. --Lee (talk) 11:20, 20 April 2004 (UTC)

Re: Tuf-kat's template: That's awesome. I've been wishing for a feature like this. —LarryGilbert 19:13, 21 April 2004 (UTC)

1. 38' 42" --KeyStorm 17:43, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

Let's get back to the topic: I want to report that Bobblewik has been changing 'sec' to 's' -at least in many of my watched albums-. So I encourage everybody to change it back, since he took the decision for us all. Why don't we use the 'ed format? 38' 42" (I'll add it to the list) --KeyStorm 17:43, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

I was not aware that this was under discussion here but thanks to Keystorm, I have been pointed at this page. I have been fixing the many inconsistencies in unit symbols and standardising to SI (e.g. hr -> h, km/hr -> km/h, kph -> km/h, mps -> m/s, kg/sec -> kg/sec, km/sec -> km/s, sec -> s). You will see at the offical SI website [4] that the standard symbols are second (s), minute (min), hour (h), day (d). Trying to help. --Bobblewik 18:24, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

And we're pleased with all your metric unit corrections. I myself would do it if I saw any. But the fact is here that it visually dosn't fit. I completely agree with you, though, that it's 's', but I think we should wait until we find a consensed solution. Thanks for your weeding. --KeyStorm 18:32, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

For what it is worth, the format m:ss (7:42, 38:42) or even h:mm:ss (1:15:42) is universal. It is even enshrined in ISO 8601 (See: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html). I think 'Duration' would be a better word than 'Length'. It looks fine to me. --Bobblewik 20:38, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

I'm not very sure. 'hh:mm:ss' is more usually used to express a certain point in absolute time (t) and not to express a time period or duration (t-Δt). That's why the most correct form is the scientific form followed by an unit. Also you can't determine whether 14:56 means 14 minutes and 56 seconds or 14 hours and 56 minutes (since we are allowed to ommit the seconds). For this and other aesthetic reasons I keep defending the M min, S sec (although wrongly abbreviated) and the M' S" formats, since they are the correct form to express time intervals and durations (for instance, in athletics). --KeyStorm 21:56, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

I agree that the correct scientific form should be a value followed by a unit e.g. ks, Ms, Gs, etc. Time is an anomaly unfortunately. To use the example of athletics, the format mm:ss is indeed used. See IAAF - international governing body US Athletics governing body --Bobblewik 23:21, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

Ok, bad example :-/, but I'm happy to see you got my point anyway ;-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by KeyStorm (talk • contribs) 23:48, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

Album box necessity?

Okay, now I don't mean to offend here, so try to read what I have to say objectively. I have just finished adding albumboxes to all of the Modest Mouse album articles. And, thinking back, I really think they looked better before, with the info in the article, and the album cover just float right, like any other image. The albumboxes seem kind of unnecessary. Plus the text of the article seems to run too close to the albumbox - like there's not enough buffer space around the albumbox or something. I just think the articles looked better before. And why is orange the color? Why not something more standard like white or grey or wikipedia-yellow? Thoughts? --blankfaze 23:08, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

Ah, but you see, those Modest Mouse articles are little more than stubs at the moment. The point of the table is to condense certain pertinant information at the top of a decent-sized article for easy reference. You should really think about adding more to the article than removing the albumbox.

As for the orange - dunno, I wasn't around when that decision was made. I think it might be a little too late in the day to change it, unfortunately. When the new mediawiki software (1.3) comes, with the ability to use templates, it might be worth rethinking the colors, if it's decided we should replace the existing albumboxes with templated versions, that is (which I think we should). It might also mean making sweeping changes like that would be easier in the future. --Lee (talk) 23:34, 15 May 2004 (UTC)

I suppose I see what you're saying. I just think these Albumbox things are kind-of ugly (no offence to anyone). But Wikipedia is a community encyclopædia, not my encyclopædia. --blankfaze | &#9835 01:28, 23 May 2004 (UTC)

A similar quesion was recently debated on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aircraft. See The Table Format. --Bobblewik 18:55, 29 July 2004 (UTC)

Fixed column widths

I've seen some painfully stretched and shrunk columns in some albumboxes. That's usually due to the length of some comment fields that usually make the third column smaller than usual. I would put a width="33%" in all columns (or at least in the first non-"colspan=3" ones). I have tested this in Rammstien and results were satisfactory. Should we add it to the example? --KeyStorm 22:44, 3 July 2004 (UTC)

"Vinyl record" v/s "Gramophone record"

There has been discussion about merging the content of the vinyl record article into the gramophone record article and making the first into a redirect to the second. I'd therefore suggest linking "LP" or similar designations where appropriate directly to "gramophone record". Alternatively, if some folks feel that "vinyl record" should remain a seperate article, explain your reasons at Talk:gramophone record. --Infrogmation 00:08, 5 September 2004 (UTC)

AllMusic.com ratings

Ive noticed that AllMusic.com is listed as a place to cite reviews for albums. Not sure if anyone had realized this, but AMG's rating system is vastly different from most other sources'.

From AMG's FAQ: Our experts use a 1 to 5 star system (5 is the highest rating). It is important to note that we rate albums only with the scope of an artist’s own work -- we only compare a release to other releases by the same artist.

Thus, every band will have at least one very highly rated album. Maybe this sort of rating shouldn't be used in the tables. Or should be distinguished from the traditional sort of rating.

opinions? —Preceding unsigned comment added by George.dickeson (talk • contribs) 16:29, 12 September 2004 (UTC)

Albums and band's article, together or separated?

I've been working a bit with HIM lately completing information, adding albums, etc. and I noticed that some days ago, without posting anything to the discussion and even adding some albums (at least Love Metal) to VFD during surprisingly only 37 minutes Samuel J. Howard redirected all 4 album articles to the bandpage and appended them chronologically to it, as you can see now.
So my question is: is this the way supported and recommended by WikiProject: Albums? Or should it be splitted back again?
I'm afraid this is not the right way, but I thought I should bring the discussion right here to get the clear opinion of WP: Albums about this. --KeyStorm 13:08, 12 September 2004 (UTC)

The albums should be in separate articles. Initially, album pages tend to be just just a brief description, track listing and personnel. Over time, the info box is added as well as additional information about the album itself (see the project info for more details). The band page should contain a Discography section, listing all of the band's albums in chronological order (which helps get the next/previous albums in the infobox correct). At this point, sometimes the albums are not linked. So, as for your particular case, the album info should be split out again. A message should be left on that user's page telling him not to fold albums back into the band page. --RedWolf 16:37, 12 September 2004 (UTC)

Record label

As many albums released in different countries are released on more than one label, which record label should be included in the information box - all of them or just the one in the country the album orginally came from? --Deus Ex 10:25, 12 September 2004 (UTC)

Since this issue also arose when it came to release dates, the decision was to use the first date of release of the album in whichever country came first. So, I would say only list the first label. You could put the other labels and dates into the article body itself. --RedWolf 16:41, 12 September 2004 (UTC)

Album template too large?

Discussion at Template talk:Album. --— Matt 03:50, 15 September 2004 (UTC)

Awards

Are there any thoughts on a standard way to list awards and nominations (such as the Grammys) for albums? I added an "Awards" section to Billy Joel's 52nd Street and The Eagles' Hotel California. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. --DCEdwards1966 04:45, 12 October 2004 (UTC)

Sample uploading project

If I made a WikiProject Sound samples to encourage the uploading of ogg vorbis music samples, would anyone join me? I think it'd be great if we had samples of as much as possible, but it's rather tedious and time-consuming to do in bulk. If you don't know how, it's easy -- I can walk you through on a Mac and point you in the right direction on a Windows. We could even advertise a week in which we encourage Wikipedians to do just two a day for a week, or maybe just one sample for their five favorite bands/albums/whatever -- with the number of users who probably have copious sound samples, we could really move towards having a comprehensive review of music. Any takers? (I am posting this to several project pages, please respond at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music) --Tuf-Kat 22:25, 16 October 2004 (UTC)

Goals

I have lately come to the conclusion that WikiProjects should set goals. I have begun to do so at Wikipedia:WikiProject World music/Phase 2, but that isn't a very active WikiProject. This is, however, an active project. We could set a goal, such as making a non-stub article on each of the albums at list of rock and roll albums (which is an aggregate of professional "best-of" lists), and promote any five to featured article status, for example. When we all agree that the articles are non-stubbed and all five have been promoted, then we can begin to keep tallies on the number of non-stub and featured articles, and showcase our best work and such. What do y'all think? --Tuf-Kat 20:09, 15 October 2004 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Featured albums proposal —Preceding unsigned comment added by TUF-KAT (talk • contribs) 06:30, 17 October 2004 (UTC)

Changes to the example table

Neutrality made several changes to the example table on the main page, which I've now reverted. The first reason is because I personally disagree with most of them, but even aside from that, some of the changes made directly contradict other information on the page, namely using a piped link to a "year in music", and also not using the date of a review as the link text (when known). It's important that the page at least be consistent in itself, you shouldn't go changing one thing without ensuring that the rest matches up, and you shouldn't make such changes without at least discussing them first. --Lee (talk) 00:05, 10 October 2004 (UTC)

Why does the example infobox table have background=transparent set in its style tag? This causes the horizontal line from section headers to show behind the box? Most albums I've viewed do not have this problem, is it a recent change? I created several Mike Doughty album pages from this template and I'm wondering if I did something wrong. --Rhobite 00:06, 6 November 2004 (UTC)

Guanaco made the change on August 29. I removed the transparent style from the template. --DCEdwards1966 00:41, 6 November 2004 (UTC)

Category:Albums by artist

Recently a couple of sub-categories of Category:Albums by artist have been listed on Wikipedia:Categories for deletion. Category:Ashlee Simpson albums on the grounds that she only has one album released so far, and Category:Chantal Kreviazuk albums due to lack of notability. Also, List of albums has been listed on Vfd, where quite a few people recommend scrapping the list in favor of categories. Now, when I first suggested the Albums by artist category, I envisaged it to be just that, a categorical equivalent of (or replacement for) List of albums, that is to say, a list of album articles sorted alphabetically by artist.

With that in mind, I had hoped that all album articles would eventually be marked with the appropriate artist album category, alongside the year category. Perhaps I was wrong to suggest it. Anyway, I would encourage more people to pass comment (for or against) at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, to help get a clearer sense of consensus on the use of these categories. --Lee (talk) 18:57, 8 November 2004 (UTC)

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