This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 20 | ← | Archive 23 | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | → | Archive 30 |
I'd like to be proactive and give you all a "heads-up" that the Biography project is starting a new Summer Article Assessment drive (primary purpose would be to populate the class tag in the WP Bio banner on talk pages of biographical articles.) So you may be seeing some script-aided activity, by editors placing/editing WPBio banners on talk pages. I will be participating in the assessment drive (on a small scale, not using scripts); note that I've placed a comment on the drive's talk page requesting the avoidance of the use of the "infobox-needed" parameter. I'm letting "you-all" know this, because I think you'd feel less alarmed being aware of it ahead of time, rather than just suddenly seeing a lot of script-assisted activity; I'm hoping that my note here won't, at this time, generate a lot of comments at the talk page above; I think in this case keeping things very cordial and not putting too much emphasis on something that may not even become an issue is advisable. If you find that the drive is seeming to generate activity other than populating the class parameter (and possibly the working-group parameters) in the WPBio banners, and you feel such activity is disruptive, I'd appreciate it if you'd talk to me about it; I would attempt to clear up situations where the cause is misunderstanding of the objective of the assessment drive by some participants. Thanks, Lini 12:43, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Just picking up on some of this: I've had plenty of the articles I've written for DYK - all of which, naturally, lack infoboxes - classed as Start when as far as I can see they comfortably pass WP:WPBIO's own criteria for at least B-class. Now, I don't care a hoot about these silly ratings one way or the other, but something like William Savage is surely one of the best resources you'll find on him anywhere, even if you do shell out 200 quid for Grove, or somehow get hold of a copy of Steven's 18th-century bio of him. The article is decently written and well-referenced, and leaves nothing out. All illustrates the folly of this mass-grading scheme. Moreschi Talk 18:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure that this isn't the place for it, but, while I'm reading Lini's sensible remarks here, what the heck: I wonder whether WPBio might be better employed dealing with biographical articles that aren't within the purview of other project(s). In the case of composers, there are three projects ( WP:Composers, WP:WPO, WP:CM), which seem to coexist quite happily; and a lot of singers may well be covered by both of the latter two. What does WPBio have to bring to the table that isn't here already? -- GuillaumeTell 17:39, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the great comments Lini. To my understanding part of the disappointment comes from the idea that someone from outside a field of interest is going to be able to perform assessments (beyond stub-non-stub) at all. I think that Wikipedia has grown to the point where editing "off the top of your head" is getting harder and harder. If editors now need to cite sources inline, be ever more vigilant in avoiding systematic bias, and so on, I would think that the level of professionalism of assessments should also be increasing in equal measure. If one gives an assessment level which says that an article has obvious gaps (B-start-stub), I don't think it's unreasonable to, for instance, name one source from which these gaps could be filled. That probably means at least having a copy of Encyclopedia Brit. on-line or JSTOR available while assessing.
I also think that these banners need to have a discussion space in them -- they're taking pride of place at the top of the talk page--the least they should do is encourage talking.
For our part though it seems that the greatest outraged feeling comes when an article is assessed as start which is complete and nearly-FA (in quality if not in importance). We could probably do more to help assessors in recognizing these articles by nominating more obscure articles for GA and participating in GA assessments for music articles. It's not operatic, but figure I should mention that I just nominated an article I wrote, Egardus, for GA, since it's really not missing much of anything; though I figured for Medieval composers it made more sense to list under History->Biography than with all the rock bands in Musicians. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Like other members of the three (genuine) music projects, I think the WP:BIO assessments just leave detritus on WP pages.
There is a potential role for the Biography Project in WP in encouraging development and better editing of biographical articles. This is the way that print projects such as the DNB Dictionary of National Biography have contributed to traditional publishing. The problem here is that WP:BIO is launching these WP-wide projects at a time when their editing standards are much lower than that of the specialized projects affected, hence the inevitable conflict and time wasting for all concerned. -- Kleinzach 03:10, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I've been working on Italian opera and I've just moved my revisions so far from my sandbox to main space. It's by no means perfect and I haven't finished but I thought I'd give others an opportunity to join in. I've made a start on revising the 17th and 18th century sections, using the version on the Italian WP as a basis. I stole Moreschi's section about Gluck and Mozart from the main article. All this probably needs expanding (especially the 18th century - i.e. Handel and Co.). I'm not going to touch the 19th or 20th centuries because I'm no expert on them and I've noticed people round here get upset if an opera gets mischaracterised as "bel canto" or "verismo". Likewise, we probably need a section on how Mussolini's artistic policy affected Malipiero and Dallapiccola (or whatever) and something about the avant-garde (Nono,Berio). But I'll leave that to others.
I've also translated Polish opera. Again, I haven't put the final touches to this but it's a good, solid article which is currently an FA candidate on Polish WP. I've checked some of the facts against English sources and they pass for accuracy. There are some controversial bits (is Halka really a finer opera than The Haunted Manor?) but they can be sorted out. I'm still ironing out a few ambiguities and maybe there needs to be more historical background to make things clearer to the non-Polish reader. -- Folantin 12:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Now that we are about to ask SatyrTN to run the bot, can we look at the Opera banner and see if it needs editing? The existing text is:
This article is a part of the Opera WikiProject, a collaboration to develop Wikipedia articles on operas and opera terminology, opera composers, librettists and singers, directors and managers, companies and houses, and recordings. The project talk page is a place to discuss issues, identify areas of neglect and exchange ideas. New members are very welcome!
We will also (presumably) need a second version (called operastub?), for noting stubs. Perhaps the wording for this would be something like:
This article is a part of the Opera WikiProject, a collaboration to develop Wikipedia articles on operas and opera terminology, opera composers, librettists and singers, directors and managers, companies and houses, and recordings. The project talk page is a place to discuss issues, identify areas of neglect and exchange ideas. New members are very welcome!
This article has been automatically assessed as Stub-Class by WikiProject Opera because it uses a stub template.
Comments? Suggested new versions? Should we adopt something shorter? -- Kleinzach 03:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Done that. Do you reckon the banner should be further altered so as to include an article rating scheme (but not an article importance scheme, which I'm not a fan of). People may have noticed I rejigged Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article ranking to make it more opera-specific, improvements upon my improvements welcome. Cheers, Moreschi Talk 09:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 20 | ← | Archive 23 | Archive 24 | Archive 25 | Archive 26 | Archive 27 | → | Archive 30 |
I'd like to be proactive and give you all a "heads-up" that the Biography project is starting a new Summer Article Assessment drive (primary purpose would be to populate the class tag in the WP Bio banner on talk pages of biographical articles.) So you may be seeing some script-aided activity, by editors placing/editing WPBio banners on talk pages. I will be participating in the assessment drive (on a small scale, not using scripts); note that I've placed a comment on the drive's talk page requesting the avoidance of the use of the "infobox-needed" parameter. I'm letting "you-all" know this, because I think you'd feel less alarmed being aware of it ahead of time, rather than just suddenly seeing a lot of script-assisted activity; I'm hoping that my note here won't, at this time, generate a lot of comments at the talk page above; I think in this case keeping things very cordial and not putting too much emphasis on something that may not even become an issue is advisable. If you find that the drive is seeming to generate activity other than populating the class parameter (and possibly the working-group parameters) in the WPBio banners, and you feel such activity is disruptive, I'd appreciate it if you'd talk to me about it; I would attempt to clear up situations where the cause is misunderstanding of the objective of the assessment drive by some participants. Thanks, Lini 12:43, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Just picking up on some of this: I've had plenty of the articles I've written for DYK - all of which, naturally, lack infoboxes - classed as Start when as far as I can see they comfortably pass WP:WPBIO's own criteria for at least B-class. Now, I don't care a hoot about these silly ratings one way or the other, but something like William Savage is surely one of the best resources you'll find on him anywhere, even if you do shell out 200 quid for Grove, or somehow get hold of a copy of Steven's 18th-century bio of him. The article is decently written and well-referenced, and leaves nothing out. All illustrates the folly of this mass-grading scheme. Moreschi Talk 18:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure that this isn't the place for it, but, while I'm reading Lini's sensible remarks here, what the heck: I wonder whether WPBio might be better employed dealing with biographical articles that aren't within the purview of other project(s). In the case of composers, there are three projects ( WP:Composers, WP:WPO, WP:CM), which seem to coexist quite happily; and a lot of singers may well be covered by both of the latter two. What does WPBio have to bring to the table that isn't here already? -- GuillaumeTell 17:39, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the great comments Lini. To my understanding part of the disappointment comes from the idea that someone from outside a field of interest is going to be able to perform assessments (beyond stub-non-stub) at all. I think that Wikipedia has grown to the point where editing "off the top of your head" is getting harder and harder. If editors now need to cite sources inline, be ever more vigilant in avoiding systematic bias, and so on, I would think that the level of professionalism of assessments should also be increasing in equal measure. If one gives an assessment level which says that an article has obvious gaps (B-start-stub), I don't think it's unreasonable to, for instance, name one source from which these gaps could be filled. That probably means at least having a copy of Encyclopedia Brit. on-line or JSTOR available while assessing.
I also think that these banners need to have a discussion space in them -- they're taking pride of place at the top of the talk page--the least they should do is encourage talking.
For our part though it seems that the greatest outraged feeling comes when an article is assessed as start which is complete and nearly-FA (in quality if not in importance). We could probably do more to help assessors in recognizing these articles by nominating more obscure articles for GA and participating in GA assessments for music articles. It's not operatic, but figure I should mention that I just nominated an article I wrote, Egardus, for GA, since it's really not missing much of anything; though I figured for Medieval composers it made more sense to list under History->Biography than with all the rock bands in Musicians. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:46, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Like other members of the three (genuine) music projects, I think the WP:BIO assessments just leave detritus on WP pages.
There is a potential role for the Biography Project in WP in encouraging development and better editing of biographical articles. This is the way that print projects such as the DNB Dictionary of National Biography have contributed to traditional publishing. The problem here is that WP:BIO is launching these WP-wide projects at a time when their editing standards are much lower than that of the specialized projects affected, hence the inevitable conflict and time wasting for all concerned. -- Kleinzach 03:10, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
I've been working on Italian opera and I've just moved my revisions so far from my sandbox to main space. It's by no means perfect and I haven't finished but I thought I'd give others an opportunity to join in. I've made a start on revising the 17th and 18th century sections, using the version on the Italian WP as a basis. I stole Moreschi's section about Gluck and Mozart from the main article. All this probably needs expanding (especially the 18th century - i.e. Handel and Co.). I'm not going to touch the 19th or 20th centuries because I'm no expert on them and I've noticed people round here get upset if an opera gets mischaracterised as "bel canto" or "verismo". Likewise, we probably need a section on how Mussolini's artistic policy affected Malipiero and Dallapiccola (or whatever) and something about the avant-garde (Nono,Berio). But I'll leave that to others.
I've also translated Polish opera. Again, I haven't put the final touches to this but it's a good, solid article which is currently an FA candidate on Polish WP. I've checked some of the facts against English sources and they pass for accuracy. There are some controversial bits (is Halka really a finer opera than The Haunted Manor?) but they can be sorted out. I'm still ironing out a few ambiguities and maybe there needs to be more historical background to make things clearer to the non-Polish reader. -- Folantin 12:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
Now that we are about to ask SatyrTN to run the bot, can we look at the Opera banner and see if it needs editing? The existing text is:
This article is a part of the Opera WikiProject, a collaboration to develop Wikipedia articles on operas and opera terminology, opera composers, librettists and singers, directors and managers, companies and houses, and recordings. The project talk page is a place to discuss issues, identify areas of neglect and exchange ideas. New members are very welcome!
We will also (presumably) need a second version (called operastub?), for noting stubs. Perhaps the wording for this would be something like:
This article is a part of the Opera WikiProject, a collaboration to develop Wikipedia articles on operas and opera terminology, opera composers, librettists and singers, directors and managers, companies and houses, and recordings. The project talk page is a place to discuss issues, identify areas of neglect and exchange ideas. New members are very welcome!
This article has been automatically assessed as Stub-Class by WikiProject Opera because it uses a stub template.
Comments? Suggested new versions? Should we adopt something shorter? -- Kleinzach 03:38, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Done that. Do you reckon the banner should be further altered so as to include an article rating scheme (but not an article importance scheme, which I'm not a fan of). People may have noticed I rejigged Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera/Article ranking to make it more opera-specific, improvements upon my improvements welcome. Cheers, Moreschi Talk 09:46, 6 June 2007 (UTC)