Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 71

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Opera stubs

Preliminary note: Many OP members were away when the stub-sorting discussion took place. For those of you who want some background, the discussion is archived here. Voceditenore (talk) 22:51, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

I've closed the June stub proposal and made a decision based on the arguments given. I think it is best to split by language rather than century although you ma need to correct the names. For instance if you have England-opera-stub for english this can be confusing as it may refer to operas also from the United States, Canada, Australia etc. So I've linked them e.g English-language-opera-stub etc. Seems sensible for an opera-bio-stub or opera-composer-stub and a stub cat for opera buildings too for better organization. I concluded that by century was a bit too generic and would be better split by language given a common theme or style from a certian language that some editors may be working on. For Russian and Czech operas etc, depending on how many there are, I would suggest creating upmerged templates. Could somebody offer an insight into how many stubs there are for each? Otherwise keep using opera-stub.

The following will be created:

However, before these are created, we will need to agree on the name of them. Normally we would name them e.g {{Italy-opera-stub}} but the country naming would prove awkward for english language operas which may derive from numerous countries. The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:00, 18 September 2008 (UTC) The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:13, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Alas, I haven't a clue as to what "upmerged templates" are.;-) Anyhow, I would say that there are currently no more than 5 stub articles for each of the other languages I mentioned. So I assume that we just continue with {{Opera-stub}} for those, as well as using it for opera directors, managers, administrators, librettists, publications, companies (as opposed to opera houses, although often a company is inextricably linked to a particular opera house, particularly in Italy)? As for the names, yes it should be the language name rather than the country name. This isn't a problem only for English language operas. There are quite a few operas written in Italian by composers who are/were not Italian and which did not even premiere in Italy. Not to mention operas by American composers which are half in English and half in Spanish like La Curandera. Voceditenore (talk) 22:42, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

The June stub sorting discussion ended - after an energetic stub removal campaign by this project - with an apparent agreement that no further action was required. The discussion was never closed - various people declined to do so on the grounds of having been involved in the debate. Finally Grutness suggested here that I approach the (hitherto uninvolved) Blofeld of SPECTRE which I did. Grutness noted the concluding comments as follows " Kleinzach and Pegship's comments at the end of the debate seem to sum it up quite well." I'm therefore surprised that Blofeld of SPECTRE has started creating new stubs on his own initiative. Klein zach 00:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Ahem. Excuse me by my own initiative? I was asked to close the debate and given that there are a relatively high number of opera stubs which is a very generalized stub category it seemd sensible to at least sort it a little by the biggest language operas. If my action was required to close it because nothing needed to be done, I find it very peculiar that nobody would close the debate if that decision was so obvious. Now I am willing to repropose the stub categories I suggested by language (excluding the composer one). The Bald One ^{White cat} 08:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

The person who closes a debate has a responsibility to make decisions in line with that debate. If you decide to participate in a debate you are encouraged to put forward your own ideas, but the person closing the discussion (as a kind of chairman) loses all respect if he or she acts in the same way. --Klein zach 03:30, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Unambiguous stub types are not only easier for editors, but also for arranging bot runs. Bots have successfully used the existing (unproblematic) stubs to categorize opera articles - whereas on the Classical Music Project this has been a major pain for us (still unresolved) due of the difficulty of using multiple stub types, many of which have not been clearly defined.

Cross-project: {{Opera-composer-stub}} has already been rejected as unnecessary (as Voceditenore said on 4 July: "I don't think §hep's proposal of an Template:Opera-composer-stub is viable or would reduce numbers much, since my understanding is that the current opera stub isn't used for them anyway. There are no stubs at the moment in "Opera" which are about composers.") I also pointed out (5 July): "Category:Opera composers is not exclusive. . . . the variability of a composer's involvement with opera means Template:Opera-composer-stub would be impractical.")

Opera nationality/language: {{Italian-opera-stub}}, {{French-opera-stub}}, {{English-opera-stub}}, {{German-opera-stub}} were rejected by this project on 30 December 2007, see the discussion here after the unannounced initiative by Waacstats. In any case we already have perfectly serviceable 'opera by language' categories such Category:Italian-language operas. Thank you for reading this.--Klein zach 00:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

So your're justifying against the creation of these stub categories because "we have perfectly serviceable 'opera by language' categories such Category:Italian-language operas". If this was the gneeral idea then we would have absolutely no stub categories on wikipedia "because we already have categories". The idea is that we root out which are stubs, (stub sorting as planned) so those articles in the newly created stub category can be expanded. Are you telling me there are absolutely no Italian opera stubs or indeed that you know exactly all of the articles in Category:Italian language operas which are on the short side? The Bald One ^{White cat} 08:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't care much either way, but could you please urgently adjust your mechanism which adds these templates/categories to provide a proper edit summary? Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:17, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Blofeld of SPECTRE, why are you adding “STUB tag” in the non-stub articles, how do you classify stub and non-stub status? This user is not only making decision to change the stub “name” without majority decision but increasing our stub numbers. Do we have the consensus to change the stub name yet and “adding” stub tag in the articles that we have removed the tag before? Not only that, in Adelson e Salvini you added the tag in the synopsis! - Jay (talk) 11:19, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Case in point: Oper Leipzig is now a stub; the previous edit by Kleinzach in July explicitly de-stubbed it. Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:27, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

That's one way of dealing with apparent problems: undo messages on one's discussion page. Michael Bednarek (talk) 11:38, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep, speechless too. I was going to comment earlier this morning but Blofeld ploughed right on ahead short-circuiting the debate. And now this... --Folantin (talk) 11:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes when you address them as rudely as you did and cause the fuss that you all make. Your're all acting like a bunch of old farts. None of my decisions are controversial. If I stub tagged some border line stub-start class articles I apologise but I think you;ll find that many of the articles, particularly those on opera houses were not even tagged at all by the opera project. The Bald One ^{White cat} 11:45, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Wow, do you know what is the meaning of "discussion" and who are you to make the decision on your own? I am right now... thinking whether I should undo all the changes you made until we have finalized the decision. Let me think, before my fingers start clicking. - Jay (talk) 11:50, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I do know what the meaning of discussion is, and I am not making anymore changes until we sort it out. I never realised there would be such a huge uproar against something that I thought was proposed by your project or somebody familiar with it and trying to help you out, Your're treaitng me like some vandal. The Bald One ^{White cat} 11:52, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I fail to see what whas rude about my question — but I regard your language definitely as such.

Is there an athority to appeal to for a wholesale revert of these edits? Among my watched pages, I have seen 2 out of several dozen changes which were proper, the others were not. Michael Bednarek (talk)

Look throught the 200+ articles I tagged. The vast majority are completely valid edits and some of your "start class" articles really are pretty stubby. The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

FYI, there are some decisions made by the majority of Opera project members that I disagree, but that’s the way it works in the real life. We all work here as a group. So, lets discuss first. If the majority agree with you, then you can continue doing it. If not, just drop it! I didn’t say your idea was bad but I would prefer if you could wait until the decision has been made. That is all what I’m asking. Thanks. - Jay (talk) 12:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

And now Blofeld is doing the assessment on behalf of the Opera Project? Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. And remember I wouldn't have even touched an article if I wasn't asked to close the proposal and taken the course of action which seemed appropriate from it. Yes some people wanted all articles under the sun to be categorised as opera stubs, when others thought it completely appropriate including myself to begin stub sorting. I hope we can come to a decision on it but if the reason not to is because of some bot, remember that WikiProject Opera articles should have them all in anyway. Can you please stop the personal attacks Michael? The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:05, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Come again? All WikiProject Opera articles should be categorised as stubs?

Personal attacks? Where? How? Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:08, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

If anything, Blofeld has launched a personal attack on Michael by reverting his good faith talk page query without an edit summary. That treatment is only supposed to be reserved for trolls and vandals. --Folantin (talk) 12:12, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Did I say all opera articles should be categorised as stubs??? I think you'll find I didn't tag any high quality articles. Its your attitude that "Oh. Who is Blofeld to touch OUR articles and decide?". I was asked by your project member User:Kleinzach specifically. If somebody is treating me as a vandal then I respond to them as one. The message by Michael Bednarek was delibrately antagonizing and critical. If he had left a message such as "HI Blofeld. Can you please hold off on the stub sorting for the mo. I disagree with some of your tagging". This would have been perfectly acceptable to me. The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:14, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

On your discussion page, you remarked on the number of articles in the stub categories. I commented: ":… which is unsurprising given that you seem to categorise articles as stubs [which] were not so categorised before." with this edit summary: "How do you determine where to add stub categories?" What's antagonizing and critical about that?

When you wrote above: "WikiProject Opera articles should have them all in anyway" it wasn't clear to me what you meant; I think it was reasonable to assume you meant "stubs" by "them". I'm glad you didn't. Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Reminder of WP:STUB: "A stub is an article containing only a few sentences of text which is too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, but not so short as to provide no useful information". Examples: this is an opera stub; this isn't. Caveat: there is no way that you can decide on an article's "stubbiness" simply by looking at the length. Some of our short articles contain almost all the available information on a topic. Therefore stub assessment should only be carried out by someone who knows something about the subject at hand. --Folantin (talk) 13:02, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Well I tend to take a number of factors into account. Whilst it has a background, an article which has a one line summary of the plot and is completely unreferenced doesn't meet start class article criteria in my book. It still looks a pretty short and incomplete article to me that is questionable as a start class which is supposed to a have a brief of the main points of the article which this fails on. I don't think it gives an adequate account of what it is about. Perhaps now we have the new C class I need to reconsider the criteria but I don't think it is as controversial as you imply.

On a more positive note, may I offer my congratulations to the project for the many articles which aren't stubs and are actually admirable. There are some very good articles on individual operas and series by composers which are an excellent and cultured addition to the project. Still a long way to go at consistently good coverage but it will get there eventually and what I thought the stub sorting would help work towards to ensure there are no stubs. Well done to all anyway! The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:10, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Some clarification

Blofeld, if you read the discussion at the Stub-sorting Project carefully, you'll see that Kleinzach asked that the discussion be closed with "no action required now" and that as a policy guideline:

"The Opera Project are asked to periodically review and de-stub as necessary. (Doing this at least once a year would be a good idea.) Any future proposals for new stub types need to be quantified and discussed between the WPSS and the Opera Project."

with which another member of WSSP agreed. The creation of new stubs was not something proposed by our project at all. In fact, we were dismayed to find last June that new stubs were being proposed, and that stub-sorting had been underway for four days (affecting at least 70 articles) without anyone in WPSS even notifying us of this, let alone asking for our input.

I'm not opposed to the new stub categories, and I recognize that while we might find them an unnecessary complication, taking the larger Wikipedia view, they may be very beneficial even necessary. However, you seem to be going beyond merely sorting the existing opera stub tagged articles into their new categories. You're also reversing our assessments of some articles as start class and adding these new stubs to articles which we don't normally consider to be in the scope of this project (things which Kleinzach most emphatically did not "specifically ask" you to do.) For example, we tend not to include buildings which primarily serve as concert halls and for theatre performances with occasional performance of opera, nor do we include many American buildings which have "Opera House" in their name, but were not signicantly associated with opera. Here are two examples: Winchester Opera House and Sesser Opera House. There's a reason why the OP banner is not on their talk pages, yet you've tagged them with {{Opera-struct-stub}}. Like any ordinary editor on Wikipedia, you're entitled to edit, change, tag, any article you wish, and it's useful to have an outside judgement. But I hope you'll accept that OP members, like all other ordinary editors on Wikipedia, can also revert changes which they feel are inappropropriate. We'd also appreciate it, since you are going ahead with this mass addition/subtraction of stub tags, if you could please leave proper edit summaries on each article saying exactly what you're adding or taking away. The majority of your edits today to OP (or putatively OP) articles have no edit summaries whatsoever. Hoping these requests won't qualify me (us) as... ahem... "acting like a bunch of old farts"... Best, Voceditenore (talk) 14:54, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Voceditenore. I appreciate your comments. But you are looking at the whole thing in a negative way. You have entirely focused on any lesser positive edits I have made rather than the majority which are valid ones by anyones standards but it is of course customary for fellow wikipedians to slate the edits of other editors. I am really not interested in interfering in your project and assessements, neither am I on some sort of crusade as implied to bring down your assessment structure or start taggin every single article, I am extremely busy elesewhere on wikipedia, adding Nepalese towns and Mexican municipalities for a start. I believe however, that I have a valid point about some of your articles that are tagged as start class. I;m not going to waste time arguing my point but some of them really are borderline and questionable, and if it means editors will edit them to complete eradicate any possibility of them being dmeoted so to speak I don't think it is a bad thing, some of them really are questionable. In reality there are far more than the 520 stubs that appear in "opera stubs". I tagged a huge amount this morning which had no stub tag whatsover and I;m talking about those sub stubs not borderline articles. There was absolutely no mechanism in place for other editors to work at developing them other than the main categories which are mixed with higher quality articles. I'd imagine including opera composers and other biographies and related content we are looking at substantially more than the 500 stubs or "lower quality" articles implied on here and it is perfectly reasonable to think that an initial step to helping you sort it out wouldn't be faced with new opposition. To me even the new stub categories look pretty broad to me and far from over-categorization. I was under the impression that the proposal had been made by the project and if they weren't to be created I find it very odd that nobody could bring themsevles to close the proposal if it was so obvious although I understand that it was for neutrality purposes which I respect. I respect your views, but don't appreciate being treated in the way I was earlier and way I was approached and I in all honestly feel there is a strong sense of self-righteousness and WP:OWN of the articles which fall under your project which the community seems to endorse. If I;d have known there was a history of objection and strange aversion to the proposals which really wasn't all that clear to me, I really wouldn't have even looked at it. I think this really has been blown out of proportion the more I think about what the debate is here, particularly when they are in within general wikipedia acceptability. I fail to see why WP:Opera is so special that "outsiders" are not permitted to make changes which are within standard procedure across wikipedia particularly when it seemd a number of editors, well respected ones might I say believed the proposal was a valid one. I read the whole proposal and the arguments for seemd to outweight those against. I couldn't see a strong valid reason why they shouldn't be created other than a glimmer of WP:Opera traditions. The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:22, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Hi Blofeld, I appreciate your comments too, and I'm sorry that you feel I'm looking at the whole thing in a negative way. As I said above, I personally have no objection to the new stubs, and in the WPSS discussion I actually argued for an {{Opera-bio-stub}}. As I also said above, I have no problem with you or anyone else tagging/editing/assessing opera articles. All I asked was that you leave edit summaries when you do it, especially since so many are being done at once (my watch list is groaning), and that you accept that other editors might well take a different view of some of those edits and change them. We won't do so because we "own" the articles, anymore than WPSS "owns" the stub system. I have to say, though, that I wish more OP members had chosen to participate in the original discussion, and I apologize for that. I should have reminded them about it more. It would have avoided much of this last-minute and unfortunately heated discussion, which I agree has been rather blown out of proportion. ;-) Best wishes, Voceditenore (talk) 16:36, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

OK I very much appreciate your words amigo. Yes I admit I should have always used edit summaries; I know I should use one every time but understand I do a huge amount of work on wikipedia and try to get things done as quickly as possible, too quickly sometimes in a way which may seem undesirable in some people's eyes. I know its not an excuse and I should find a way of automatically finding an edit summary every time. Sometimes I tend to solely concentrate on the task at hand and forget some articles are on watchlists and not being watched. I still think though that a single opera category for a project like WP:Opera which now in September 2008 it pretty substantial it will need amore focused way to develop these stubs. Whether anybody agrees with my methods or those of the stub sortnig project I, and I;m sure I speak for the others at the stub sorting project, only have purely positive intentions to try to help the chances of developing lower quality articles to a high standard. I did not mean to be intrusive or a bug to WP:Opera this morning, I thought it was a valid course of action which I could see a number approved of and thought I was doing a positive by making the initial steps to ordering it. I've looked at the June proposal again, but I still, and I still can't see here any strong reaosn not to create what just seemd like basic stub categories. Anybody would think I;d begun sorting them by year. Regards The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:51, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Never mind

Blofeld was asked in good faith to close the discussion, as the rest of us involved in the discussion were following procedure by not closing it. Once he closed it, the Opera Project members immediately started questioning his methods, his understanding of various aspects of WP, and his good faith. Leave him alone.

Many Stub Sorting Project editors have made attempts to accommodate the goals and methods of the Opera Project in regard to stub articles. There is no evidence that the Stub Sorting Project is trying to undermine the Opera Project's efforts. We are tired of having our efforts reprimanded, criticized, micro-managed, and belittled. I can hear it now: "What on earth could you mean by that? We're just...We were only...!" Spare me. I guess Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that anyone can edit...as long as they don't touch the articles under the Opera Project's scrutiny.

The only thing that will apparently satisfy the Opera editors is to have the Stub Sorters leave all "their stuff" alone, so I suggest that Opera create only full-sized articles henceforth, and keep the opera stub categories under 200 articles. Good night, and good luck. Her Pegship (tis herself) 15:17, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree entirely. If stub-sorting is to be for every article on Wikipedia except those relating to opera, so be it. Other WikiProjects seem to understand well enough that stub-sorting is designed to be useful to editors both within and outside WikiProjects across the entirety of Wikipedia, and as such compromise is often needed both on the part of WP:WSS and any other Wikiprojects concerned, but there is damn-all evidence of any such understanding here> If your intention here is to WP:OWN all the articles relating to opera so as to actively discourage any activity from outside the project, then so be it. It is a shame, since Wikipedia is poorer for it - especially as related to articles on opera - but if that's the way your project wants it, then that's all there is to it. As Pegship points out, Blofeld was neutral to the whole debate - and AFAIK remains so - and as such was the best person to close the debate (something which WP:WSS was asked to do on several occasions by members of your project). He closed it and acted only according to the outcomes of that debate. While some of you seem to understand this (e.g., User:Voceditenore comments above), others seem to suggest that Blofeld's actions were in some way against the spirit of Wikipedia. They weren't, which is more than can be said of some of the comments which have been aimed at him since he closed the discussion. Grutness...wha? 23:57, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Everybody calm down now

Everybody calm down now. As someone from the opera side who has not participated in the conversation I have to say that almost everyone is acting in a ridiculous manner, on both sides. It seems to me that the difference of opinion here is over the fact that the stub project sees a problem with the current organization of opera related stubs and some of the people in the opera project see nothing wrong with the current stub situation. Pegship and Grutness, it is rather unfair to lump everyone in this project into the picture you painted above and lets face it your own project has had a bad history with this project by implementing unhelpful stub changes in the past (example being Pegship attempted changes a few months back). I personally am indifferent to the current suggestions. I see nothing wrong with the current organization but I also have no objection to the stubs suggested above (with the exception of the opera-composer stub because almost all composers who write operas write and are known for other things as well) and I think they may in fact be helpful. However, I think whatever is decided should be implemented jointly by both projects, as this project does have bots that will need to be adjusted accordingly for things to keep running smoothly here. I personally feel that those in this project who object to changing the stubs should give a little. Changing the stubs isn't going to hurt anything for the opera project if we do it in an organized fashion. On the part of the stub project, I think that you should listen to opera project members about which stubs would be best suited to fit with the scope of this project and the perview of other related music projects. I think an opera bio stub and the operas by language stubs are welcome editions. Perhaps an opera company stub would also be useful.Nrswanson (talk) 03:10, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I am in total agreement with Nrswanson on this. To WPSS, no more accusations of OP "owning", and to OP no more accusations of WPSS "refusing to discuss" or "barging in". Enough with these totally counterproductive mantras on both sides. Now, I've been wandering around the new stub category pages today, and I'm finding it very useful to have the opera stubs categorized by language. As you know, we've divided up our watchlists with me covering Italian operas; Kleinzach, the German ones; and Folantin the French ones. It will be so useful to be able to go to the stub category page and check for potentially new articles that need to be added to our lists. And Category:Opera structure stubs was a real eye-opener. Although I might disagree about a few of the assessments as stubs and/or being significantly related to opera, it's very helpful that these are now being brought to our attention. It's an area that the OP tends to neglect in my view. Some of them are absolutely dire. I particularly like this flaming little beauty. The architect's PR people couldn't have written it better themselves. In fact, they probably did. Like Nrswanson, I think an {{Opera-company-stub}} would also be useful, while the {{Opera-composer-stub}} is not a good idea.

To OP members: All of us have different interests and areas we like to work in. Think how convenient it will ultimately be to be able to go directly to the stub category page of our particular intererest to find articles to work on or add to our watchlists. The current Category:Opera stubs is downright daunting in this respect. OK so there may a few minor problems with classification, but they can be easily remedied. And they're easier to remedy if the stubs are sub-categorized for easy access. The bot issues are not insurmountable either. Adjustments can be made, and the stubs don't affect the actual category(s) the article is in. The bot that throws up all new articles that might be opera-related (User:AlexNewArtBot/OperaSearchResult) won't be affected by the stubs being used either. And finally, we're intelligent people. It's not that hard to keep track of the additional stub types and what they're used for, and their names and intended usage are quite transparent.

To WPSS members: Do you want any help with the stub sorting from OP members? I'd be happy to take one alphabetical section at a time in Category:Opera stubs and add the new stubs. There may be others here who would help as well. If you don't want any help, could you post here when the sorting is finished, so we can make any bot adjustments etc. There's no use doing that until they're all done. I also have a question about maintenance. Does your project periodically check the generic categories like Category:Opera stubs for articles to sort into the more specific categories once the initial sorting is done? Or are we supposed to do that?

Best, Voceditenore (talk) 07:44, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I concur with everything said by Voceditenore and I think this is really the best thing for both WPSS and OP. Both projects will benefit and hopefully it will also put a permanent end to any friction between the two projects.Nrswanson (talk) 07:55, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Apologies to Nrswanson and Voceditenore - my comments were not directed at everyone in the Opera project (and I singled out Voceditenore as one editor who has taken a reasonable course as far as these discussions are concerned). They were aimed at a vociferous group in the project that has caused considerable problems as far as trying to implement stub sorting of opera-related articles. It is probably a small minority of the project, but even a tiny minority that is loud or stubborn can taint what should be a good relationship between WikiProjects. These editors caused problems despite attempts to work towards a situation which is suitable for both projects - attempts which included inviting members of WPO to take part in discussions relating to the split of opera stub. The split which was implemented was the result of those discussions, and it is for this reason that it was so disappointing to see Blofeld's work, based on this discussion, being attacked by a few members of WPO. The size of Category:Opera stubs is daunting, and it is for that reason that some split of it into subcategories is useful for all concerned - for you as editors trying to work on your specific areas of interest; for us trying to ensure that stubs are in sensible categories and that articles are in their correct categories; and for general Wikipedia editors so that they are able to navigate around the categories to find articles to expand. As far as WPO keeping track of the stub types, most WikiProjects list the stub types relevant to their editors on their WikiProject's main page - you already have the start of such a section on your page. And yes, Voceditenore, we would be very grateful of help with sorting any opera stubs into more specific stub types; we are always keen to get help and advice from those who are specialists in the specific areas to which stub types apply. Periodic "emptying" of Category:Opera stubs into more specific subtypes would be partly the job of both of our projects - hopefully many stubs would automatically get marked with more specific stub types, but if not it's likely that there would be an empty-out at irregular intervals whenever it appears to be getting too big. Grutness...wha? 08:40, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, this whole affair has been bizarre. I didn't pay much attention to the issue over the summer because I tend to tune out when Wiki-bureaucracy takes over. Having looked at the lengthy debates now I'm really bemused. So much effort for so little reward in terms of improving the encyclopaedia. Wouldn't the time have been better spent, say, expanding some stubs? --Folantin (talk) 08:49, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Folantin, that isn't really a helpful comment right now. This issue keeps croping up and it isn't going to go away. I suggest you view this supposed "Wiki-bureaucracy" as a necessary evil. The answer is to work with WPSS in a productive way, not ignore the issue. That aside, Grutness I think your suggestions are perfectly reasonable. I don't mind helping with the stubs either and from the opera project side we could probably agree to do a run through the Category:Opera stubs every six months or so.Nrswanson (talk) 08:57, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

"I suggest you view this supposed 'Wiki-bureaucracy' as a necessary evil". No, I don't view it as a necessary evil. Increasing bureaucracy is wrecking Wikipedia and diverting attention from the business of writing an encyclopaedia. Stubs are best "sorted" by expanding the articles in question so they are no longer stubs. Judging by my watchlist over the past few months, members of the Opera project and complete newcomers have managed to accomplish this task perfectly well without caring too much about the type of stub tag at the bottom of the page. --Folantin (talk) 09:13, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I perfectly understand where you are coming from. If it were up to me I wouldn't be doing anything with further stub sub-types. However, stub sub-types are now the norm throughout the encyclopedia (we are one of the few projects without them) and like it or not the opera project has to adapt to common practice at wikipedia. Otherwise we will be fighting with WPSS and eventually other editors over and over and over. It is much easier to adapt now and get along with everyone rather than waisting out time arguing. Furthermore, as Voceditenore has pointed out some of these stub cats may actually be helpful for editing purposes. In my view this conversation is a bigger waist of time than just adjusting our stubs as needed. The position held by yourself, ~~Voceditenore~~, and others can not win and will only keep creating wikidrama here at the project. Even if nothing happens now, how long do you think it will be before WPSS or other editors brings it up again? A month maybe two? This isn't going to go away until we adapt to current practice. And frankly, the additional stubs don't hurt us in anyway so why get so upset? Nrswanson (talk) 09:29, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I'm not against the stub-sorting, I'm for it. Voceditenore (talk) 10:03, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I meant Kleinzach. lol. I profusely appologize for my error. I think of the two of you in such a high regard and usually you are both on the same page. Not that I think of you two as the same person. Anyway I'm babbling. Forgive my brain lapse please. Nrswanson (talk) 10:08, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm not "getting upset", I'll leave that to others. As I've said, I'm just bemused by this complete waste of time. There again, it's part of a wider malaise on Wikipedia. --Folantin (talk) 09:38, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Um... maybe I should start a separate Recriminations sub-section.;) Seriously though, I don't consider stub-sorting as "bureacracy", evil or otherwise. I look at it as "housekeeping". Also, one of the reasons why so many stubs got expanded since June is that Kleinzach and I and some others went through Category:Opera stubs, de-stubbing articles that had been expanded and expanding several to start level. Frankly, this was primarily prompted by the discussion over at WPSS. In my view, the sub-categorization of stub articles will make the expansion task much easier and quicker in the future. For example, as a project, we might decide at some point to do a concerted expansion drive on the "opera house" stubs. How much easier it will be to go straight to that category than plowing through the 500+ articles in Category:Opera stubs to find them. Yes, we got along OK without the sub-types. But I think we'll get along even better with them.

It would be good to have some opinions from other OP members here. But please, let's avoid recriminations and raking over the coals of past miscommunication on both sides. It's much more productive (and pleasant!) to stick to discussing the way forward with the stubs. And, it has the added bonus of encouraging more OP members to participate in the discussion. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 09:56, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Good points. To clarify my position, I probably would not have proposed changing the stubs by myself. However, now that others are pushing for it, I support the proposed changes for the same reasons given by Voceditenore. I also do not see them as bueraucratic and I was simply refering to them as a necessary evil as a perspective that those, like Folantin, who do see them that way could adopt.Nrswanson (talk) 10:16, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

A very quick answer to folantin's points about the necessity of stub-sorting. Consider this: would it be easier to find and expand opera-related stubs if all of wikipedia's 400,000 stubs were simply in one large stub category? Grutness...wha? 21:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Stub changes: Should I quit?

Where are we now? Can someone summarize the changes that have been made? Can someone tell me how many articles are effected?

Until this past weekend, the Opera Project was the only classical music, or theatre-related, project with a well-organized body of stubs and stub rated articles. I know because I've been using the stubs on a daily basis. I've been using them not only for stubbing, destubbing, and rating, but also for bot runs and compiling statistics for article development (stub to non-stub ratios).

For several months, I've been working on the bannering and the slow, consensus-based introduction of assessments on three major music-related projects. The Opera Project has been by far the best organized of the projects. Instead of being fragmented with a host of silly, impractical categories, the whole corpus of opera articles has been easily accessible. This means we've been able to make sure that all the articles follow our guidelines and participants here have a good understanding of editorial and content problems over a range of articles. Most other project editing groups, in contrast, are unaware of all but a few articles in their subject area, with most pages being written and edited (or rather not edited) without the project ever being involved.

We've been trying to code a bot run to rate stub-bearing Classical Music Project articles as sub class. This has been difficult (in fact we've got nowhere) because of the proliferation of cross-project stubs. Instead of the manageable pair of stubs used by Opera, Classical Music have around 40-50! (I still haven't been able to verify the exact number.) There is a page 'dedicated' to the problem here. It's a kind of monument to stub-proliferation: dinky sets (e.g. bowed-musician-stub, cellist-stub, violinist-stub) with visible text that doesn't always correspond to the template name (e.g. Conductor-stub which is also for jazz band leaders) created by people apparently unaware of any need to study classification systems - or, of course, to quantify anything at all!

As the unofficial dust-pan-and-brush-carrying janitor for the project, I can only do my job if the rubbish/garbage bins are left in the little room at the end of the corridor on the second floor. It's a small dirty little room, but the kettle is in there and I can put up my feet . . . . Anyway if everything is going to change and we are going to have 50-odd brightly coloured bins, all decorated with flags, distributed around the building, then frankly I want to have nothing to do with it. I'd like to retire and spend more time in the garden!

So if the stub/category etc. system is going to be completely ~~buggered up~~, uh, changed, I'd like to quit as janitor, and suggest that we choose a project coordinator to take over the job. Have a nice day! --Klein zach 01:57, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

First of all, Kleinzach, you have done a great job in here. For that I do not want you to quit. As for the rest, I know all of you are working on the best interest of articles in Wikipedia. As I said earlier, I do not have any problem if you want to break stub into many languages etc, but at the end of the day, we have to think of, who is actually “maintaining the project - the MOST”. Kleinzach is one of the active members – frankly speaking, he is like what he said, a “janitor” in our project and I truly appreciate it. With all these changes especially from some users (I am sorry but this is the truth) who don’t really do all these chores (not even members or contributors in OP), how can Kleinzach continues doing what he is doing every day? I always agree with consensus, as much as I care for those who made lot of contributions. I noticed that all the “discussions” above are so messy with unhealthy debates. Why don’t we just CLOSE it and start voting AGREE or DISAGREE - state reasons. However, please bear in mind - You can agree or disagree but if you just make your decision without thinking of “maintaining” it, someday, this project will be dead or half dead just like many projects in Wiki. We need a good coordinator in here and please don’t just agree with something and expect “it” will run by itself. If the suggestion comes from OP members, I may not be too worried. What worries me is, once the new changes take place and the non-member finishes his/her job and leave, who will maintain and continue with that effort? The bots? C'mon guys! - Jay (talk) 03:09, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Kleinzach, I don't see what the problem is. You do a good job of coordinating the articles for this project, and the changes to the stub system should make that job easier, not harder - as they have with other projects. You've used {{Opera-stub}} up till now, and you still can - there has been no change to it whatsoever. if you wish to use the other templates, though, it will help both of our projects.

Any changes by adding other stub templates should make no difference whatsoever to the assessment categories, as Stub-Class assessment is completely separate from stub sorting and has nothing whatsoever to do with stub templates (there is nothing wrong with an article being assessed as Start-Class while having a stub template, or as Stub-Class and having no stub template - the unfortunate use of the word "stub" to mean two unrelated things by Wikipedia is simply a concidence and doesn't indicate a correlation between them). Similarly, having more than one related stub template for a project doesn't usually cause problems for the bot-running of assessment templates (the classical music project's seemingly large number of different stub types is actually very small compared with those falling within the scope of some projects - you should see the number that, say WikiProject Australia has!).

Jay, the effort is of course ongoing, by both of our projects. Much of the sorting will probably be done by any WP:WSS members who are interested enough in opera to want to deal with them. As already suggested by others, there are members of WPO who are willing to work alongside those from WPSS on this task, and between them it should be little problem to keep the categories organised in a way that will help, WPO, WPSS, and editors from across Wikipedia in general. Grutness...wha? 06:15, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

It has to be said that Kleinnach demonstrates a perfect example of WP:OWN. Apparently the creation of just 6 basic stub categories of which there are likely to be hundreds in each category is "buggering" up his system. The question is does it really matter? The reason you are in a bad mood, is precisely because you always seem to get your way and because you haven't as yet, you find it neccesary to brand me as grossly offensive to the project by my decision and use emotional blackmail to get editors plead you not to leave and to be sympathic to your cause. Given that I and the others at Wp:Sorting always had WP:Good faith with the stub sorting, it is you Kleinnach who is being unreasonable and against the spririt of wikipedia, not myself. What do you expect me to think when you cause all this fuss about something seemingly very trivial? The Bald One ^{White cat} 20:11, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Opera stubs and what to do

I don't think it's sensible to simply start saying "agree" or disagree" until everyone here understands the problems/advantages. To help us to decide what to do about all this, and to focus the discussion on the actual practical issues, I'm starting a new section and subsections. Hopefully, as many active OP members as possible will join in. Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Current state of play

1. Number of new stub types. The following 7 have been created by WPSS:

{{Opera-bio-stub}} This biographical article related to opera is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it
{{Opera-struct-stub}} This article about an opera house or structure is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it
{{Italian-opera-stub}} This article about a Italian language opera is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it
{{French-opera-stub}} This article about a French language opera is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it
{{English-opera-stub}} This article about an English language opera is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it
{{German-opera-stub}} This article about a German language opera is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it
{{Opera-company-stub}} This article about an opera company or opera festival is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it

Note that we have used {{euro-struct-stub}} for European opera houses. {{Opera-struct-stub}} would supercede that and include opera houses everywhere, so technically there are only 6 additional stub types to deal with. I've asked over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Stub sorting if that's it for now, and according to Grutness, it is.

2. Number of stub articles that have been given the new sorting. As of now, 217 articles have been sorted into the new stub-cats, with the largest number of those (127) going into {{Opera-struct-stub}}. The next biggest one is {{Opera-bio-stub}} with 61. At the moment relatively few of the potential articles in the "opera by language" sub-cats" have been shifted. Note: Not all of the 217 articles were actually 'moved'. Some were receiving opera-related stub tags for the first time. (More about this below). There are currently 507 articles remaining in Category:Opera stubs. I've asked over at WPSS if they are going to continue with the sorting they've started, or if they are now waiting until the discussion here is wrapped up. The reply from Grutness was:

"There are always so many splits on the go at WP:WSS that it may take a while to get round to this being sorted thoroughly - it has been (or will be) added to our "To do" list, so some sorting will be done on it at some stage, but it'll largely depend on when an individual stub sorter decides that it is the next one he or she is interested in working on."

In other words, they've split the stub cats, moved some articles into them, but the rest of the relevant articles may remain in their current place until someone in WPSS... er... "gets around to it" or we do it ourselves. (More about this below.) Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

A couple of (very) minor points from the WPSS perspective - firstly, please note that I said that I don't know of any planned further splits, and if there are any it will depend on number of stubs in each of the current splits. It is possible, for instance, that if there are a large number of, say, opera-struct-stubs relating to one specific country, that it would be sensible to split those out. I would think it unlikely for some considerable time, however. Second, although I said that further sorting may not be until someone gets round to it, that may be tomorrow for all I know. There are quite a few other categories in the process of being split, and we have only about 150 active stub-sorters in our project, but it's more than possible some of them will be keen to split this category up soon. Grutness...wha? 13:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, WPSS has created Italian, French, English and German stub tags but what about Spanish (or zarzuela) and Russian? - Jay (talk) 14:52, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Those would be extremely small stub categories. In all there are only 77 in Category:Russian-language operas and 18 in Category:Spanish-language operas. Of those, only a small fraction, if any, are stubs. Once Category:Opera stubs is sorted out, it will be much smaller and much easier to find the stub opera articles in languages other than French, English, Italian, and German. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 17:10, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Under normal circumstances, stubs would have split by country of origin, rather than language, and it would be possible to have templates at least for every country (or in somce cases just continent). Given that in this case it has been decided to split Opera by language, this becomes more difficult, since opera can be written in many different languages, some of them wikth a very small number of opera, and some of them very obscure. Splitting out the largest language groups though should leave a far smaller and easier to handle number of opera in the base category. Grutness...wha? 21:46, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Potential probelms and/or issues

In this section, it might help if people could focus their replies/comments under the relevant points so they can be weighed up in the end. Also please add any further concerns that I might have missed. Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

1. The number of new stub-cats Leaving aside issues about what's actually in them for the moment, what exactly are the problems these 5/6 new ones would cause with future bot runs, assessment, and compiling OP statistics? Are those problems relatively easily fixable, especially if the rest of us help? Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

2. Are these new stub cats reasonably transparent and unlikely to be mis-applied by editors unfamiliar with either opera itself or the Opera Project? Related to this is the explanatory text that currently appears on the various opera stub category pages. At present I find it inadequate or confusing in many cases. I know that WPSS currently have {{WPSS-cat}} banners on those pages re no one creating new stubs without discussing it with them first. However, I'm assuming that OP can re-write the instructions for the usage of the existing stubs where we consider it desirable and/or necessary. Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

3. Possible problems with {{Opera-bio-stub}} as WPSS is applying it? I've only had a quick look at the articles that are now in this category. It appears that this stub is now being added to articles about composers (as well as opera librettists, adminstrators, etc.) some of which also carry come kind of composer stub as well, e.g. {{euro-composer-stub}} , {{US-composer-stub}}. Prior to the addition of the new stub tags, the articles I've seen were already in Category:Opera composers, so no change there. I know there have been past issues with double bannering on the talk pages and the OP banner has been removed unless the vast majority of the composer's main works were operas e.g. Verdi, Puccini. Note however, for the articles to which the {{Opera-bio-stub}} has been added, the talk page bannering has not been changed. For example, Evald Aav still has only the {{Composers}} banner on it and still carries the original assessment as "start". (I personally think it is probably closer to "stub", though). Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

4. Will double (or triple) stub tags affect bot runs (like the one that added the OP banners)? What 'clues' does the bot use for adding the banner itself? Only the actual cats or also any stub tags that appear? Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

5. Stability issues From Grutness's replies about how soon the sorting will be finished, there could be quite a delay, unless the OP does the remainder of the sorting now. What kinds of problems would this delay cause for the OP, if any? If the OP does want to use the new stub sub-cats. I would be happy to do to the sorting so we could get it over with, and I believe Nrswanson said he would help as well. I also enquired over at WPSS as to what happens if after all the current stub-sorting is finished, there are opera stub categories with less than 60 articles or if the category falls below 60 (supposedly the minimum recommended here). Grutness's reply was:

"It largely depends on how much below 60. If it's clear that a stub category is very small (30 stubs, say), then it's likely that the template will be upmerged (that is, the template will stay but it will point to a more general category). So it won't be re-tagged even then - the template will stay the same in case the number of stubs rises to a high enough level to have its own category again. Even in those cases it usually takes a long time to get around to thinking of deleting a category that's fallen below threshold, and if there are good arguments for keeping it (e.g., it has subcategories, or it's likely that other stubs exist which haven't ben sorted into it properly) it often gets kept."

Does anyone forsee any problems with this approach? Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

6. "Aesthetics" A relatively minor point, but nevertheless we might as well consider it. The addition of images tends to make the tags rather clunky looking and when stub articles are tagged as related to 2 or more subjects the visual space taken up by the tags can be as large as the article itself. This is not a new problem, by the way. See for example Herman Geiger-Torel or Audrius Rubežius. Is it possible to just have text or small symbols (like ♦) instead to make some of the OP tags less obtrusive? Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Regarding point 2, it's be good if any major change in the scoping of the stub types could be discussed with WPSS. Minor changes in the wording for the sake of clarity, etc, would be fine as far as WPSS is concerned for the most part.With point 5, you note that the threshold for stub categories is 60 stubs - that's not strictly true. 60 is the threshold for creation of new stub categories. They can fall below that size if they still seem to be of significant use or if there is a chance of them growing again without causing much concern to WPSS. As for point 6, there is no necessity to have any picture on a stub template - many stub templates are text only, and if you prefer that to be the case for opera-related stub templates that's fine. Grutness...wha? 13:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Potential advantages to the Opera Project

Again please add any further ones that I might have missed.Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

1. Will this give us a period of stability? And save us from endless negotiations so we can get on with actually writing articles, which all of us in this project prefer to do? And save us from endless adjustments to bot runs? Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

2. Will the new cats make it easier for OP members to organize some of our activities? For example, if we (or some of us) want to concentrate our efforts on expanding stub articles in a particular area, or add them to our watchlists, or just go over them to see if they have problems of notability, referencing etc. A query here: Is it possible for all 7 stub sub-cats to appear on one page, i.e on Category:Opera stubs. I think that would make it more convenient for us. Is that what upmerging does? Voceditenore (talk) 09:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

To answer point 2, yes, upmerging would let all the articles appear on one page, but if all of the templates were upmerged it would mean the split is of no practical use - one of the main purposes of splitting stubs is to reduce the size of a category that has grown too large - as Category:Opera stubs is becoming. Given that any other categories would be subcategories of Category:Opera stubs, however, I hope it would not be an inconvenience for WPO, but is rather more of a convenience, as it would be both to WPSS and to editors outside the two projects. It should be, in exactly the same way that the subcategorisation of articles in the permcat tree is. Grutness...wha? 13:00, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Actually I just looked again at the Category:Opera_stubs page and there are links to all 7 of the stub sub-category pages, including Category:Opera singer stubs. I find this very helpful and I hope it remains that way. Voceditenore (talk) 14:56, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Voceditenore for your highly contructive way of trying to find a solution. The Bald One ^{White cat} 20:27, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

I did one of the bot runs here assessing stubs by their tags and tagging articles by category. It's a general rule of thumb not to worry about bot-ops that much. If you list your stub tags on the main project page, and setup the subcats correctly there should never be an issue with what a bot can do. I'm pretty sure my last run was a few months ago, if you'd like another one once this is sorted please let me know! §hep • ¡Talk to me! 15:13, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much for this, §hep! Both for the reassuring answer and for your offer. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 20:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Update on where we are; stats

I have spent several hours going through the entire Category:Opera stubs and the entire Category:Stub-Class Opera articles. I have gone ahead and applied the new stubs to the stub rated articles. I did not add the opera-bio-stub to opera composer pages. However, some WPSS editors have done so to a handful of them and I have not bothered to remove them. (We might decide to leave them.) Also, some articles could have easily been tagged with both an opera house stub and an opera company stub. I only put one on those articles and not both; using my best judgement on what best fit the current info in the article. Here are the statistics of the current state of things. We have a total of 1,566 stub articles out of the 5,063 articles in the project. We still have one very large stub cat., the opera singer stub. We may want to consider spliting it somehow. Possibly into male and female opera singers to start. Or we could do voice types. Or just forget it and leave it alone. Nrswanson (talk) 17:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Stub statistics

Stub Category	Total number (X)	Percentage of stub OP articles (X/1566)	Percentage of all OP articles (X/5,063)
All stubs	1,566	100.00%	30.93%
{{Opera-singer-stub}}	676	43.16%	13.35%
{{Opera-bio-stub}}	165	10.53%	03.26%
{{Italian-opera-stub}}	141	09.00%	02.78%
{{Opera-struct-stub}}	129	08.24%	02.55%
{{French-opera-stub}}	94	06.00%	01.86%
{{Opera-stub}}	94	06.00%	01.86%
{{English-opera-stub}}	87	05.55%	01.72%
{{Opera-company-stub}}	84	05.36%	01.66%
{{German-opera-stub}}	52	03.32%	01.05%
Stub-rated articles w.o. OP stubs (mostly opera composer articles)	44	02.81%	00.87%

Opera-stub analysis

Here is an analysis of what is left in the "catch all" {{Opera-stub}}. There are 93 articles in the list (94 on the actual page because of a listed template). If any of you think of another useful stub let us know. I think possibly an "Eastern European-language-opera stub" could work. That would cover many of the stubs listed below. Surprisingly there are no Russian opera stubs, but if any crop up in future, as I am sure they will, they could go under the EEL stub as well. Nrswanson (talk) 17:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Article type	Number of articles
Opera genres	13
Hungarian-language-operas	10
Miscelaneous opera terms	9
Opera excerpts (arias, choruses, etc.)	7
Czech-language-operas	7
Spanish-language-operas	7
Opera recordings	5
Grants/Awards/Competitions	5
Opera librettos	4
Operas of unknown language	4
Opera schools	3
Portuguese language-operas	2
Polish language-operas	2
Finnish language-operas	2
Japanese language-operas	2
Multi-language-operas	2
Swedish language-operas	1
Yiddish language-operas	1
Norwegian language-operas	1
Serbian language-operas	1
Macedonian language-operas	1
Croatian language-operas	1
Children's opera chorus	1
Opera museum	1
Music label	1

Comments

This has been very helpful. Judging from the current statistics on the OP page. The ratio of stubs to developed articles has gone down a bit. Below I'll list some other issues that have cropped up. Voceditenore (talk) 16:58, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Glad to be of service.Nrswanson (talk) 17:35, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

{{Opera-bio-stub}} and composers - Up to now the OP has simply used {{Composer-stub}}, although I see that there are actually several sub-types, of which WikiProject Composers may not be aware, judging from the lack of bannering on many of those articles. There's been a policy at both projects to avoid double bannering of the talk pages unless there's a very significant opera component in their work. I'm not sure how all this affects the banner-bot runs. I notice also that Category:Opera biography stubs explictly suggests using it for articles "relating to opera biographies, particularly composers and directors". Could we have some suggestions here about what do about this from people who work in both projects? Voceditenore (talk) 17:49, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Eastern European-language-opera stub? - I'd really like to avoid further breaking down the languages. There's no real need for it now that Category:Opera stubs is so greatly reduced, and there really aren't that many stubs to go into it. I also think it's essential for any new opera stubs to be as transparent and non-mistake-prone as possible. Besides, I think we're all suffering from "stub fatigue" at the moment. I'd suggest giving this one a rest. Voceditenore (talk) 18:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

You are probably right. There really is no need to break down the leftover stubs in "opera-stub".Nrswanson (talk) 12:08, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

{{Opera-company-stub}} - This is one that Nrswanson created. I hope WPSS won't mind that it wasn't discussed with them first as per {{WPSS-cat}}, although he did mention the possibility here and no one objected or commented. Having said that, I find it a very useful stub cat, well-populated (83 pages), and reasonably transparent to use. So presumably WPSS is OK with this? Voceditenore (talk) 18:46, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

{{opera-singer-stub}} - I know this category is big and probably should be broken down eventually. But I'd like the dust to settle on the current changes first, or we're never going to have a proper discussion about it, again due to "stub fatigue". In the meantime, we can go through it to weed out any articles that may no longer be stubs or ones where the tag has been mis-applied. I'm also requesting that WPSS not propose any split of this stub over at their project without simultaneously letting the OP know about it. I really don't want a repeat of this current sorting saga which caused a lot of bad feeling and friction on both sides. Voceditenore (talk) 19:11, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Commment. I have already gone through and removed the mis-applied opera singer stubs, so all of the articles are allegedly about opera singers. However, some of them are so stubby that they may indicate an aspiring artist or someone of suspect notability. There were some that were borderline start articles as well, and I upgraded a few obvious ones. There were also ones with a lot of content but that needed a lot of copy editing/ deleting of fan cruft. In general, I would say that the opera singer articles are our project's weakest area (at least among the stubs; the other areas at least tend to be fairly accurate in content and reasonably well structured which is not the case with the singer stubs). Perhaps we should stop picking new articles for the singer of month and focus on building up some of the articles we already have. That would also go a long way in lowering the amount of opera singers in the stub category.Nrswanson (talk) 19:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It is a weak area. I'll have a look at some of these stubs and see if some might be good candidates for SoM. Voceditenore (talk) 20:38, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

From WPSS's point of view, creating more stub types for the catch-all area wouldn't be a profitable exercise. The main category would be down to such a small size that any split of it would mean that one or the other parts of it would be well below 60 stubs. Given the statistics above, the only splits that we'd be likely to look at in the near future would be to opera-singer-stub, which has over 600 articles (splitting categories becomes a high priority at 800 articles, but anything with over 600 is a likely candidate at some point). As far as WPSS is concerned, the most sensible way to do this would be by nationality, since it would tie in with the general "by nationality" splits of biography stubs. It might be worth looking at the possibility of, say Italy-opera-singer-stub, US-opera-singer-stub, UK-opera-singer-stub and the like, at least for the two or three predominant nationalities. I think the suggestion of going through this category first to rule out any misapplied templates and non-notables is very wise. Grutness...wha? 22:39, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Opera stubs: final summary

It would helpful if this discussion/saga/exercise could be concluded so that the OP main page can be updated and we can all get back to what we prefer doing - writing and improving opera articles. Below is a final summary.

(1) WPSS has finished the stub sorting. All articles carrying opera related stub tags can be accessed from this page: Category:Opera stubs.

(2) §hep, who did one of the bot runs here assessing stubs by their tags and tagging articles by category, has reassured us above:

"It's a general rule of thumb not to worry about bot-ops that much. If you list your stub tags on the main project page, and setup the subcats correctly there should never be an issue with what a bot can do."

(3) The new stubs in themselves have no effect on the "normal" categories that are attached to articles. Note that stub cats are entirely separate from normal categories and are not a replacement for them. All new articles still need to have normal categories.

(4) The new stubs have no effect on the current assessments in the Opera Project talk page banners. If you want to access the articles which have an actual "stub class" rating on their OP banner, you can do so here: Category:Stub-Class Opera articles. Likewise, the new stubs will not impact on the New Article Search Bot.

(5) All the new stubs here have "opera" in their names and are highly unlikely to be used cross-project, unlike some of those used by other projects, e.g. {{conductor-stub}} or {{keyboardist-stub}}, which cause problems for WikiProject Classical music.

(6) Like all editors, if in our judgement an article is sufficiently expanded to have the stub tag removed, we can simply remove it. However, it's a good idea to check the talk page banner to make sure that it no longer has "stub class" asessement on it.

(7) No more stub splits are anticipated in the medium term, so the stub classification system for opera articles is now stable. However, Category:Opera singer stubs is big (670 articles) and may have to be broken down in the future once OP has gone through the category to check that the curent stub tags actually apply. We are requesting WPSS to notify us promptly of all future discussions/proposals concerning any changes to this system.

(8) Below is the list of all the opera-related stubs and their usage (the new ones are in bold):

{{Opera-singer-stub}} for biographical articles about opera singers
{{Opera-bio-stub}} for biographical articles on all other persons related to opera - opera directors, librettists, managers, administrators, opera critics, etc.
{{Opera-struct-stub}} for articles about opera houses
{{Opera-company-stub}} for articles about opera companies or opera festivals
{{Italian-opera-stub}} for articles about Italian language operas.
{{French-opera-stub}} for articles about French language operas
{{English-opera-stub}} for articles about English language operas
{{German-opera-stub}} for articles about German language operas
{{Opera-stub}} for articles on operas in all other languages, and for opera-related topics that don't fit into any of the other major stub categories, e.g. articles on opera terminology, individual arias, albums, publications, etc.

Any final comments, queries, explosions, etc.? Best, Voceditenore (talk) 14:20, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

I only have a comment on bullet (6), if you don't mind what an outsider has to say. According to WP:ASSESS articles that have stub tags and stub-class articles are very different; though they usually do come hand and hand. A stub tag should be used if the article is short in text. A stub-class is generally used when the article has little content relevant to the topic. I'm not exactly sure how this project works but articles in most projects can have the stub tag removed and still be a stub-class. Hope you don't mind me butting here. §hep • ¡Talk to me! 01:23, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

That is very true. From the stub-sorter's point of view, there is only a medium correlation between Stub-Class and stub templates. All the other points above seem to tally with what I've seen of the debate, though I would remind you of the comments I made about opera-singer-stub with reference to point (7) - it is quite likely that this will need to be split by nationality at some point. If that is proposed, we'll try to ensure that you find out about it ASAP. As a corollary to that, if members of WPO wish to see a new stub template or category made, feel free to propose it at WP:WSS/P - given that you've all probably a better idea of how the stub-sorting project works now, chances are any proposal you make will be in line with the sort of splits we'd be likely to be interested in. Finally, a big thank you to Voceditenore for his input and liaison in all this. Cheers, Grutness...wha? 07:15, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome.;-) But... I'm a "she". Despite my user name, I'm neither a man nor a tenor. I just like and am fascinated by the tenor voice. Best, Voceditenore (talk)

Oops - apologies - the tenor fooled me :) Grutness...wha?

Response re point (6). Yes, I know that the two criteria can be different, at least in theory. But in practice, the vast majority of the "stub class" assessments on the OP banners are currently automatic and highly congruent with the stub tags. The bot rated the articles as "stub class" if they had a stub tag. However, if an editor here reviews the article and judges that it is (a) sufficiently long not to be tagged with a stub and (b) in addition to the length, the actual content is sufficiently informative, relevant, coherent and sourced to be a "start class" article then in addition to removing the stub tag, they should manually raise the assessment on the banner from "stub" to "start". Incidentally, this is what WP:ASSESS describes as a "start class" article:

An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources.

And this how they describe a "stub class" article:

The article is either a very short [word length undefined] article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.

I have to say that some of this confusion was engendered at the outset of the sorting when Blofeld added stub tags to articles like this, Théâtre d'Orléans and Oper Leipzig and (initially) Adelson e Salvini. They were 272, 245, 375 words long respectively (not counting headings, references, or external links). All content was informative, relevant, coherent, and least minimally sourced. (Note that some editors confuse external links and sources and mis-label as simply 'external links' what they actually used as sources for the article.) All were as long or longer than typical music encyclopedia entries for those topics. He then said that he used "a number of factors" when he added the stub tags, not simply length (including whether or not the synopsis was "too short" in the case of opera articles). That seems to me a clear conflation of "stub-tag" criteria with "stub assessment" criteria. Grutness, provided the article content is neither irrelevant or incomprehensible, what is the word count the WPSS considers the 'ceiling' for the applicability of a stub template? Voceditenore (talk) 09:14, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

There is no set wordcount, as that is only one consideration taken into account when judging what is or isn't a stub (relative importance of the subject and amount of information known about it are others; my essay User:Grutness/Croughton-London rule of stubs may be informative on that point). It's probably true that every stub sorter uses his or her own rule for judging whether something is a stub; an article like Théâtre d'Orléans would probably be regarded as a stub by some sorters but not by others. Given that any editor can add or remove a stub template, it's the only really practical way of using stubs. It is worth noting, though, that descriptive (paragraph) text is the primary concern - an article may have one descriptive sentence followed by a long list or large number of infoboxes and still be a stub. Grutness...wha? 09:34, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the link, I found it helpful. Following your essay, I'd consider all three of the articles above not to be stubs, given their relative importance and the amount of information available about them. Note also, that when I gave the word counts for them, I excluded navigation templates like this. Anyhow, the bottom line is that anyone can add or remove stub tags, including editors who are more likely to be familiar with the articles' subjects, their importance, and the amount of information available on them. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 10:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Response re point (7) I've added additional text there to make it clearer that Category:Opera singer stubs is big and may eventually have to be broken down. However, I'm requesting WPSS to please hold off on proposing that until OP has had a chance to go through that category and weed out misapplied stubs. Also, re informing us promptly about discussions/proposals at WPSS, I want to emphasise that we're also requesting that re-stubbing/sorting not start until the discussion is closed – unlike what happened back in June when over 70 articles had been taken out of {{opera-stub}} and re-tagged with {{playwright-stub}} and {{theat-bio-stub}} without even letting us know. We found that very unhelpful as they were cross-project stubs, something we really want to avoid. I'm not asking this because we "own" opera articles, but because we look after them and it's only courteous not to implement mass changes without at least getting some input from us first. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 11:46, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure - and as I pointed out above, going through the category to weed it out is a good move anyway. That will hopefully reduce it to the point where and necessity of a split is put back by a few months at least. Cheers, Grutness...wha? 23:41, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

As there have been no further additions or responses to this discussion and as it is very long, I suggest waiting two more days (until October 7th) for any further responses, archiving it if there are none and adding the extra stub tags that are now available here. There is a related discussion at the Village Pump about stub tag categories in general if any members are interested. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 07:31, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Role tables date format - Your feedback is very much appreciated

Our current date format for role table: Month Date, Year (January 2, 2008)

Format below are taken from WikiProject Opera - Article and format Guidelines that have been used for role tables in many of our articles (mostly noted operas). However, refer reply sent by user: The Stickler to me. The user plan to undo the date format in some articles only. I have no issue about it but I am concern about standardization because we have many articles with this date format for role table. I have received similar comments about date format before this, therefore I like to know your opinion about this. Do you think we should stick to this or change to WIKI standard format to Date Month Year (2 January 2008) ? - Jay (talk) 00:25, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, January 2, 1843 (Conductor: Richard Wagner)

For multiple premieres format:-

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, April 27, 1720 (Conductor: - )	Revised version Premiere Cast, December 28, 1720 (Conductor: - )	Revised version Premiere Cast, Month date, 1728 (Conductor: - )

For the unknown conductor:-

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, January 2, 2007 (Conductor: - )

Comment by User:The Stickler taken from my talkpage

Hi Jay, Thank you for explaining your reasons for redoing the changes to the roles tables. I apologise for not having extended the same courtesy to you when I first undid them. However, even after consulting the opera guideline that you recommended, I still have serious reservations. First, it seems to me that the opera guideline doesn't really mandate the use of the American date format, rather, it simply gives an example to show the appropriate layout of a roles table, which just happens to use that format. Making any particular date format mandatory directly contradicts other well established guidelines such as WP:MOSNUM and is a decision that is unlikely to achieve consensus. Secondly, the guidelines for choosing a date format are clearly laid out in WP:MOSNUM#Full_date_formatting:

Format consistency

As the articles in question use the non-American date format for all of the other dates, your changes violated this guideline. Consistency across all opera articles is certainly desirable, but it is less important than consistency within an article. This is the consistency that I was referring to in my edit summary.

Strong national ties to a topic

As the articles in question related to non-American composers, your changes violated this guideline.

Retaining the existing format

As the articles in question had evolved using the non-American date format, your changes violated this guideline.

I'll wait a couple of days in case you disagree with what I've said or you want to point out something I've overlooked; however, unless you do, I'll make my changes again. The Stickler (talk) 15:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
- copied by JAY on 00:25, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I suppose this has arisen because of the removal of "auto-formatting". I always add dates as Day Month Year (per my sources). --Folantin (talk) 11:35, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

I already use Day Month Year, like Folantin. On the whole, I think its better to be consistent with WP:MoS on this one and certainly consistent within an article. I don't think we need to worry too much about the ones that haven't been changed to this format yet. Just keep an eye out and change when you notice it in an article. Besides, it looks like User:The Stickler is doing them all for us anyway. Best, Voceditenore (talk) 16:43, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

When I have the time, I will change the date format in the existing articles, perhaps User:The Stickler can help us too - Jay (talk) 17:10, 5 November 2008 (UTC)