Template talk:Infobox musical artist/Archive 6

This is an archive of past discussions about Template:Infobox musical artist. 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 1

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Archive 4

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Please, restore genres section!!

Genres are very important in pages about artists & bands, I think it's necessary to restore this section soever. Vziel (talk) 19:02, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The main discussion of this topic is taking place at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music#Time to remove genre section on info box?. Feel free to join in there. "P.S." It's best to start new talk page sections at the bottom of the page instead of the top. See Wikipedia:Talk#New topics and headings on talk pages — Mudwater^(Talk) 16:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I was pretty confused why it was removed as well. Y B K

Where is the infobox template for classical musician articles?

The template repeatedly states this is the template for non-classical musical articles/artists. Where is the template for classical conductors, composers, instrumentalists? Softlavender (talk) 02:57, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm guessing there isn't one. I looked at Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven, the first two that came to mind, and they don't have an infobox. Then I looked at a few other names; the only one with an infobox was György Ligeti, and he is using the musical artist infobox with green colour scheme for "non performing personnel" (despite the instructions saying this colour is not for classical music composers). You may want to look at whether a template is being considered at WP:WikiProject Classical music or WP:WikiProject Composers. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 13:38, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

In ru-wiki, we have no problems using the same infobox as for pop artists, even for featured articles. Here, you may try using "Person" infobox Netrat (talk) 18:25, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

During the original discussions over content and layout for the current Infobox musical artist the members of the classical music/composers projects flatly rejected the musician box for use on classical composers. I believe it was just as much a "we do not want your infobox forced onto us" which is what some of the more ignorant musician project members were trying to do as it was a 'cosmetic' issue. The layout and fields that were available for use on composer articles were deemed to be as useless/retarded as the current genre field is to every active music related Wiki-project. The Real Libs-speak politely 19:26, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Height

Can we have a field with the height of the artist as I think alot of people would be highly interested in this statistic as alot of the time celebrities are completely different heights to what the public might expect. And I think it is relevant and appropriate to have it in the infobox with all the other statistics listed. Xcahv8 (talk) 15:12, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

How is it relevant to a musician again??? This subject has been beat to death before. (along with eye colour/hair colour/etc) No one really cares how tall Dizzy Gillespie was. Or how tall Clapton is.... or whoever. It might of a piece of information important to a professional wrestler. But not to a guitar player or a piano player or a... etc. The Real Libs-speak politely 16:00, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

We're writing articles, not baseball cards. --IllaZilla (talk) 18:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree, it's an irrelevant piece of information. --Rodhull andemu 18:08, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Agree as well, this is totally and completely irrelevant. These are musicians, not basketball players. We already have enough fields abused in the infobox templates as it is, too. coccyx bloccyx_(toccyx) 18:29, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Time for a clarification?

It's well known that the associated acts field suffers misuse and even causes casual edits wars (at least from what I've seen). I propose we change the field to have a clear, concise definition and where to set the limit. I'd also like us to define an associated act and where to draw the line for these acts. Thoughts? DiverseMentality 00:20, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you provide a few examples of these edit wars? I've never seen one, probably because I don't really edit high-traffic articles. I'd like to see what exactly the problem seems to be before I express an opinion. That said, I'm not really inclined to add more rules, personally. I think the contributors to an article should decide what works best for each article. I think the description of the associated act field is ambiguous to allow editors to do exactly that. I'll agree that the phrasing currently in use is awkward, though. Zytsef (talk) 02:16, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

There was a recent edit war with associated acts in Sean Paul. Edit wars like these usually start with newly registered users in what they believe what they think are appropriate. Some people have different views when it comes to associated acts, and when they clash, it turns out ugly. DiverseMentality 03:49, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that adding a rule here about what will and will not be allowed in the associated artists field will deter new editors from making those kind of contributions. They are more likely to jump right in editing their favourite artists instead of checking here first to see if what they're adding is kosher with us. In my opinion, adding one more thing that experienced users can point to to show how a newb is doing it wrong isn't particularly constructive. I believe it's better to hash it out on talk pages using the basic criterion of verifiability. I still think that associated acts are usually best handled on a case by case basis. I don't have any idea about where we could draw a line that covers tha majority of cases clearly and concisely. Zytsef (talk) 06:22, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I have removed so much rubbish from these sections over the years, where i couldn't find any link whatsoever but the point is there is no indication what does and does not belong there. There has to be some guideline to that or no-one will have a clue new editor or not. To be honest I fail to see the purpose of it, what is an 'assosiated act' and is one exits doesnt a 'see also' section suffice? and would support it's removal. If not it does not clarification. --neon white talk 14:40, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

There is a current discussion of this field further up the page, under "associated acts", and a proposed change to the instructions on its use. Please carry this discussion over to that section. Thanks! --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 16:58, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Origin and Hometown

I guess Origin means place of birth. In a lot of situations the place of birth is not necessarily the hometown of the artist. Would it be OK to add a variable for Hometown?--HJKeats (talk) 18:08, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

The distinction would be applicable for a solo artist, but not for a group in most cases. Also, we would need to define "hometown": does this refer to childhood residence (in which case, define an age range for "childhood"), current or last residence, or a list of all the places a person lived in his or her lifetime? As always, there is the question of why this should be an infobox item, when the hometown can be mentioned in the body of the article, and added as a category ("people from..."). --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 19:29, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

For a band or group, "origin" is what city that group formed in. For most individual musicians, it is where they grew up or launched their career from. Where either of these is unclear then the "origin" is wherever the musician or project is primarily based from. For example, Jewel was born in Utah, learned to play guitar in Michigan, launched her career while living in San Diego, and currently lives in Texas. But she spent most of her young years in Alaska, and it was there that she first began performing as a musician, singing with her father in bars and taverns and learning to yodel. Therefore Homer, Alaska is listed as her place of origin. An example of a group would be The Hold Steady: Most of the band members are originally from the Minneaopolis-St. Paul area, but they formed the band while living in New York and it is from there that the group is based, so their origin is listed as New York. --IllaZilla (talk) 20:03, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking in terms of an individual artist. Origin can be a bit unclear as to its context in birth, current residence or even the place where the major part of the artists work had taken place. Then again to accommodate it in an infobox can be problematic. I tend to agree, categories and explanation in the text of the article can resolve it. Thanks, --HJKeats (talk) 23:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Automated archiving

Would anyone object to me setting up the Miszabot to perform automated archiving on this talk page? Some of the discussions of late have gotten very long and then sat stale well after they've become inactive, and now the page is getting quite huge. Instead of manually picking through them to figure out which ones are inactive, I can configure the bot to automatically move any thread that's been inactive for 30 days (or any other agreed-upon length of time) into the latest archive, and even to automatically create a new archive when the previous one reaches a certain size (say, 130K). Thoughts? --IllaZilla (talk) 09:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Template:~~Albums~~Musicians is usually at the top of my watchlist with a note that Miszabot archived some more threads, which bugs me a little (though I don't really know why!); I wish it wouldn't archive that page so often. Aside from that, I agree that something needs to be done about this page. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 10:15, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, we can change the amount of time it waits before archiving an old thread by setting the number of days. 30 days seems to be the most common on the project talk pages I watch, but we can always increase it. The rate at which it archives, however, is entirely dependent on how many discussion threads are present and how often they become inactive. There could be 25 threads, and if all of them have had some activity within the last 30 days then the bot won't touch them. But if, say, on Tuesday 6 of them pass the 30 days of inactivity mark, it's going to archive them. Then on Thursday 3 more might pass that mark, and they'll be archived. So the more active the page, the more threads are going to become stale from time to time, and the more the bot is going to do its job. --IllaZilla (talk) 09:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Ignore my previous grumpy old man reply and do what you think is best. :) --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 21:22, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Support Zytsef (talk) 04:06, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Strong support of automatic archiving. So far it works beautifully on other talk pages that I watch, and this one is getting a little cramped. Maybe we could set the archiving threshold a little higher than 30 days (60?) as this page seems to be less active than some others. – IbLeo (talk) 07:31, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Done I've started it out as a 30-day counter just to get the current page uncluttered. We can always change the threshold at any time if it seems to be archiving too quickly. I also took the liberty of removing the archive box, as archives numbers automatically appear in the talk page header now. --IllaZilla (talk) 09:07, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

infobox w/o an image

Just out of curiosity, why doesn't this template allow the image fields to be on the article while empty? [1]--Rockfang (talk) 21:54, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

One or more of the spaces after the equals signs must have been causing a problem. Or maybe there was some kind of phantom undisplayable character. Fixed! --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 23:00, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I didn't even think to check for spaces. Thanks for the fix.--Rockfang (talk) 23:03, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Signature or autograph

Like most other biographical infoboxes, can we add a signature or autograph parameter to this infobox, or is there a specific reason not having it? --staka (T ・C) 02:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Re the request above (moved here to bottom): would anyone care to comment, or create a signature field? Musicians as a group are people inclined to be sought out for autographs, and would make a worthwhile addition. I have a number of musicians' autographs I would like to contribute to the project. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I fail to see any encyclopedic value to this whatsoever. Wikipedia is not an autograph book, nor a place to show off your celeb autograph collection. Oppose. --IllaZilla (talk) 03:44, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

weak oppose - I agree that consistency between biography infoboxes is important, but there are some serious issues with including signatures everywhere. Firstly, certain categories of people use their signature regularly in their published works. Examples include politicians (in official documents), authors (in forewords/ book covers) and artists (on canvases). For these people, it can therefore be argued that the appearance of their signature is encyclopaedic information.

Other categories of people, (including musical artists) usually don't tend to publish works (such as album covers etc) including their signature. This makes the encyclopaedic value of such signatures very tenuous. If no publications exist containing the signature, it is also impossible to verify that it is correct.

Finally, the infobox for musical artists naturally attracts a lot of "fan info", which is of interest only to a very small number of people. The infobox should be a clean, easily accessible resource for important information - for example, readers wouldn't appreciate reading through lists of Eddie Van Halen's hair colour, pets' names, famous quotes, baby photos, favourite type of soup etc before they can find out that he played the guitar! The point I'm making here is that we need to decide who would find an artist's signature useful. I suspect it's only really of interest to serious fans.

In short, I think it might be appropriate to include a signature if the artist has included it in a widely published work. However, this is unlikely to apply in most cases so it is best not to include the field. Papa November (talk) 11:34, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Oppose I don't see how this could ever be considered useful to anyone or how the images use could be justified. Does it help at all with understanding of the articles subject? On top of that there is the copyright nightmare issues considering Autograph#Copyright and Signature#Copyright. --neon white talk 18:01, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Strong oppose It would add nothing of value to the articles; It would be incredibly hard, if not impossible, to verify for all but the biggest of names; It brings up copyright issues. Prophaniti (talk) 10:54, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject Classical music is deleting infoboxes from articles under their control

Several people from musical Wikiprojects are systematically deleting infoboxes from biographies that are covered by their projects:

"Rmv infobox as these are not used for classical musicians per Wikipedia:WikiProject Classical music#Biographical_infoboxes)
"Rmv infobox as these are not used for composers, per Wikipedia:WikiProject Composers#Lead section) "

Here is an example at: Milton Adolphus

The discussion is here at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Individual_wikiprojects_are_deleting_infoboxes_from_articles. As best as I can sum up the argument is that: classical composers as creative people can't be defined by the simple labels used in musical infoboxes, and as creative people transcend the traditional people infobox which can't capture the essence of what makes them an artist. And of course, some people are just philosophically opposed to any infoboxes, no matter what information they contain.

Someone asked about infoboxes for composers last month (see earlier discussion on this page), and I noted there isn't one, and also noticed the musicians infobox says it should not be used for composers, but found a few instances where it was. I'm not surprised at this, and I doubt there are a great many for them to remove, to put them in sync with other composers' articles. Thanks for pointing it out, but I don't have any objections. Those who do object, should discuss it on the applicable Wikiprojects page, which probably has more relevance than MOS's talk page. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 23:49, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

The issue isn't whether composers are musical artists, it is whether the Classical music project can decide that composers don't get any infobox, because the group is philosophically opposed to infoboxes in biographies. It would be like the New York wikiproject deciding that people born in New York City don't get infoboxes, because something is special about New Yorkers that seperates them from other people. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 01:02, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

That's not entirely a correct analogy, it very unlikely that the articles of all persons born in New York would all be considered under such a wikiproject. --neon white talk 01:11, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

During the long drawn out debate over how the current infobox should be formatted the Classical music project made it clear that they would not be making use of it. It was their consensus decision. And it is certainly OK for them to follow that if their consensus is still holding. Fair Deal (talk) 01:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm not so sure this discussion is even about the use of our musicians infobox; I've been presuming it is, since we're on the talk page belonging to it. But anyway, like I said before, most articles about composers don't have an infobox currently, from what I've seen, and I think the other Wikiproject is partly trying to get those articles in a uniform style. If this is a discussion as to whether those articles should be using any infobox, not necessarily ours, this is not the right page for it. It's not our jurisdiction. --A Knight Who Says Ni (talk) 01:46, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm This topic is being shopped around. Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) has also referred it - in new topics, either entitled "Individual wikiprojects are deleting infoboxes form articles" or "WikiProject Classical music is deleting infoboxes from articles under their control", to:

--Klein zach 03:30, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

No "Hmm" at all. I am notifying potentially aggrieved parties, the first step in any law based system. Posting notices in targeted forums conforms with Wikipedia policy. It would be egregious to not inform others of policy decisions affecting them being held in remote areas of Wikipedia. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 05:54, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

but that isn't exactly what you did, you started seperate discussions at each page which is not recommended. In future posting a link to a single discussion with a summary of the issue is better practice. --neon white talk 17:31, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought this was extremely old news. The composers and classical music groups have been opposed to infoboxes for a few years now, I thought. Zytsef (talk) 06:39, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

URL

Shouldn't the preferred format be just http://example.com instead of one where the website address is written twice? I don't see a real legitimate reason for writing the same thing twice in the same field. Tim meh ! 17:01, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

I didn't realize they changed WP to allow for that. If you put the website in brackets (which is how it used to be done), it appears like this: [2]. So the first instance provides the link itself, and the second would give the text that appears on the page. But if you no longer have to put the link in brackets, it should probably be like you suggest. -Freekee (talk) 04:25, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd be happy with that. What I usually do is use [http://www.example.com example.com]; what I really don't like is obfuscating nonsense like [http://www.example.com Official website]. I had been thinking of raising this at MoS, or a village pump page, for all infoboxes. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 09:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I now see the difference in the original wording. It removes the "http://". I think that's cleaner for viewing the page. -Freekee (talk) 22:08, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Notable instruments

A discussion has started on Talk:George_Harrison#the_.22notable_instruments.22_section_of_the_info_box in which the wording of the guidance for the notable instruments section has been called into question. The purpose of that section needs clarity as the current wording "models or custom" has led to a narrow understanding of "brand", and so "generic" instruments are being disallowed, even when they are highly notable. Harrison is very closely and notably associated with the sitar. As indicated on the talk page, he is more notably and closely associated with the sitar than the current examples of Hendrix and Toris Amos with their identified instruments. Harrison's playing of the sitar was pivotal to the development of the Western interest in that instrument and Indian music in general. Proposed wording:

This field is only relevant for individuals.Particularly noteworthy musical instruments with which the artist is strongly associated e.g. Jimi Hendrix with the Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Flying V guitars or George Harrison with the sitar. Custom made or promotional brands may not of themselves be notable, while generic instruments may be. The test would be the depth of coverage in reliable sources.

Comments and thoughts welcome. SilkTork *^YES! 12:14, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

i agree that the instructions for the "notable instruments" field need clarification, but don't agree with either the concept or the wording proposed above. the "instruments" section of these info-boxes is for a list of instruments mastered/used by the musicians (eg sitar [among others] in Harrison's case); the "notable instruments" section is clearly intended for particular models and/or individual instruments.

how many particular models/instruments to list in the "notable instruments" field is of course another recurring source of confusion/disagreement, and i hope we can also establish what the consensus is on that and re-formulate the instructions to reflect it. obviously the ideal is to have detailed and properly-sourced gear sections in the articles themselves, not to try to list everything in info boxes, but we definitely need a much more clearly-formulated concept of what does belong there. Sssoul (talk) 18:29, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I think there needs to be some clarifying of "instrument" and "brand". As an example - A sitar is an instrument. Of the varying instruments that Harrison played, the sitar was one of the most notable. Thinking of all the "instruments" he played, it is appropriate to select that one as among those to highlight. So as a quick "infobox" type summary, we say: George Harrison was a musician who played these instruments - Electric Guitar, Moog, Drums, Sitar, Piano, etc. Of those instruments the ones he was most associated with are Electric Guitar and Sitar.

If the intention is rather to list the "brands" that a musician is associated with, then we can say that George Harrison played electric guitar and sitar, etc, and that the brands of guitar most associated with him are the Rickenbacker 12 string, and the psychedelic Fender Stratocaster.

We could of course blend both together - which is what I hoped to do in my suggested wording.

However, if it is felt that the purpose of that section is to highlight specific commercial makes or brands, then the wording could be changed to accommodate that (calling it "Notable brands" would help). But I feel uncomfortable with simply concentrating on commercial brands as being notable rather than styles or types of instruments in themselves, and I'd be interested in hearing some reasoning for doing this.

Another option, as this seems to be a contentious issue, and is not in itself particularly valuable (the notable instruments would be discussed in depth in the article anyway), would be to remove the "Notable instruments" section as too problematic. SilkTork *^YES! 01:05, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I would favor leaving brands out as excessive detail for the infobox. I imagine many guitar-niks will consider brand an important and notable detail, but it is not worth including for every musician, and in many cases the publicly identified brand is because of an endorsement deal, so this becomes advertising. If brand is important, elaborate in the article body. / edg ☺ ☭ 11:42, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

well let's see here ... the "notable instruments" field is not meant to reiterate the "main highlights" of the "instruments" field; the "instruments" field itself should be "highlights": the main (generic) instruments that an artist has used, saving the details about rarely-played-but-documented instruments for the article itself. the "notable instruments" section is meant for a couple of particular models that the artist has famously used (yes this involves mentioning particular makes/brands). yes, the criteria for the "notable instruments" field need to be spelled out more clearly; yes, maybe "notable models" would be a better name for the field; and yes, maybe the field is more confusing/debatable than it's worth, particularly in articles where there's a good detailed gear section anyway.

meanwhile, would it be more constructive/worthwhile to pursue this in more detail on the Guitarists Project page? it may well be that different projects need different info-box criteria. Sssoul (talk) 13:38, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

As this particular field is causing problems, then yes, it would be worthwhile to get some wider involvement. Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians would seem the most appropriate, as this is a Musical artist template rather than specifically a guitarist template. I'll make a notice now. SilkTork *^YES! 17:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

what i meant is that it's quite possible that different criteria are appropriate for different "categories" of musicians: the exact model may be of more interest in guitarists' info boxes than in flutists' or pianists' info boxes - i don't know that, since i'm not a flutist-spotter, but the guitarist info boxes i'm familiar with definitely use this field to name specific models (and/or as noted below "named instruments" like Lucille, if the artist has/had any such). anyway i posted something on the Guitarist Project page pointing out this discussion ... Sssoul (talk) 10:15, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

I think there are three different uses for this field. One, brands. Two, named instruments. Three, general types. Here's a list of inclusions:

Tori Amos: Bösendorfer piano
Roger McGuinn: Rickenbacker 12-string guitar
Brian May: Red Special
B. B. King: Lucille
Ian Anderson: flute

I think the purpose of the field is to say what these people were known for. The instruments in question are a part of the musicians' images. So the question is what is he or she noted for playing? I think the first four are reasonable uses for the field. But what about the last? Ian Anderson is certainly noted for being one of the few flautists in the rock field. But it already lists that instrument in the Instrument field. But it lists ten others there too. So do we use the field for emphasis? Brian Ritchie is a bass player. He is famous for his Ernie Ball acoustic bass guitars, but he is also a shakuhachi player. Should that go there? Also, should the notable instruments be notable in the sense that they should have WP articles? -Freekee (talk) 23:29, 19 December 2008 (UTC)