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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Kleinzach (talk | contribs) at 18:37, 28 April 2006 (Greetings from Opera Project). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Let's get this party started

Ok, now that we've signed up, what can we do to start fostering a relationship between the all the arts on Wikipedia? What can we do to improve articles? Should we all introduce ourselves first? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 22:04, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, who is maintaining the portal? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 22:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Greetings! Well, I'm a theatre person and spend much of time working on articles relating to it. I also help maintain Portal:Theatre and I created WikiProject Theatre and WikiProject Elizabethan theatre. Well, I just got back from a walk and while walking I thought about some things this Project might work on. Here are some ideas:
  • First I think we need to redo the Project page. I jazzed up the page for WikiProject Theatre, just to make it more visually appealing; we're artists aren't we? In addition, we need to have a scope and mission statement as well as ways to help the project.
  • Since we encompass such a large area, I think trying to work on individual articles might be difficult. Perhaps the purpose could be to enhance co-operation between projects and portals, certainly maintenance of all arts related portals, and perhaps an arts article collaboration (only if there is enough interest in this Project).
  • One project this group might consider should be sorting out arts related catagories. Certainly working on a general arrangement of them and then working downwards. Being that they are so related, perhaps creating a model category for arts related fields and then working to bring other arts related categories in line with that.
Just some ideas in stream-of-conciousness order. On the re-design of the project page, I have very little time now, but I may be able to tackle it shortly and redesign it if you like. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 23:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Two more thoughts. Perhaps we might send some spies over to WikiProject Science and find out what they're doing to create attention. We also might consider an arts related assessment of arts coverage as a whole. Taken it piece by piece and looking at how the arts of covered. Of course we need people in all the arts disciplines to really be able to do this well. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 23:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, yes, absolutely yes to all of the above. I must confess that other than an arts COTW (a long way down the line from now, you're right) and looking after the portal I had only the haziest idea of how this project could actually improve individual articles, but your category suggestion sounds like a good place to start – an orderly list of categories on the portal à la Portal:Science will look impressive. In fact, the whole idea of this project as I envisaged it was of stealing all of the Science project's best ideas, so I'm glad you caught on to that!
The only new suggestion I have to add is that we perhaps formulate a sort of standard "Come and join the Arts Portal!" message and paste it on all of the related project/portal talk pages. Granted, some of them are a bit dead, but surely loads of people who joined and then forgot all about them still have those pages on their watchlists. HAM File:Icons-flag-wales.png 16:59, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
So, how should categorization go? Has a categorization scheme already been invented by historians or sociologists to categorize the arts and artistic endeavor? I'm going to search for one, but if anyone knows of a book or web site that discusses such a scheme, let us know!
--Tony(blah blah blah)(look what I can do!) 15:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
As I see it, certain categories can be applied to every art category, such as "Theatre by country", "Dance by country", "Visual arts by country", "Literature by country" and so forth. The same could go for categorizing artistic movements, artists, etc. The purpose of the categorization would be to structure these in a consistant manner. In addition, there are some issues that might be best addressed here (i.e. an issue I have still yet to resolve in terms of theatre categories: should theatre be classified by country or by culture? This also affects the naming of the category ("Theatre in Italy" vs. "Italian theatre")). This is certainly a decision that would apply to all arts categories. Another issue arises with the use of British vs. English and then further what about Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish? What about artists, etc. under colonial rule? (i.e. Indians under British rule? classified as British, Indian or both?) Note, however, that I have noted and appreciated your sarcasm. :-) Cheers! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 16:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Tony, I had a bash at what you might call a "categorization scheme" on Portal:Arts/Categories. I put theatre, music etc. under "Performing arts" and architecture, painting etc. under "Visual arts" (no surpises there). Literature and poetry I decided to class as "Liberal arts", although the term is a bit problematic as in the classical sense it would mean grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. And of course you could argue the case for poetry being one of the "performing arts". This scheme hasn't actually been applied to the categories yet – I'll wait for some feedback from the project as to whether everything's in the right place before I go ahead with the changes. HAM File:Icons-flag-wales.png 18:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I just did a few calculations. Of Featured articles, arts-related articles comprise roughly 20%, while they comprise 19% of Good articles. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 01:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Tag for WikiProjects

I just whipped this up! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 19:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Arts
Announcing the creation of WikiProject Arts, an effort to create a collaboration between all arts projects and artistically-minded Wikipedians in order to improve arts coverage.

  • Such a pretty little tag, I'm considering rewording it as almost a sort of party invitation – I've never seen that done before. Perhaps with the header ==An Invitation to all members of this Project/Portal== ... but before I go ahead with that I wonder whether, for brevity's sake, this should be made a template, or whether that would fall foul of the Wikipedia:Templates for deletion squad. Having the message this template is being considered for deletion above the invitation won't reflect very well on the project. HAM File:Icons-flag-wales.png 16:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Go ahead and re-word it as you wish. I didn't create this as a template as I don't see it being used very much. Certainly once the project gets off the ground we may consider making this a template, but as it stands I think just inserting the code will work just as well. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 16:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scope

Why are television-, film- and radio-related WikiProjects currently excluded from this list? They're no more or less "artistic" than sculpture, comics, or music. Also, what about other, non-theatrical performing arts, like dance and perhaps stage magic? -Silence 18:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm of the opinion all of those should be included. I didn't even consider Magic, but it certainly does qualify. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 18:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. They're all currently listed under "Arts" in Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects, anyway. -Silence 18:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Dance was duly added and I'll do Magic next. Film I'm willing to add, but I don't know about Buffy, Digimon or Star Wars: it seems to me that there are plenty of fans to keep these projects in the pink of health, and they neither need help like Theatre or Visual arts nor can they help us, as a big project like Music potentially could with related aspects of the arts. Perhaps I'm wrong, but do those pop culture topics really need what Project Arts is intended to offer as much as ones of the kind already on the list? HAM File:Icons-flag-wales.png 19:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any need to add series-specific projects here. I was suggesting that we add WikiProject Film and WikiProject Television, not that we add WikiProject Star Wars or WikiProject Doctor Who or anything of the sort; why would we have to include those just to include "Film" and "Television", when we don't have to include "WikiProject Harry Potter" or "WikiProject Middle-earth" just to list "Novels" here, nor "WikiProject The Beatles" to list "Music" and "Musicians" here? That level of detail is unnecessary, as it should be covered on WikiProject Television, Music, Film, etc. instead, if anywhere. -Silence 19:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, that's perfectly fine by me, then! HAM File:Icons-flag-wales.png 19:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings from Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels

We have been increasing our activity from the end of last year and have recruited a number of new members. We are progressing through Wikipedias diet of article on Novel (of whatever level of elitism) and striving for increased quality and consistency. The consistency is more difficult to acheive as Novels come in all shapes and styles and articles that pre-exist are more difficult to bring to consistency. Anyway all the best. I have joined up as a contact between these projects. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome! We're certainly glad to have a representative of WikiProject Novels! I just glanced at the project and I'm particularly impressed with the categorization project. This is something we may have to steal for this project. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 20:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New layout

I threw together a new layout for the mainpage. Now, it looks much better, methinks. Certainly not as sterile as it was. If anyone thinks the yellow is too bright, feel free to change the colours or let me know and I'll do it. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 18:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm damning with faint praise, but I can live with it. :) Steve block The wikipedian meme 21:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Better looking apart from the colours - please, please go for something more subtle. We do not want to put people off before they join. Also I suspect once underway fully the layout will need to change again to be more functinal. At present this is beginning to take on the sharacter of a Portal. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I think the redesign has flair! If it has to be changed – and I suppose Ganymead's (IMO marvellous) in-house style is something you either love or hate – let's at least keep it looking distinctive. Perhaps we should be taking our cue from some of the more aesthetically successful userpages. I see no reason why ours should look like every other WikiProject page. HAM File:Icons-flag-wales.png 18:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, as long as the design isn't too esoteric. We don't want to alienate people with an élitist design that's hard to use. But I definitely like what's going on now with the design. Good work, Ganymead! -- T.o.n.y 18:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the compliments. Feel free to tweak the design if y'all would like. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 18:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think the current design looks bad: it has a lot of potential, at the least. But it would be hard to dispute descriptions like "garish" or "gaudy" at this point; the bright pastel colors are a bit off-putting. Also a serious issue is that the use of tables on pages like this does, in fact, scare off some users in practice, as it makes it significantly more troublesome to figure out where one has to edit in order to make changes occur on the page, such as the changes required to add oneself to the list of participants. I, for example, had to make 6 or 7 attempts in order to edit the right part of the page to tone down the glaring yellow color to a more reasonable and muted hue (though it was subsequently reverted for some reason..).
  • Remember that one of the key components of all fields of art is the ability to balance sound and silence, positive and negative: this page will look a lot healthier and more aesthetically pleasing when it's less cluttered and has a bit more subtlety and moderation in its presentation. There is a very thin line between a beautiful art gallery and a bloated mound of shinies; we should strongly resist the urge to bloat this page with shiny images, cutting off all room for the text to breathe. Rather than shoving a bunch of huge (albeit very well-chosen) images down our readers' throats, some tasteful, selective placements at carefully-chosen and well-balanced intervals along the page will ultimately be more effective, compelling, and inviting to new users. As examples, we don't really need a giant friggin' portrait of Beethoven to represent the musical aspect of the arts: a simple line of music notes would be more than enough, and would be easier to fit into the layout in a non-obtrusive way. We should also avoid redundancies: we have the image of the dancers both near the top of the page and near the bottom (it's also poorly-alligned near the bottom), when we probably only need it near the bottom, in our signature template, especially since there's already an image depicting "dance" very near the top of the page; nor are two illustrations of comics, and two illustrations of literature, really necessaary (if you're going to include an extra one left-hand column, why not balance things out better and take a load off the page by removing one from the right-hand column?). But, as I said, the layout has potential.
  • It will also probably look better when we don't have a cheesy Hallmark-esque quotation like "Art is the signature of civilizations." as our motto. :) Or lies like "Art means to dare — and to have been right." (Though I am, and long have been, fond of the "Art is useless" point. Wilde will be spared.) But I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. :f -Silence 22:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings from Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera

Opera has also been an active area during the past few months. We have a long way to go before we can begin to rival the coverage of the main print resource (the New Grove Dictionary of Opera), however in the long term Wikipedia is better suited to developing an up-to-date performance history than a conventional encylopedia.

We have made some progress in developing an appropriate ‘project style’ based on Wikipedia policies, taking into account that we are using many terms and references in languages other than English. Categorization is disorganized and proliferated, perhaps it always will be on Wikipedia? It might be helpful if the Arts Project produced some guidelines. I see there is a Portal:Arts/Categories page and I may make some comments there.

Lastly I hope members here respect the work done by the individual projects and do not try to impose solutions on them. Advice will be much appreciated, but not peremptory editing! Best regards to all. - Kleinzach 18:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

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