Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera/Archive 24

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Richard Wagner Project

Following the success of the Gilbert and Sullivan Project we now have another 'descendant' - the Richard Wagner Project. IMO having special projects for the more developed areas of opera coverage works well, enabling higher standards etc. Congratulations to Dogbertd for setting this up. -- Kleinzach 01:28, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Assessments

Peter Cohen has raised this subject in relation to the proposed bot run. Are we ready to bite the bullet on this and introduce some kind of system, albeit very slowly? Like most of us I have been reluctant to get involved, although I remember GuillaumeTell did some preparatory work. I've now come round to regarding assessements as a necessary evil, the only way to establish the legitimacy of the project in WP as a whole (and perhaps prevent it being sliced up in bot and AWB raids). (The reason given for the Biography Project bots marking up opera project pages was because the Opera Project didn't do ratings.) So, yay or nay? Comments? -- Kleinzach 02:28, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not very enthusiastic. I'd rather be getting on with creating and improving articles. Five years down the line maybe we can start assessing, but this is just another distraction from the business of writing an encyclopaedia as far as I'm concerned. The experience of the past month has put me off all the obsessing with superfluous, peripheral stuff. The good thing about this project was it didn't have those "30-second assessments" in the talk page templates. I'm prepared to rate articles as "stub", but that's about it. --Folantin 08:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to let you know where I stand on this. WP:CM tagged articles with the banner with the sole purpose of keeping track of which articles fell under our scope. Given that most classical music articles (35%) are stub class, it seemed stupid to rate articles when frankly what was needed was an drive to improve our articles. This is what I think should also occur at WP:Opera. You should tag articles under your scope by all means (saves on organisational problems), but maybe rating articles is a little too wasteful of time. Sure you can get the bot to automatically a stub article a stub, but who's going to separate the Start class from the B class? Centy – – 10:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm wary of offering to rate articles if we haven't the resources to do so. I asked another project to rate one of my articles and I've noticed a lack of movement on it or an article where a request was put in in April. And I'm personally currently more interested in working on the 30 opera articles I've identified than in rating other people's efforts. That list will probably last me to near the end of the year. --Peter cohen 10:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The bot is able to look at an article and tell if it has a "This article is a stub" tag in the article, then add the assessment. Otherwise it will leave the rating alone, basically leaving "stubs" tagged and the rest "unassessed". While doing the assessments can be drudgery, it has a couple benefits. 1) It allows you (and others) to see progress in enhancing articles. 2) Being in the WP:1.0 Editorial gives you a log of articles that have been added or removed from the project - see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/LGBT articles by quality log for an example. That helps with people either removing banners or adding them unnecessarily. 3) We use the ratings to "challenge" each other to "Jump-a-Class" - see Wikipedia:WikiProject San Francisco Bay Area/Jumpaclass for an example.

So I think the above plan to auto-tag stubs and not worry about the rest for now will suit well. Just my 2 cents :) -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 13:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at how assessments work at WP:G&S. I think it is more user-friendly than the way they do it at the Bio project or some other projects. Best regards, -- Ssilvers 14:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't find that the standard WP assessment criteria work very well for articles about operas or singers. In particular, most of us stick a Stub category onto anything that we haven't finished (such as my current Ermione project), but the criteria imply that a stub is actually a lot less than what I've already done. B and Start are quite difficult to distinguish. And so on.

For now, and if anyone is interested in actually doing the work, I'd be in favour of a "points" system - at least for articles about operas (my main interest). We could tally up a) whether required sections (roles, performance history, synopses, recordings, etc.) are present or absent and b) what standard those present have reached, with a simple scale of 0=absent, 1=present but inadequate, 2=good, 3=excellent. Or something like that. I could conduct a small trial once I get back from Wexford on 9 June. --GuillaumeTell 23:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

If we have an assessment system it needs to be designed broadly along the lines that GuillaumeTell is suggesting. However I am wondering if we can quantify what is involved before we get to that stage, i.e. an assessment of the assessment. All SatyrTN's suggestions look good to me. Will the bot run give us some figures? If we do a run placing banners and noting stubs what other data (if any) can we get out of it. To put this in context I believe we have about 3,000 articles, including around 900 operas, 400 composers, 1000 singers and 700 other miscellanous articles. (Any future assessment system woud have to apply to all areas.) Also if we have more information we can try to address the (very reasonable) concerns of sceptics like Folantin. -- Kleinzach 01:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've put together a run of the categories listed on User:Peter cohen/opera categories. All I did was count the number of articles in each category, then the number of articles the bot recognizes as a stub for each category. Because articles can belong to more than one cat, the totals can't be trusted, but it should give you an idea of what you're dealing with.

And just because, I also counted the number of categories that have the word "operas" in the name, then the number of pages in those categories. Again, the numbers aren't fully accurate, but it's an idea. See User:SatyrBot/Opera1 for the list. -- SatyrTN (talk | contribs) 04:56, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that was helpful. I've left a (vaguely technical) question on User talk:SatyrBot/Opera1. -- Kleinzach 08:42, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

A point system strikes me as labor intensive and, because it's not in wide use, confusing to all but the group of people who follow this project closely. The Stub/Start/B/GA/A/FA system is vague and sometimes inconsistently applied, but that's OK -- it accomplishes its goals of (among other things) encouraging editors to improve articles, giving editors some feedback on their contributions, and encouraging peer review. Fireplace 02:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Fireplace. The assessment system up to B level is informal. It's just a guide to say that the article doesn't have much in it (stub); or it has a reasonable beginning of the key sections, but they might not be very fleshed out, or else it might need clean-up/referencing, etc. (start); or the article is pretty good: it's got all the main sections with a reasonable amount of content and referencing: It could have a more complete background or musical analysis section and more references, but the characters/synopsis/musical numbers sections are pretty complete, and there is reasonable information about background/productions/recordings, etc. (B-class). After B-class, however, an article needs a formal review to be designated GA, A or FA. These processes are fairly well described. Why create a system that is different from all other projects on Wikipedia? Best regards, -- Ssilvers 00:51, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

The objection to the standard system is that it is 'one-size-fits-all' and assumes all articles can be developed to the top level. Maybe we can talk about this later? It's not an easy subject. -- Kleinzach 01:02, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that every article is destined to be FA at the end of time. There is nothing wrong with a good B-class article (and B-class covers a lot of territory). For instance, there could be a perfectly nice-looking article about a performer, say, Marion Hood, about whom little is known. The article should give all the available information, be well-written and be nicely formatted, but even after it has been taken as far as it can go (I'm not saying that this one could not use some more work), it would still be relatively short, missing some information about her life and career that we may never unearth, and have relatively few references, unless some researcher ever does a good book about her. So, it may never get beyond B-class. That's OK. Someone looking her up in Wikipedia will get a good summary of the singer. The point of the assessment is just to give a general idea of the relative state polish and completeness of articles (in broad terms). Then, if you are a person who likes to expand stubs, it is easy to find them. On the other hand, if you are a person who likes to take an article that has a pretty good start and make it into a more complete B-class article, it will be easy to see which opera project articles fall into this category. Simple; no pressure! If you look at the talk page assessments for the WP:G&S articles, you'll see that Marc and I (mostly) have given them assessments, using a template that is very easy to change, and when I upgrade an article, I just upgrade the assessment. Then I can get a birds' eye view of which articles are still "stubs" or "starts" in the project and concentrate on getting those up to B-class (which is what I have been trying to do, in general). Best regards, -- Ssilvers 02:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

I propose we accept SatyrTN's offer to set the bot to (quote) "look at an article and tell if it has a "This article is a stub" tag in the article", otherwise to "leave the rating alone, basically leaving "stubs" tagged and the rest "unassessed"." -- Kleinzach 00:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that where there is a stub tag, there is no harm to automatically adding a "stub" class assessment. If an article is then improved, the assessment should be upgraded at the same time. Best regards, -- Ssilvers 00:51, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. --Peter cohen 10:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Ok. Moreschi ^Talk 20:13, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

List of important opera companies

This has been tagged as original research with an implied threat of deletion (Afd), see Talk:List_of_important_opera_companies#Original_research. The tagger objected to the limit of 60 enties in the introduction (which I have removed) and the selection criteria. He/she has agreed that the OR tag can be removed if the word 'important' is removed from the title and the list becomes inclusive. I am inclined to do this to save a good article, but do other people agree? -- Kleinzach 00:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. -- Ssilvers 00:51, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Agreed - Jay 02:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Do so if you mus, but I notice the reference list at the bottom. If someone can state how it was used, it should rebut the original research claim. --Peter cohen 10:26, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately it would be extremely laborious to do this, the results would probably be disputed and in any case the information would be dated. (I'm not happy about this myself. IMO OR is the most abused policy on WP.) -- Kleinzach 01:41, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

If the list gets too big (which I doubt it will) it could always be split by continent. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 01:56, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The criteria listed (except the first and the last) are factual, but I doubt if some of those facts are (or were) very easy to find, even for major companies. I personally would prefer a more inclusive list anyway. --GuillaumeTell 10:53, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately List of opera companies exists as a redirect. Does someone know how to move the page? An admin perhaps? -- Kleinzach 02:41, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

You have to post here Wikipedia:Requested moves. Gustav von Humpelschmumpel 03:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

I've renamed it and removed double redirects. No need to post. --☑ SamuelWantman 06:42, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I have now removed the Original Research tag as agreed. -- Kleinzach 10:33, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

International Music Score Library Project

The IMSLP (which works exactly like WP) has an opera section. I don't know whether anybody else is interested? I've joined with my WP handle. -- Kleinzach 02:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)