User talk:Bobnotts: Difference between revisions

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Hi Rob, I couldn't understand your reasoning in restoring this [[ChoralWiki:Privacy policy|blank page]] and protecting it for admins access only. Do you intend to begin editing it soon? [[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]] has offered to create a text draft for this page and I thought it would make more sense to let her recreate the page only when she had the draft ready. —[[User:Carlos|Carlos]] [http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Carlos http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/skins/monobook/mail_icon.gif] 00:29, 28 July 2008 (PDT)
Hi Rob, I couldn't understand your reasoning in restoring this [[ChoralWiki:Privacy policy|blank page]] and protecting it for admins access only. Do you intend to begin editing it soon? [[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]] has offered to create a text draft for this page and I thought it would make more sense to let her recreate the page only when she had the draft ready. —[[User:Carlos|Carlos]] [http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Carlos http://www.cpdl.org/wiki/skins/monobook/mail_icon.gif] 00:29, 28 July 2008 (PDT)
:Hi Carlos. I blanked the page and protected it for the same reason that I blanked it and protected it before you deleted it, "so that spam bots cannot create the page which is potentially a system page". I don't plan on editing it any time soon but if Vaarky fancies writing a draft, she can do so on a user sub-page. As site policy, it should be checked and ratified by admins before being published in my opinion. --[[User:Bobnotts|Bobnotts]] <small>[[User talk:Bobnotts|'''talk''']]</small> 06:00, 28 July 2008 (PDT)
:Hi Carlos. I blanked the page and protected it for the same reason that I blanked it and protected it before you deleted it, "so that spam bots cannot create the page which is potentially a system page". I don't plan on editing it any time soon but if Vaarky fancies writing a draft, she can do so on a user sub-page. As site policy, it should be checked and ratified by admins before being published in my opinion. --[[User:Bobnotts|Bobnotts]] <small>[[User talk:Bobnotts|'''talk''']]</small> 06:00, 28 July 2008 (PDT)
::Thanks for trying to make it more convenient for me, Bob. FWIW, the approach Carlos suggested makes perfect sense to me. A draft for something like this is best reviewed in the discussion page section, so it doesn't create an impression that the document is ratified by the site's administrators until it actually has been. Requiring admin approval for edits to a page that purports to represent CPDL policy sounds like a fine idea. --[[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]] 10:10, 28 July 2008 (PDT)
::Thanks for trying to make it more convenient for me. FWIW, the approach Carlos suggested makes perfect sense to me. A draft for something like this is best reviewed in the discussion page section, so it doesn't create an impression that the document is ratified by the site's administrators until it actually has been. Requiring admin approval for edits to a page that purports to represent CPDL policy sounds like a fine idea. --[[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]] 10:10, 28 July 2008 (PDT)

Revision as of 17:12, 28 July 2008

Archives:

Drink to me only

Bob, I have added a new record for "drink to me only". In my view the work was clearly originally composed by Callcott. Philip Legge does not seem to accept that. So the "traditional" version within his busking book is probably a harmonisation of Callcott's original. The same apoplies to the later edition added earlier this month. In any event the two version are sufficiently different to merit separate entries. Jgoodliffe

Add New Works form

Hi Robert,

I'm still working working on the form and the results, and I'm a bit puzzled how to 'render' part of larger work. Should it come directly under the title? e.g.
Title: Just a title, Op. 65, No. 7
Part of: Larger work, Op. 65

Also I don't know what to do with the second composer entry, you requested. Yours, Arie 02:10, 1 May 2008 (PDT)

I also noticed that the template {{Acap}} renders as:
Instruments: a cappella
whereas e.g. {{OrgAcc}} just gives the category. IMHO all the templates concerning instrumentation should render the same way, in order to maintain the PHP-script easier. Arie 06:11, 1 May 2008 (PDT)

Hi Arie. I've replied on ChoralWiki:Operation and implementation issues. Regards --Bobnotts talk 01:10, 2 May 2008 (PDT)

More superfluous links

Hi Bob, thanks for deleting the redirs created with my page moves! If you don't mind, there are still 39 of these to delete. If you look in Recent changes (last 250 edits), you will see them under (move log) on 07-May. They are too many for me to tag each one with a delnow template. Thank you again! -- CarlosTalk 03:03, 8 May 2008 (PDT)

Hi Carlos. I'll jump in here (I hope I'm not too nosey!). You can tag the redirects by typing {{subst:delnow|superfl redir|~~~~}} on the superfluous redirects. That way, we can catch them even if several days (or pages of Recent changes) have elapsed. I'm rather strapped for time right now, so I'm not sure if I'll get to deleting them right away, before Rob has a chance to - but who knows, maybe I will. :) -- Chucktalk Giffen 05:04, 8 May 2008 (PDT)
Hi Chuck, thanks for your tip, in fact I've been using {{subst:delnow|...}} here and there, but this time I moved too many pages to new names and was a bit too lazy to go back to each of the redirects (39 left for deletion) to tag each one of them with this template. I imagine you admins all use the "Enhanced recent changes (JavaScript)" option (under Recent Changes tab in Preferences), and this option is great because it does the hard work of gathering related edits in topics, thus making easier the task of deleting redirects, in this case. :) -- CarlosTalk 20:15, 8 May 2008 (PDT)
Hi Carlos. Basically, I'm taking this approach: if I see lots of page moves in the recent changes, like earlier, then I'll probably go ahead and delete the redirects. However, deleting redirects doesn't really feature high on my CPDL priority list so I won't be going into the special pages to hunt them out (unless I'm particularly bored!) However, if there are pages listed in the immediate delete category, I will aim to delete them if appropriate, within a reasonable time of them being marked as such, even though ordinarily, they wouldn't be a priority to me. Incidentally, I don't use the JavaScript recent changes thing-e-me-bob because I didn't find it particularly useful the last time I switched it on. I'll forgive you for the invasion, Chuck! --Bobnotts talk 00:42, 9 May 2008 (PDT)
Bob, you are right in giving higher priority to nobler tasks! :) In fact this is the kind of dirty job no one really likes doing; the ideal would be if a script could automatically remove items from the 'immediate delete' category from time to time... but I really appreciate the cleaning up you and Chuck are constantly doing. And CPDL servers probably appreciate it too, having less pages to index! :) I'll tag those pages for deletion so you can erase them without hurry, ok? I also started checking the complete list of redirects and tagging those that are junk; these too can be dealt with in no rush. -- CarlosTalk 02:48, 9 May 2008 (PDT)

What is happening at CPDL?

Hi Rob, I noted that you commented out the donation page from the main CPDL page. This seems consistent with my experience: I sent a donation cheque to the address specified in the donation page, and the cheque was returned as undeliverable, as if Raf Ornes were not receiving donations for CPDL.

A number of CPDL issues, described in the "ChoralWiki:Operation and implementation issues" of the Forum, and requiring Raf Ornes' intervention, are pending since some time. I also offered to CPDL a new phpBB3 forum so as to replace, at least temporarily, the old phpBB2 forum that is out of order since many weeks, but nothing happened.

I'm under the impression that CPDL is loosing the energy that Raf provided since its foundation. Am I wrong? What's happening? Can we help?

Max a.k.a. --Choralia 05:24, 12 May 2008 (PDT)

Hi Max. Thanks for your message. I'm fully aware that you tried to donate some money to help CPDL and that you found it imposible to do so. Allow me to thank you for your goodwill in doing this and also in offering a new Bulletin Board for CPDL's use. The offer was very generous. Unfortunately, there are certain parts of CPDL that no-one except Raf can change, and he is not active on the project at the moment and he has not been forthcoming with his reasons for this, nor has he suggested when (or if) he will be active on the project again. One of the parts that only Raf can change is the navigation menu on the left of every page. At the moment, the link for the forums is to the old forums and we can't change that. So, that's the main reason why your kind offer wasn't accepted - we figured it would confuse users even more if CPDL apparently had 2 forums... Other things that only Raf can do is - ensure the site is backed up regularly and completely, update the Media Wiki installation and add new add ons for it, and fix & update the forum.
You're right that a lot of the impetus of CPDL has been lost and a figurehead (like Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia) tends to encourage people to work together in one direction. At the moment, there are not nearly enough active users who are not just contributing new editions and texts and translations. Of course, I don't mean to belittle the efforts of contributors - CPDL would be nothing without its content, but there need to be more people doing admin related jobs such as moving pages, updating pages with the new templates that have recently been introduced, writing new help pages and formaliseing policy. At the present, there are 3 active users doing this stuff - me, Chuck and a very welcome addition to the team, Carlos. And whilst we would love to have the same level of framework in terms of policy as, say, Wikipedia, we just don't have the time to commit to it. Basically at the moment we're doing a little better than treading water. One of the ways we are moving forward is the new Add Works form which, when complete, will make people's lives considerably easier. I'd like to increase participation in CPDL by enhancing the community portal and improving documentation. I'll be able to start doing this in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, it will then become obvious as to how you can help :-) Thanks for your concern and support. --Bobnotts talk 01:08, 15 May 2008 (PDT)
Hi Rob, I definitely have a professional bias. My motto is "no single point of failure", i.e., there must be a back-up for everything, including people. From my professional perspective, having no back-up for Raf is a big risk for CPDL. One year ago CPDL had a major failure. At that time, the forum acted as a back-up resource: even though the scores were temporarily unavailable, the community remained in touch, and this somewhat mitigated the effects of the failure. If the same problem occurs today on the wiki platform, all the communicatons are lost, and it would be worse. So, I appreciate your effort creating better templates, improving documentation, and so on, but I'm more worried about loosing all the work made so far by so many people.
Anyway, let's wait that Raf is back on the project, hopefully before a major problem occurs. If you have any tasks for me, I'll be happy to help. A small suggestion about the phpBB2 forum: perhaps somebody (you? Chuck?) have forum credentials allowing to add a link on the top of the forum page, or even to re-direct the forum to another URL. If so, you may add a link or re-direct the phpBB2 forum to my phpBB3 forum. As the phpBB2 forum remains the "gateway" to the back-up phpBB3 forum, the relationship between the twos (phpBB2 as "primary", phpBB3 as "back-up") should be reasonably clear for everybody. The benefit, of course, is that there will be a back-up forum available in the case of problems on this wiki platform. --Choralia 05:33, 15 May 2008 (PDT)
Can you say more about the transition now that Rafael is withdrawing? In particular, I (and possibly others) would be interested in how this affects the back-up situation--any way we can help with remote back-up even if it isn't 100% comprehensive? Are there higher priority ways people can help than with translations or fixing broken links (maybe even something that can be added to the volunteer page). I'd like to hear more about the some of the tasks you mentioned above (updating pages with recently created templates, writing new help pages, formaliseing policy).
By the way, would Rafael be cool with some update to his user page that tells people where support or feedback should be sent now? Also, his page has an box encouraging people to report broken links or errors. That should be redirected to others. I will understand if you folks have your hands busy and can't get to my more gnat-like questions. --Vaarky 00:04, 27 July 2008 (PDT)

Transpositions

Hi Rob, I saw that you removed a few works from Adrian Cuello's page. I understand your point, they aren't really original compositions, but those that I saw were not simple transpositions too, he did a lot of "rewriting" to adapt them for female choir. Do you think he could leave them under a specific section in his composer page, say, Re-arrangements? If not, perhaps in his user page... but I think that his "intellectual" work on these scores deserved being mentioned on his composer page. I don't know if there's already a consensus on this subject here at CPDL, if so please let me know. -- CarlosTalk 23:27, 14 May 2008 (PDT)

Hi Carlos. I have to say that I didn't look closely at the level of arrangement that Adrian made to the works. The ones that I skimmed over I compared to the originals and saw mainly just transposition. If you have any specific references to hand, I'd like to take a closer look. I have to say that I'm against listing so-called "arrangements" on individuals' composer pages as, in my opinion, anything but considerable re-writing isn't arrangement - it's editing. However, I'd think it's fine for an editor to list his editions on his editor page like Chuck and I have. Now I realise this may develop into something of a discussion of semantics, not the actual issue, so here are a few example that I think are useful:
  1. David Fraser has edited many works by William Byrd. Byrd often wrote for ATB or subdivisions of that, ATTB, AATB, etc. I know that Dave often transposes some of Byrd's works for SATB as most choirs use those forces, but I would never consider him an arranger because of this transposition, rather this is a part of editing - making a work which was composed some time ago suitable for modern day performance.
  2. User:Denis Mason has made 2 editions of Cantique de Jean Racine by Gabriel Fauré, one for SSA and one for TBB. Are those arrangements? I'm not sure but they're not listed on his composer page (he doesn't have one), nor on his editor page.
So I guess it comes down to the amount of re-writing. If there's some considerable re-writing then it's probably fair to call it an arrangement. If the person has just swapped a few clefs around then I don't think that counts... --Bobnotts talk 19:30, 23 May 2008 (PDT)

User:Thierry

Hi Rob, thanks for fixing things in Thierry's userpage, I erroneously thought his username was Thierry Buclin and moved his talk page with no reason. Must remember to look more carefully when a User: page is really a userpage. :) -- CarlosTalk 02:31, 24 May 2008 (PDT)

No problem :-) --Bobnotts talk 04:49, 24 May 2008 (PDT)

Add works form problems

Hi Rob,

I tried to use the create works page to put up a new mass setting i've finally finished.. after entering all the info, i clicked submit and got the error message "unable to update table". Any help or advice of what's going on? Thanks Paul R. Marchesano

Hi Paul. You get this error message when you use an apostrophe without putting a backslash before it. Simply follow the instructions at the top of the page, "Technical note: If you use an apostrophe, you must use a backslash before it, or the program will not work correctly" and you should be fine. Please note that all movements of a mass should be added to the same score pages. Hope that helps. --Bobnotts talk 07:04, 30 May 2008 (PDT)
Thanks for adding the composer to the Mass page. I didn't have an apostrophe, but I did have quotation marks. That may have done it. --Paul Marchesa 13:52, 3 June 2008 (PDT)

Mulitple editions

Hi Rob. I see you have been removing parentheses around multiple editions listings on the Victoria page by typing out, eg. 3 editions available. I'm not sure I understand your rationale behind this, since from earliest times we have had such items appear as (3 editions available). See Template:3editions, Template:Editions, etc. As far as I'm concerned, the Victoria page (which I had adopted) looks horrible with that material not enclosed in parentheses ... the italics of the work title conflict with the italics in the number of editions information. Moreover, the " - " that has been removed makes it look even worse. I think that any such changes in style should not be made by hand by circumventing the templates already in place. If change is warranted, it should be made with the templates themselves. As for the Victoria page, I'm reverting all the editions information back to templates. The one change I am contemplating (with the templates) is to have them read, eg. "(3 editions)" ... ie. not including the parentheses themselves inside italics. -- Chucktalk Giffen 02:48, 27 June 2008 (PDT)

Hi Chuck. I meant to reply to this a couple of days ago and got distracted... the reason for my removing the editions templates was that I saw a development for Template:Editions which we could introduce. We know how many score pages there are on CPDL, but we don't know how many editions there are since the catalogue system has been skewed by people misusing the add works form. Would it be useful to know how many editions there are on CPDL? Maybe. If so, I think the best way to determine this would be to use the existing Template:Editions to add a category to the score page to categorise it as "Works with 2 editions" or "Works with 3 editions" etc. Then we could find out how many editions are on CPDL. Now, if the template is used on composer pages too, this would, of course, mess up the count. What do you think about extending Template:Editions? --Bobnotts talk 23:38, 28 June 2008 (PDT)
Hi Rob. Are you trying to count CPDL number used or what? I'm not sure what counstitutes an "edition", since, variously, people have used more than one edition number for what amounts to a single edition with separate CPDL numbers for individual movements or even individual paper sizes, while others have put these under one CPDL number. I strongly suspect that a simple-minded thing like the editions template is going to fill the bill.
If we had some accurate idea as to what it is we wish to count, then the editions template might be expanded to included it, or, more likely, it might not (for example for a work with major movements, some of which have differing numbers of editions, currently usually covered under the rubric "multiple editions"). Furthermore, if we ever do get a handle on what it is we wish to count, then a separate template for the counting purposes should be added to the works pages. At present, the editions template does not count CPDL numbers, because of the above-mentioned problem of multiple CPDL numbers being used for what really is a single edition. Neither does it count PDFs or MIDIs. What the editions template does when it provides a number (sometimes it does not!) is to give a subjective count of the number of editions available, and in its present form, I think it is something we should leave pretty much alone, at least for the present.
If tracking and counting CPDL numbers is the goal (and I think it probably should be a goal, since CPDL numbers are like "catalog numbers"), then I think something like [[Category:CPDL jklmn]] should be added to the page containing the CPDL number "ijklmn", and this category page should itself be categorised [[Category:CPDL numbers| jklmn]]. This would make the Category:CPDL numbers a complete list of all individual CPDL numbers, each linked to the page containing the edition information. -- Chucktalk Giffen 02:05, 30 June 2008 (PDT)
I'm not really sure I understand the last part of what you said there, Chuck. Why create c.15,000 categories on the wiki just to check the catalogue numbering system? Surely there's an easier way? Anyway, the idea wasn't to count CPDL numbers used instead the number of editions on CPDL. The latest CPDL number is 17407 but I we both know there are many fewer than 17407 editions on CPDL... as for what constitutes an edition, we could go into that later... I know exactly what Template:Editions does at the moment and I think that we wouldn't have to have a subjective decision - we could make guidelines. Thanks for the award, btw! Is there going to be an alto clef award?! --Bobnotts talk 07:45, 30 June 2008 (PDT)

And the envelope, please...

Bass clef.gif The Bass Clef award
  for basic work essential to the functioning of CPDL

is hereby awarded to Robert Nottingham for tireless, countless, ongoing and steady edits and contributions to the overall look and feel of CPDL. — Chucktalk Giffen

Your IMSLP Forum Posting

Hi Bob, Might want to get back on the IMSLP forum. David Newman (owner of the "Art Song Central" site has objected to your proposed removal of his PDF-file "Branding" in his Art Song Central PDF files. If you read the comments on his user page you will see he proposes his PDF files be only linked to, and Chuck recently deleted all the copies of his PDF files which were on CPDL, in favor of remote links to the same files. (See Ralph Vaughan Williams, "Songs of Travel")

Your IMSLP Forums post in reference:

I've just discovered Art Song Central and I want to copy all the PDFs over to IMSLP. Can someone explain how to remove the text at the bottom of the PDF pages? I have Acrobat 6.0. Alternatively, is someone willing to remove this text themselves? I couldn't find a help file on this which is why I'm asking here. I'd be happy to write a help page if/when I work this process out! Cheers, Rob

Feel free to delete this post after you have read it. Johnhenryfowler 06:33, 8 July 2008 (PDT)

Blank page

Hi Rob, I couldn't understand your reasoning in restoring this blank page and protecting it for admins access only. Do you intend to begin editing it soon? Vaarky has offered to create a text draft for this page and I thought it would make more sense to let her recreate the page only when she had the draft ready. —Carlos mail_icon.gif 00:29, 28 July 2008 (PDT)

Hi Carlos. I blanked the page and protected it for the same reason that I blanked it and protected it before you deleted it, "so that spam bots cannot create the page which is potentially a system page". I don't plan on editing it any time soon but if Vaarky fancies writing a draft, she can do so on a user sub-page. As site policy, it should be checked and ratified by admins before being published in my opinion. --Bobnotts talk 06:00, 28 July 2008 (PDT)
Thanks for trying to make it more convenient for me. FWIW, the approach Carlos suggested makes perfect sense to me. A draft for something like this is best reviewed in the discussion page section, so it doesn't create an impression that the document is ratified by the site's administrators until it actually has been. Requiring admin approval for edits to a page that purports to represent CPDL policy sounds like a fine idea. --Vaarky 10:10, 28 July 2008 (PDT)