User talk:Bobnotts

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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 impossible 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)
Hi Vaarky. The best way you can help at the moment is to update score pages with templates. I reckon the best way to proceed is to familiarise yourself with all the templates listed here and here. It would also be a good idea to review the following edits that I've made recently which incorporate the new templates: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Those are the sort of "template update" edits that would be most useful, so that scores are categorised as a cappella, or as having piano accompaniment, or in English, or by William Byrd, for example. One of my bug bears is incorrect score icons when it comes to external links - should be Network.png when not pointing directly to a file. These pages contain editions which are hosted externally (often the icons haven't been updated) so if you fancy getting your teeth stuck into something, have a go at that. I'll let you know if you mess something up! Once you've learned the ropes, it would be great if you could add something to the volunteers page.
The submit error box on Raf's page simply invites the user to create a new page with the title that they enter in the box, so I don't see a problem with leaving it as it is at the moment. In terms of backups, I reckon this is probably best continued in the same manner as it has been before. It is one of the procedures that I and others will be looking to review over the next couple of months. Thanks for your enthusiasm! --Bobnotts talk 06:23, 29 July 2008 (PDT)
Thanks for the feedback and excellent ideas. It so happens that I have previously corrected icons (based on my own peeve) when I've noticed that Icon_pdf.gif should have been Icon_pdf_globe.gif or Network.png. This sort of thing is right up my alley. --Vaarky 08:52, 29 July 2008 (PDT)

External tool for editing score pages

Hi Rob, you've been editing and adding templates to a lot of score pages lately! Would you like to experiment a bit with the macros I was talking about at the forum? I uploaded the necessary files here (program) and here (CPDL macros). The macros aren't still totally developed, so you may want to customize them to fit your needs (or ask me to if you don't know how). Some step-by-step instructions:

  1. Unzip ue32v90.zip to a folder
  2. Save CPDL.MAC in the same folder
  3. Execute uedit32.exe
  4. On menu Macro -> Load, select file CPDL.MAC
  5. On menu Macro -> Set Auto Load..., select the same file
  6. Now open a new empy document: menu File -> New
  7. Edit a score page on CPDL and select all text (Ctrl-C)
  8. Paste the text (Ctrl-V) to UltraEdit's new doc
  9. Now (Ctrl-L), select macro CPDL__Score and OK
  10. Select all text (Ctrl-A), go back to CPDL page and paste (Ctrl-V)

That's it! Now just compare changes and see if there's something missing. It may sound a bit difficult at first, but with some training you'll do all steps very quickly.

This is just a temporary solution. I'm working on a way to implement a bot that would accurately do most of these edits for us. Regards, —Carlos mail_icon.gif 06:26, 31 July 2008 (PDT)

Thanks for that, Carlos. A bot would definitely be a good idea, something I looked into a while ago but determined I don't have the programming skills. I use a macro in MS Word at the moment but that's quite basic. Have you tried Python? I might have a go at the program you suggest when I get a mo, thanks. --Bobnotts talk 05:45, 1 August 2008 (PDT)
You guessed it, Rob! I was trying to customize PyWikipediaBot (a Python based bot) to run these macros in place of UltraEdit, but I'm not sure yet if it'll work as a standalone bot. Python was totally new to me, but it seemed to be one of the solutions that could be best customized to work with other "non-pedia" wikis. —Carlos mail_icon.gif 13:37, 1 August 2008 (PDT)

Contributor of Winterreise (IMSLP)

Hi Bob, You changed the "Contributor" of Winterreise (Franz Schubert)) to "Edward W. Guo" - where did you find this name. I used the "uploader" at the main page for Winterreise:

http://imslp.org/wiki/Winterreise%2C_D.911_(Op.89)_(Schubert%2C_Franz Uploader: Feldmahler (24 February 2006) Johnhenryfowler 02:00, 1 August 2008 (PDT)

Hi John. I changed it because that's his real name, elusively hidden on his user page ;-) --Bobnotts talk 18:39, 1 August 2008 (PDT)

did you mean to delete this page?

Just came across this page which was marked for deletion a while ago and wanted to check if it fell through the cracks or there was some decision to hold off (didn't see any indication on its talk page): Requests-chronological Vaarky 04:49, 29 August 2008 (PDT)

I've just deleted it, thanks for reminding me. --Bobnotts talk 19:32, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

deleting superfluous redirects

I noticed you (and I think others) deleting superfluous redirects--thanks. When we rename a page by using the Move function, it leaves behind a redirect at the old location. When the redirect is superfluous, is there any recommended way to request such deletion, or is the appearance in the change logs sufficient? Tx. Vaarky 09:11, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

You can mark any page for immediate deletion by following the instructions here. --Bobnotts talk 19:32, 4 September 2008 (PDT)

thanks for Epitaph on a Doormouse!

Thanks for doing an edition of Epitaph on a Doormouse. We sang it this week with our sight-singing group, and it's a sweet piece. Some of the singers were familiar with an earlier, out-of-print edition were grateful to have an edition that is easier to read. Vaarky 03:23, 13 September 2008 (PDT)

No problem - it's quite harmless isn't it? Thanks for the feedback. --Bobnotts talk 03:34, 13 September 2008 (PDT)

Modification of the (french) submission guide

Hi, Bob, Two or three hours ago, someone modified the (french) score submission guide, introducing a paragraph specifying that a french person isn't allowed to transfer copyright to CPDL. You can see that modification at the recent changes page. It should be incorrect to have texts changing too much comparing between languages. Regards, Claude 22:02, 24 September 2008 (PDT)

Hi Claude. I don't know anything about French copyright law but I've posted a message on the forums which will hopefully get a response. Thanks for flagging this up. --Bobnotts talk 22:27, 24 September 2008 (PDT)
Honestly speaking, I don't think that any law in a democratic country may limit the freedom of the owner of intellectual property rights to choose the type of copyright license he/she prefers. If you own the property rights of a certain work, you can decide what is allowed and what is not, what is permitted for free and what is not. It's your property, you decide. So, it sounds very strange to me that in France an author cannot choose the CPDL license to copyright his/her works. The CPDL copyright license is just a license - intellectual property always remains with the author. Perhaps the person who added such a note thought that CPDL owns the intellectual property rights for the works hosted at CPDL, but this is wrong. Anyway, I've submitted my considerations to a French guy with significant experience in the field, let's see what's his opinion. --Choralia 07:04, 25 September 2008 (PDT)