Wikipedia talk:WikiProject The Simpsons/Proposal for managing song lists on Simpsons episodes

It wasn't such a good start, spelling 'Simpsons' wrong in the name of the page! --Mortice 23:31, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• I think on first view it's a really neat idea, and a creative and utilitarian use of Categories. The problem with the wiki is it isn't designed to deal with dynamic data management, and this is a good solution IMO (until the wiki comes up with a gnu sql lol). Anchoress 20:20, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
• Apparently the discussion is here... I hope. I have a few thoughts:

making categories could work fine, but I think making a category for every episode will just end up creating a bunch of one- and two-item categories. But a category of "Songs featured on The Simpsons" or similar would be enormous and ridiculous. Perhaps categorizing it by season would work? Or some other middle ground...?

A list page would probably still be helpful for occasional or inexperienced editors. Not having a list page when there are so many other list pages may be seen as an oversight that needs to be corrected by such editors, which would create an endless loop of creation, AfD, etc. That could be problematic. I'm not sure what the best way to avoid this would be, but one possibility is categorizing any songs that can be categorized. Then put any other songs, if there are any un-categorizable (is that a word?) songs on a list page, with the note "for the complete list see Category: Songs featured on the Simpsons" or similar. Another option, which may or may not be within policy, is to have the List of songs page redirect to the category page. That would obviously necesitate a note about how it's a category page (for the unexperienced or just-not-paying-attention). Natalie 14:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi Natalie, thanks for your thoughts. I wasn't proposing removing the 'list' page, only that the list page would (I suspect amongst other data) have a link "click to view the list of songs" which would take the viewer to the categories list - which, I see, is just what you've suggested too :) I think there's some songs, such as the original ones, for which there are no song pages and they'd have to be listed explicitly on the 'list of songs' page.

Hmm you have an interesting point that it would not be as straightforward for newcomers to add a new song into 'the list' (they'd have to find a similar example and see how it's done - scope for error there).

The idea of having a category per episode is that then each episode would get a list of the songs in it 'for free'. What I'm trying to get around is the frustration of having uncorrelated lists of data - A references B but B doesn't reference A - or in this case, the 3 items (list of songs, details of episode, details of song) may or may not be interconnected depending on the whim of the editors. I'd prefer to have (I asked about it some time ago) a wiki database from which list pages could be 'generated' but it seems it's not possible (unless one exploits categories).

A compromise (but quite a poor one) would be to attempt both - do all the categories as per the proposal, add the links to the episode pages (so they get the benefit of seeing what songs are included) and leave the songs list page as is, with an 'explicit' list as well as a link to the categories page. That would just offer the user two lists, in order to confuse them...

So you sound like you're positive, except the possible issue of having lots of categories with small numbers of items in. I'll try to enquire whether that's considered 'bad form' or not. Thanks again --Mortice 15:20, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• Okay, as I was being stupid on Sunday, here are my comments moved here from the actual project page...

Okay, lets see what we got here. First of all I certainly agree that the List of songs featured in The Simpsons page needs to be changed, I really didn't find it very clear. But, as for your idea about using catergories, well.... I happen to think like cons Reason 4. I, and this is just a presonal preference, happen to greatly prefer lists to catergories. So, I think maybe going do the route of List of guest stars on The Simpsons, and do it like that, just with songs not guest stars. Then you can have all the real life, parody and completely original songs in the same place, broken up by episodes. So that's how I think. Gran2 15:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• I agree with Gran2, the List of Guest stars is a well organized list, and doing the songs in that method would perhaps be best. It would take some time to do though... -- Scorpion0422 16:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

That is a nicely formatted list, but gets none of the benefits I'm trying to achieve (automatically synchronising data in three different places). But it does look nicer than what I'm suggesting --Mortice 16:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• Just occurred to me, one alternative to what I'm trying to achieve would be use of a bot - something like generating the list from categories, or having a list in each episode page and generating the list by extracting and combining those. But bot generation is a bit advanced (unless there are bots already doing similar jobs) --Mortice 16:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

• Another way to do the same job would be having a template page per episode - each episode includes its song template, the 'list of songs' page includes all song template pages (automatically ordered by episode) then it just requires that people 'know' (through HTML comments) to edit the episode's song template to add a song reference. But it loses the beneift of adding something to the song page itself --Mortice 16:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Not a good idea

I'm not involved in this Wikiproject, I came here because of a request left at Wikipedia:Categorization. I am an administrator who has spent the last two years working on categorization policy. I don't think putting all these songs in categories by Simpsons episode is a good idea. It will lead to overcategorization. Being in a Simpsons episode is not a defining characteristic for most of these songs. That is what categories is for. I could support a single category for songs that were expressly composed for the Simpsons as that would be a defining characteristic for those songs. For songs like All Along the Watchtower and the 1812 Overture, being on the Simpsons is essentially trivia. Categories are not for trivia. These categories will likely be nominated for deletion shortly after they are created.

You can create lists that function just as well (or better) than having categories. Lists can have more information than a category can. You could include the composers, performers, etc... The list can be linked to any article about the Simpsons episode, or linked in the trivia sections on the song article if the Simpson is mentioned. There is a bit of support of removing much of this trivia. If someone doesn't think this information should be linked in a trivia section of an article, than it definitely won't fly as a category.

Thanks for posting a request for an opinion at WP:CAT. I wish more Wikiprojects did this, as it ultimately saves everyone a great deal of time and effort. Put that effort into something besides making categories like these. -- Samuel Wantman 01:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Thankyou very much, that was exactly the sort of insight I've been after for the last few weeks while considering this implementation. I have an alternative plan (using a bot and not categories) which I'll now propose instead --Mortice 20:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

The list is a pretty big mess right now. I took a good look and saw a dozen songs I know were never in the show and another 2 dozen that I'm pretty sure weren't. I like the idea of doing it in the style of the guest stars list because it would look pretty organized, but lets hear your proposal on using a bot first... -- Scorpion0422 22:14, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

One advantage of the bot system (see below) is that the data will be on episode pages, so it will be much easier for someone who's just seen the episode to notice an error on the episode page, rather than an entry in a long list on the songs page --Mortice 23:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Alternative plan using a bot

I have an alternative proposal to address this, and I think it will be a good solution for all sorts of list pages across Wikipedia.

I'd like to create a section on each episode page containing the lists of songs used on that episode, with appropriate comments etc.

I'm writing a bot (which currently has approval for test runs) which will take those sections and insert them into the 'songs' page, either as a sorted list of songs (as the songs list is now) or a section-per-episode basis (in the way the 'guest stars' page is) or both. The bot will ensure that the 'songs' page is kept up to date with changes in the episode pages.

I'd also like to restructure the 'guest stars' in the same way (put the info onto the episode pages and generate the list on the 'guest stars' page automatically) and the same for any other similar blocks of information. And I'm sure other projects across wiki could benefit from the same auto-treatment.

Comments? --Mortice 23:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

One of the problems with that is that some Wikipedia members love to delete entire sections (or "list cruft" as they call it), so some episode pages could see their song sections deleted. And there's really nothing wrong with the guest stars page. I'm the main editor for that one and I think its fine the way it is. There's really no need to have a guest stars section on each page because the guest stars are listed in the infobox. -- Scorpion0422 23:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm you have a point about people interpreting the list of songs as fancruft and deleting it - it would need buy-in from editors, which would not be easy. I'd think references to songs used on the episode would be a nice thing to have, but I appreciate not all would agree.

I hadn't realised there was already a list of guest stars in the infobox on the episodes. That's even easier - the bot can take that text and generate a list into a list page without any visible change to the episode page. It would ensure the list page is always in sync with the lists on episode pages, and it should be able to alert if someone makes a change on the list page (probably by a note on the talk page) so the corresponding change can be made to the episode page. If that's worth doing?

It could also generate the list of guest stars sorted alphabetically, each star linking to the episode they were on.

Looking at the infobox, we could consider using the bot to generate a page listing all the writers, all the couch gags, cultural references etc. I guess those list pages (with introductions) would not be very encyclopedic, but then I dont suppose the songs or stars pages are --Mortice 19:46, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

If you're interested, just taken a copy of a few episodes and added invisible bot markup, and the bot (running in test, not continuously at the moment) has generated this page User:MorticeTest/GuestStarsOnTheSimpsons - all the references to episodes and stars were generated by the bot --Mortice 20:49, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of having an alphabetical list for the guest stars, so go ahead with that, but I don't think there is a point of having a bot work on the existing list, besides many of the boxes aren't complete. -- Scorpion0422 21:11, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Once you put the bot markup (templates that have no content) onto the episode pages in order to generate the alphabetical list, the other list comes 'for free' as it's just telling the bot to generate another list in the sectioned rather than alphabetic style. But you can use it however you like. The bot's still in development (and only approved for testing at the moment) but once it's done we can put the page markup and list generation stuff in place wherever it's wanted --Mortice 21:49, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

In the case of musical groups, the bot wouldn't list the members, right? That's fine for an alphabetical list, but the general list should have all voices listed. -- Scorpion0422 21:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)