Talk:Russian Symphony Orchestra Society

State of article

I've done what I think is a pretty good start on this; it's one of those cases of "how did we not have an article on this?" There is enormously more territory to cover (I don't think this is even 1/5 done), but I'm going to be very busy the next 10 days or so. Someone else is more than welcome to add to it; if not, I should get back to this roughly the second week of February. - Jmabel | Talk 07:15, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Finally was able to resume recently. A fragment that I need to work on; trying to find more about the New Music Society of America:

"[[File:New Music Society of America - 1906 ad.jpg|thumb|left]] In late December 1905, Altschuler and others announced the formation of the New Music Society of America, soliciting "serious new work" from American composers.<ref>"New Organization Will Have Aid of the Russian Symphony Society, ''New York Times'', 1905-12-27, p. 9.</ref> The first concerts were scheduled for February 19, March 10, and April 2, 1906 at Carnegie Hall. The first announced piece was [[Edward MacDowell]]'s ''[[Indian Suite]]''.<ref>"Music and Music Makers, ''New York Times'', 1906-01-07, p. X1.</ref>" Apparently the first of these never took place, because the ''New York Times'' refers to the March 10 concert as the group's first.<ref name="NYT-1906-03-11">"Music by Americans: The First Concert of the New Music Society in Carnegie Hall", ''New York Times'', 1906-03-11, p. 9.</ref> That concert featured MacDowell's ''Indian Suite'' and ''Second Concerto'', Henry F. Gilbert's ''Salammbô's Invocation to Tänith'', and Arthur Shepard's ''Overture Joyeuse''.<ref name="NYT-1906-03-11"/> - Jmabel | Talk 06:48, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

• Now integrated into the article. - Jmabel | Talk 06:12, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Infobox

The infobox has again been removed from this article with an edit summary of "per previous". There has been no previous discussion on this talk page. The removing editor's previous edit summaries, in their entirety, have been "cleanup". "fmt", "the IP's solution" and "okay andy, if you insist..."; none of which appear to be justification for removing such a useful feature. The infobox had previously been replaced with a non-infobox template, totally hidden from view, which has been deleted from Wikipedia, by consensus.

The (real) infobox displays the following values, all of which are supported and cited in the article:

• Name = Russian Symphony Orchestra Society
• Also known as = Russian Symphony Orchestra
• Origin= 1903, New York City, USA

for the convenience of our readers; and also emits them as machine-readable metadata.

The infobox should be restored. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:20, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Hello Andy! Thank you for coming to the talk page to discuss your proposed addition. "The IP's solution" was in reference to a suggestion made elsewhere by an IP editor that the infobox invisible template might be a viable solution for this article. You objected to that solution, which is fair enough; your rationale was "remove bogus template", so we did. All of the values you mention are provided in the first sentence for the convenience of our readers. As for the metadata, what is the status of the Wikidata project in that regard? Nikkimaria (talk) 12:41, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Okay, pending the development of a more appropriate means of emitting metadata, I've added a metadata-emitting template. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:53, 9 April 2013 (UTC)

Russian Symphony Orchestra Society
Orchestra
Advert for the first performance of the orchestra
Founded	1903 (1903), New York City, USA
Disbanded	1918 (1918)
Principal conductor	Modest Altschuler

I am surprised about objections to an infobox for an orchestra, as was developed by project Classical music, {{infobox orchestra}}. I suggest to use it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:31, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Done. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:42, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! I placed in the starndard position for an infobox. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:29, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

No thank you. The original placement and parameters were preferable, so I've restored them. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:59, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Please explain how your placement - which was not the original - to a position that is not standard would be preferable and by whom, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:02, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

The longstanding placement was a compromise allowing the emission of metadata without negatively impacting the experience of editors. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:33, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I am less interested in metadata, more in a presentation of key facts where the average reader expects them. (Compare other orchestras such as Lautten Compagney.) Please let me understand what you mean by "negatively impacting the experience of editors". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:43, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

• @Nikki. From the Arbcom infobox case: "I think several of the parties to this case are quite capable of changing their conduct without the need to pass formal remedies." One really would like to think that; however, at least one editor - me, isn't so inclined to make that assumption. — Ched :  ?  18:30, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

The bottom of the article from an iPhone.

FYI, the current "infobox" is completely unusable from a mobile device and suggests a broken site. I've uploaded a screenshot to help illustrate the problem. Even if you zoom in you can't interact with it. I don't have a screen reader to test with but it wouldn't surprise me if there are accessibility problems as well. Mackensen (talk) 11:19, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Content with a font-size of 1.133px breaches our accessibility guidelines, as does content that relies on javascript for its display - we can't assume that user agents will handle those in a usable manner, as Mackensen notes above in relation to mobile devices (an increasingly popular means of viewing). Placing article content in the References section breaches our conventions on what the content of that section may be. I'll restore a sensible size and acceptable placement of the infobox. --RexxS (talk) 22:04, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Only if we assume that this is intended to be content for the reader; it isn't, and "acceptable" as presented is false. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:35, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Of course our content is for the reader - infoboxes present a brief summary of key facts for the casual reader on over 2,000,000 articles and this one is no different in that respect. Editors have taken the time to create {{infobox orchestra}} for a reason and it is unwarranted to deny a group of readers the opportunity to glean the main facts in this way. It is not at all obvious that the "Russian Symphony Orchestra" was in fact founded in New York City and that fact needs to be immediately available to the reader; I would argue that the years active is almost as key in giving an overview of the subject. ArbCom has agreed that infoboxes are content, so please don't call me a liar: there is no-one who will agree with you that it is acceptable to place content in the "References" section. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout #Notes and references is clear if you are unsure of what consensus exists on the issue. --RexxS (talk) 01:09, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

No one has called you a liar, I've simply said that your assumption was mistaken: the previous version of the article had a metadata-emitting template to provide the machine-readable data that some prize; it used an infobox template to do so not because it was intended to provide the traditional function of the infobox (which in any event does not "need" to be presented in that way, despite what some claim), but simply for convenience. And it is quite acceptable to place metadata-emitting templates at the bottom of the article; you need only compare the use of persondata on biographical articles to confirm this. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:45, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

My argument thus far has excluded consideration of the value of machine-readable data, but if you want to bring that to the table as well, so be it. Just because an non-text producing template like persondata (which incidentally does not emit microformats) may be safely placed anywhere on a page, you cannot assume that a template that produces text - like infobox - can be situated willy-nilly within an article. It is not acceptable to place any article content (and that includes infoboxes) inside a References section. You even have a screenshot of the problem on a mobile device to see the effect. You are sorely mistaken if you think that using "collapsible collapsed" to hide content will prevent it from being seen (or heard) by a multitude of visitors. You only have to temporarily disable JavaScript in your browser to see how it looks to anyone who doesn't have JavaScript enabled - and that can include huge numbers of people who use computers that they do not control themselves. Then you need to consider screen readers and text-only readers - we still have considerable numbers of visitors who are visually-impaired or live in places where only a low-bandwidth connection is available.

Tl;dr summary: just because it looks ok on your screen, it doesn't mean that nobody is going to have a problem with it. --RexxS (talk) 02:31, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

As the person who originally created the infobox on this article, I am uniquely able to make an authoritative and irrefutable statement that it was, and is, "intended to be content for the reader". HTH. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:01, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

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Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:10, 17 February 2022 (UTC)