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Compilation album categorization

Category:Compilation albums has been getting very bloated, so I've created some new subcategories as a start to cleaning it up: Category:Compilation album series branded by bars and cafés‎, Category:Radio station compilation album series, and Category:Record label compilation albums. So, this is just a note to populate as necessary.

In addition, far too many greatest hits albums have been placed here instead of Category:Greatest hits albums.

I'm also considering other archetypes to categorize by, and what to call the categories. "Top of the charts" compilations? Regional music compilations? Compilations by country of release? (There are a disproportionate number of albums from New Zealand...) Genre compilations? Compilations of particular recording sessions? –Unint 20:02, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm trying to think of category names to distinguish albums released under the brands of music-related bodies (magazines, TV stations, festivals, retailers) from those released under brand names of unrelated bodies (non-music magazines / retailers, bars and cafés, etc). Any suggestions? –Unint 20:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Catalog numbers in infobox

I had put in a request on the infobox template talk page to have the catalog number included. The response I got was rather puzzling: "...the general feeling was that it wouldn't be a good idea to put them in the infobox because, really, it should only have the original release details in there, with further releases discussed/listed in the article body." It seems that the catalog number is part of "the original release details" and so I can't figure out what Bubba hotep had in mind there. Anyway, he referred me to this page to discuss it.

The current infobox has a space for "label" but not for "catalog number." To me they are really both of the same order of interest. If one is interested in the fact that You're My Thrill was released by Columbia, I think that it was released under catalog number CL-6071 is of equal interest. I can't see why one is significant and the other not. -- BRG 18:29, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree, although it might get a little messy cataloging every album page on Wikipedia. Inevitably, some will have catalogue numbers and some won't.--Drewcifer3000 19:30, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that for almost any field one can say "some will have and some won't." Even in the specific area I've been concentrating on (Doris Day albums), for example, some have recording dates in the info I can track down and some don't. -- BRG 16:41, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

This has been brought up before and will again I'm sure. I actually do put the cat number in the infobox. I use the "break" command after the label name and put in the number. I think it looks good but I would like an optional field for it too. To me the first commercial release is the one that should be in the infobox and the year, cover, label, cat number and etc that correspond to it should be there for it. I only add other releases if there is a significant difference between versions. To me that difference is typically an extra track or tracks, an extra disc of tracks, deleted tracks or some other major change to the songs of the album. Typically you can put the new cat number and (if needed) label in the track listing section like I did here Eyewitness. In practice most albums have only one or two different releases that fit my criteria.

Note that for alternative or extra covers I do not refer to the cat number because covers are usually used over many different releases and labels it would get too messy. If you just have so many versions that are notable and need to be mentioned than something like this Let It Be put in the article body is probably the best bet. Take care Solonyc (talk} 21:01, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Given the limited data currently usable on Template:Infobox Album, I normally put catalog-number data inline with the album, single or maxi single title at the start of the article. If a catalog number is a go for inclusion on the Infobox, I recommend making it a UPC, which is satisfactory for record-store and online-distributor inventory needs; I concur with the first-release recommendation of User:Solonyc with regards to the UPC. - B.C.Schmerker 03:56, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Speaking as one who is generally interested in all kinds of little details about things, I can't imagine why a record's catalog number would be of any interest whatsoever. Can someone fill me in? -Freekee 02:55, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Pictures in chronology

Lately, I've been seeing this more: putting album cover images in the chronology (the previous/next album) of the infobox. I've been removing them, because as I understand it, that is going a bit far on the fair use of those images. I just wanted to come here and verify that I am doing the right thing. -Joltman 12:13, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

That should be the way to go; those little images add bugger-all anyway. Cheers, Ian Rose 12:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

• Not only are they unneeded they would most likely violate fair use. How would providing fair use images for next/previous albums satisfy fair use criteria? RedWolf 21:51, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I remove them too. Recently I started to do this with AWB. This regex works fine:

(Last|This|Next) album(\s*)=(\s*)\[\[Image.*?\]\](\s?<br ?/?>)? ?

replace with

$1 album$2=$3

Feel free to use it as it's much faster than removing them manually but note that sometimes there are valid images in the chronology (for example in Led Zeppelin IV) so proceed with caution :-) Jogers (talk) 08:49, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you think we should specify on the project page that images should not be put in the chronology? -Joltman 11:06, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

You mean album cover images? I actually suggested it a while ago. Jogers (talk) 11:17, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that this should be mentioned. --PEJL 11:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. I have now mentioned this. --PEJL 09:28, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed language change for track listing credits

I'd like to propose the following changes be made to the current language about track listing credits. I'd like to change:

If all songs were written by the same person/team, this can be stated at the top as in "(all songs written by Gordon Gano)"

to:

If all songs were written by the same person/team, this can be stated at the top as "All songs written by Gordon Gano." If the majority of the songs were written by the same person, this can be stated as "All songs written by Gordon Gano, except where noted."

I believe this better reflects current practice (and looks better). Any objections? --PEJL 16:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

sounds good to me. Violask81976 18:32, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

No objection here, thats exactly what I've been doing. -MrFizyx 18:58, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I have been doing the same. Two grammar questions. Is the comma after the persons name needed or can it just be a straight sentence? "All songs written by Gordon Gano except where noted." Also I have had people edit this sentence by putting a ":" at the end on the sentence. "All songs written by Gordon Gano except where noted:" Is that correct grammar also. I know this is a minor point but I am wondering which is right or looks better. I can go either way...lol. Solonyc (talk} 19:16, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. (I have no preference about the comma, so I left it in. I also don't see why a colon would be useful.) --PEJL 20:24, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

And I was WP:BOLD and made some other changes to that section. I felt the sentence about not using parentheses or brackets was redundant, so I removed it. I also moved the text about rappers and verses down, as I didn't feel it was appropriate as the lead for the section. --PEJL 20:55, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

That appears consistent with the procedures I use for Album articles, e.g. Anything Is Possible, where certain tracks had two composers. That article has the following in small text after the track listing:
All songs written by Deborah Gibson - Possibilities Music/Sony BMG Songs, ASCAP except:
2, 3, 4, 7. (Deborah Gibson/Lamont Dozier) Possibilities Music/Sony BMG Songs, ASCAP/Beau-Di-O-Do Music/Warner-Tamerlane Pub. Corp., BMI.
Be advised that original admistrators of copyright (in this case Deborah Ann's Music (ASCAP), a division of Gibson Management, Inc.) are often replaced years down the road. I see it proper to maintain credits procedures consistent with the record labels. - B.C.Schmerker 05:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

It would be consistent if you put the "All songs..." text at the top of the track listing rather than then bottom and didn't use small print. The track listing on that page also fails to follow the guidelines for track listings in other aspects, such as using a proper ordered list and delimiting track lengths with en dashes. --PEJL 08:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

How to change the project page

I am curious as to how do changes to the project page happen? Is it just up to administrators or editors? Do we vote on it? Stage a coup? :)

I have some issues with some things on there that I would like to change (like track listing format) and I am wondering how to go about it. I know we say it is just a guideline but I find that too many newer members give it sacred status, though honestly I can see a need for certain sections being the same in format from page to page.

If there is a set policy for how changes are made perhaps it should be stated on the project page to avoid this question in the future. Thanks Solonyc (talk} 19:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

1. If you think it's a non controversial change just edit the page (see WP:BOLD). There's no need to ask. If other folks don't like the changes, they'll revert, and you can both come here to discuss.
2. If you think the change is significant or likely to be controversial, discuss it here first.

This is the basic idea for all guideline and policy pages. Don't be afraid to edit. --kingboyk 19:30, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

If you're planning to make major changes that would affect many articles (such as changing the recommended track listing format, as you mentioned), I think it should definately be discussed here first. --Fritz S. (Talk) 19:34, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep, that would count as "significant". --kingboyk 11:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Another proposal for changing track list formating

On the project page track listings are shown as this:

1. "Complete song title" (John Doe, Brian Smith) – 4:23

But that leads in practical reality with links to things like this:

1. "Baby It's You" (Mack David/Barney Williams/Burt Bacharach) – 2:38

Which if you are reading it at 3AM on a small screen or a laptop just looks like one big line of blue until you come to the time.

Additionally if you have a majority of the songs written by one person but a couple tracks written by different people you can end up with this situation (part of the track list from the album Double Eclipse):

4. "Change of Heart" – 4:42
5. "Everything" (Schon/Gioeli/Gioeli/Eddie Money/Jonathan Cain/Tony Marty/Mark Tanner) – 3:55
6. "Takin' Me Down" – 3:34
7. "Hot Cherie" (Randy Bishop/Darrell Gutheil/Jeffrey Neill/Kenneth Shields/Kenneth Sinnaeke) – 4:47
8. "Bad Taste" – 4:23

This looks really messy to me, makes the eye wander and has little symmetry to it.

I would propose a change of the format to the following:

1. "Baby It's You" – 2:38 (Mack David/Barney Williams/Burt Bacharach)

Letting the time break up the links makes it a little easier to read, helps prevent the mouse from floating to the wrong link and in a full album listing actually lets things look a little more symmetrical especially when writing credits are involved. It's not perfect but it would be better.

I also prefer using the slashes as opposed to commas in the writers area as I have noticed that slashes are used in many reviews and in most album credits on the album. Perhaps that can be changed also?

I am interested to know what others think. Thanks Solonyc (talk} 21:50, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I think keeping the writer's credit immeadiately after the song title makes it more clear that it is in fact a songwriter credit. I usually use commas, but slashes are reasonable alternative. I also tend (sometimes) to pipe the names to surnames (I don't know if others object to that or not). So it might end up something like:

1. "Baby It's You" (David, Williams, Bacharach) – 2:38

Since most songs aren't linked, and songwriters only need to be linked the first time they appear, I would think that the long blurry blue lines are somewhat rare. I general, I think the current recommendation is a good one. -MrFizyx 22:44, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with MrFizyx, and prefer the current formatting over this proposal. --PEJL 23:35, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

When the names first appear, the full names should be given (i.e. not piped last names). Apart from that, I agree with MrFizyx that the current style is fine, and don't see any reason to change the guidelines (especially since a change would mean we'd also have to change several thousand articles using the current guidelines). --Fritz S. (Talk) 23:42, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

It seems that just using commas instead of forward slashes improves line spacing by a great deal. –Unint 23:52, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

In order to maintain consistency with the procedures used by the record labels, I list composer and publisher data in small print after a break from the line with the artist (in the case of Soundtracks by various artists), song title and duration, e.g. in the track listings for Fatal Beauty (soundtrack album), where every track had a different artist and a different composer. Here's the format I used for Track 1:
#'''Donna Allen - Make It My Night''' (4:12)<br />_{(Danny Sembello/Tony Haynes) No Pain, No Gain/Unicity Music/Ertloejay Musique/WB Music Corp., ASCAP}<br />Produced by Jeff Smith and Peter Lord
Resulting in the formatted version:

1. Donna Allen - Make It My Night (4:12)
   _{(Danny Sembello/Tony Haynes) No Pain, No Gain/Unicity Music/Ertloejay Musique/WB Music Corp., ASCAP}
   Produced by Jeff Smith and Peter Lord

This procedure will reduce problems with needful data on a track listing. - B.C.Schmerker 05:48, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The track listing in that article article seems to defy almost every aspect of the track listing guidelines. It would be perfectly possible to format this according to the guidelines, possibly using nested lists for the production credits. --PEJL 09:06, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

that article looks horrible. if i weren't at work i'd change it myself. tomasz. 16:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Proposed language change for chronologies

I'd like to remove the text starting at the second comma from:

For latest albums, the right box (the "Next album=" field) should be left blank, or with a " . . . ".

I don't feel this represents current practice. (Current practice seems to be blank, "TBA", "N/A" or "Untitled".) I don't think it is necessary to distinguish latest albums from final albums, and doing so may be impossible. How do you know a band won't reunite and release another album for example? Any objections? (The entire section should perhaps be rewritten if this change is made, but this question is about the policy change.) --PEJL 11:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I also think that we do not need to distinguish between latest and final albums. In case the change to the guideline is made it would be nice to find another example of advanced infobox usage (with extra chronology and extra cover). Jogers (talk) 12:14, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there are plenty of pages using both "extra chronology" and "extra album cover". How about We're Only in It for the Money? Jogers (talk) 12:26, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree: it's far easier to standarize a blank field than a field with any text at all. –Unint 17:30, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. --PEJL 17:01, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Only studio albums in chronologies

As long as we're making all these revisions to chronology usage, what about that "studio albums only" line? Is it necessary to restrict the album chronology to studio albums? (This doesn not seem to be common practice.) –Unint 17:30, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've generally seen, and I do this too, that albums and EPs, box sets, splits, live albums ,etc get listed-everything except singles really.. Violask81976 22:52, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I sure wish people would follow the studio only rule. I can handle live albums in there, but best-ofs get annoying. I prefer to chronologize by significance, and check the discography for the details. -Freekee 03:41, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

What's wrong with having box sets and live albums and EPs? You should show the complete chronology, not just what you feel is worthy enough to talk about. Violask81976 22:38, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Just for chronologies. I'm a big fan of completeness for discographies, but chronologies serve a different purpose. Chronos allow you to click through a band's career. A greatest hits record or a compilation box has little bearing on the artistic output of an artist. It's really the only place in WP, besides the text of the artist's article, that you can distill that. I would agree that some best-of or live records were defining moments, but for the most part compilations are of little consequence. That's only my opinion, but don't think I'm alone. The only reason I'd go along with reverting the studio-only rule is because it's hopeless to enforce. -Freekee 02:51, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

General fixes with Jogersbot

I'd like to apply some simple fixes to articles about albums throughout entire encyclopedia with my bot. I listed them at User:Jogersbot#Things I would like to do. There are plenty of other things the bot could possibly do. Some replacements may be supplementary meaning that I would not look specifically for them in the database dump. Please share your thoughts. Jogers (talk) 18:28, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

The list looks very good to me. I think you should change those links to [[Q magazine]] and [[Q magazine|Q]] to [[Q (magazine)|Q]] to avoid the redirect, but apart from that, it's fine. --Fritz S. (Talk) 18:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, good idea. Jogers (talk) 18:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I've added two supplementary fixes:

• removing obsolete "background" parameter from the infobox and
• removing unnecessary boldface from "last album" and "next album". Jogers (talk) 14:04, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Here are some other ideas for the reviews section:

• Pitchfork Media {{Rating-10|7.1}} → Pitchfork Media (7.1/10)
• NME {{Rating-10|7}} → NME (7/10)
• This album = ''Album Title''<br />(2005) → This album = '''''Album Title'''''<br />(2005)
• Last album = ''Album Title'' (2005) → Last album = ''Album Title''<br />(2005)
• Last album = ''Album Title<br />(2005)'' → Last album = ''Album Title''<br />(2005)
• ''{{Rating → '' {{Rating
• {{Rating-5|4}}[http → {{Rating-5|4}} [http
• '' '''4/5''' [http → '' (4/5) [http
• '' (Favorable) [http → '' (favorable) [http

--PEJL 16:43, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice ideas. I should be able to figure out proper regexes for most of them. Jogers (talk) 08:49, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Great! For future reference, do the regexes operate on a subsection of the article, such as the infobox or the reviews section, or on the entire article? I would think the regexes could be more lax and get fewer false negatives if they only ever operate on a subsection. Here's another, a variant of my fifth example, which I think is more common:

• Last album = ''Album Title<br />(2005) → Last album = ''Album Title''<br />(2005)

--PEJL 16:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I didn't have problems with false negatives when I was doing similar changes manually but limiting them to the album infobox would be an improvement. Good idea. Jogers (talk) 08:14, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually it's more complicated than I thought but a string like "Last album = ''N/A''<br />" isn't very likely to appear in the article body, I guess. Anyway I'm going to limit the changes only to articles that are likely to be articles about albums (categorized as albums, containing an album stub template, album infobox etc.) Jogers (talk) 10:27, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I've just posted a suggestion relating to changing the terms for track listings. Let me know what you think. I'm pretty sure I posted a logical argument. --linca^linca 11:19, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Thanks. Jogers (talk) 11:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

For reference, the suggestion referred to is here. I'm not sure I agree that the header should be "Track listings" rather than "Track listing" when there are multiple track listings for an album, even though the former may be grammatically correct. Where does one draw the line? When there are multiple different editions? (example) When there are multiple discs? (example) When there are multiple sides? (example) When there are one or more sections with bonus tracks for other editions? (example) When there are bonus tracks listed but not in separate sections? (example) Perhaps it depends on if there is more than one ordered list that starts at position one? I think the header should always be "Track listing", for consistency and simplicity. See also Wikipedia:External links#External links section which says to use plural form even if there is only one external link. I think this situation is very similar to that, except the other way around. External links sections are optimized for the case when they contain multiple links. Track listing sections should be optimized for the case when they contain a single (as in not plural) track listing (whatever that means, see above). Whatever we decide, I think this should be completely defined and mentioned on the project page. I'll also note that AFAIK the majority of affected pages currently use the singular. --PEJL 12:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Verifying commercial success

Are there any reliable resources for gauging an albums commercial success, like Box Office Mojo does for films?Skomorokh 15:58, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Nielsen SoundScan - have to pay for it though. M3tal H3ad 04:12, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Track listing: medleys and untitled tracks

I'd like to add the following to the second section about the track listing, in a new paragraph before "Note the standard method of attributing songwriters...":

Track names should be in quotes in the track listing and in the rest of the article. A track that is a medley of multiple songs should be inside one set of quotes, like this: "Song 1/Song 2". Untitled tracks should be listed as Untitled (without quotes).

The first sentence is just a repetition from the first section about the track listing. The second sentence is meant to codify and make consistent the way medleys are shown: "Song 1/Song 2" (example), "Song 1"/"Song 2" (example), "Song 1" / "Song 2" (example), where the first format seems to be the most common. The third sentence is meant to codify and making consistent how untitled tracks are listed: "Untitled" (example), Untitled (example), "(Untitled)" (example), Untitled #1 (example), etc. Any objections? --PEJL 21:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Medleys: Seems like there are cases where the medleyed songs were never individual songs (such as this) and cases where separate songs are mixed or performed as continuous (such as these). Should these all be treated as the same? (Should there be spaces around the slash?) What if individual track times are given for the different parts?
• Untitled: In that "numbered untitled" example you give, are the numbers actually part of the title? (Are the songs still actually "untitled" in that case?) –Unint 21:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Medleys: I believe medleys are currently mostly treated the same, mostly with a single set of quotes and without spaces around the slash. I think it's fine to continue to do so for track listings. What is inside the quotes is after all the track name. (For singles on the other hand I think "Song 1"/"Song 2" (with or without spaces) is more appropriate, and more common in practice.) To keep things simple I didn't mention that some medleys are listed with nested lists (example).
• Untitled: I consider tracks which have no track name listed on the physical album to be untitled and tracks which are listed as "Untitled" on the physical album to not be untitled but in fact titled "Untitled". I'm not sure which is the case in the numbered example I gave, it might have been a bad example. --PEJL 22:05, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Medleys: How do you distinguish song titles with slashes in them from medleys? (I can't actually think of an example right now, but this is the main reason why I decided to use spaces.) Another case: how do we format one track with songs by different people, or one track that mixes different versions of the same song? (example)
• Untitled: Is there a good indicator of what's actually listed on the physical album? For example, what do you actually call this? Would titles given by chart listings, record label catalogues, fan lore, or the Library of Congress override this rule? –Unint 22:24, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

• Medleys: Do we need to distinguish song titles with slashes from medleys in album track listings? In cases where credits need to be added for individual songs a nested list would work (example above, another example). Alternatively quoting each song separately (example). The advantage of using a nested list is that it avoids the ambiguity of this: "Song 1"/"Song 2" (Artist X) – 1:23.
• Untitled: Good indicator? Looking at the physical album. :-) All Music Guide seems to list untitled tracks as blank spaces in the track listing. I'd call your example Untitled (a.k.a. "Vaka") in the track listing for the album. In terms of the track listing on the album, I'd say non-album sources should not override the name (or lack thereof) given on the album. If the song is a single I think it's obvious the single article should use the name of the single, which may differ slightly from the name on the album. Similarily, I think a song article for a non-single should not have to be as strict about using the name on the album and could be named "Vaka", but should note in the text that the song is untitled on that album. --PEJL 23:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I've got nothing else, and it's been a few days now. Summarize all that and I guess we can go ahead with it. –Unint 21:49, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. Thanks for the feedback. --PEJL 00:40, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Tagging subcategories of albums by artist

I've just made a list of articles in subcategories of Category:Albums by artist with the intention to tag them with the {{Album}} template as per Fisherjs's suggestion. I noticed that many of these pages are discography articles. Is this right? And if it is, is it OK to place {{Album}} tags on their talk pages? Jogers (talk) 08:51, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

You have to be very careful when tagging those categories, if you're not you'll end up with all sorts of out of scope material tagged. I think you know that already but there's no harm in pointing it out again :) As for discogs, pass. You could explicitly add them to project scope by editing the attached page, or just filter the word "discography" out of your AWB list. --kingboyk 13:18, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I will just filter them out then. Jogers (talk) 21:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually after I took a closer look at the articles in this list I decided no to tag them. Category:Albums by artist is a mess! There is everything here: discographies, lists and lots of singles. Jogers (talk) 07:56, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Can I say I told u so? :P Been there, done that :) --kingboyk 13:13, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Are album covers next for the chop?

As you may have noticed, Cydebot (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is changing {{albumcover}} to {{non-free album cover}}. Can anyone shed any light on what the end goal is? My concern is that images tagged with "non free" templates, which will be about 99.999% of album covers, will soon be targetted for mass deletion. --kingboyk 13:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I've been wondering about this too. There seems to be a new trend to label all "fair use" images with templates that begin with "non-free". Another tightening of the rules that would impact this project appears in this example: Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline#Non-template. I realize that those who write these guidelines have good intentions, but I fail to see how creating unique text each time the same type of image is used for the same purpose is helpful. -MrFizyx 14:45, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I wonder how they'd describe an album cover, on the page for that particular album, as something other than fair use. Wouldn't most of the album-cover images uploaded be used only on the album's page?  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 14:53, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

If you look at Wikipedia:Bot_owners'_noticeboard#Point_that_bothers_me and scroll down to the bottom of that section, you'll see that a response to my question about this was that "It allows third party users to remove non free images simply by killing anything with a template starting with "Non-free" on it." Quite how this could be helpful in the case of album articles wasn't explained. --kingboyk 14:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content/Archive_18#Machine_readability. --Fritz S. (Talk) 15:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds innocuous, but machine readable so they can be earmarked for deletion? Let's hope not. Since I'm not intending to start a forest fire unless somebody is waiting with a gallon of petrol, I propose we just monitor developments and assume for now that it's all harmless enough :) Thanks for the link. --kingboyk 15:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

This has pretty much no effect for us. Images here on Wikipedia are as likely to be deleted as before, it just makes it easier for people who re-use the articles to remove all fair use images (not just album cover, but also screenshots, book covers, film posters, etc.) at once (since all fair use tags will now have the prefix non-free). --Fritz S. (Talk) 15:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

I see. That makes a lot of sense. I once tried to write an interface for a Wikipedia fork and the number of templates to deal with was horrendous. --kingboyk 16:03, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Any idea how many of those templates are duplicating efforts already in existence? --Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 14:31, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

A sobering statistic

This WikiProject has 9 FAs from 52,000 articles, one of which is borrowed from WP:KLF. That's frankly appalling! Some editors have 9 FAs themselves, and there must be hundreds of people contributing to articles on albums... --kingboyk 12:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Is this project involved in some sort of "arms race"? If so, I definitely missed that memo... --Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 14:32, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm shocked you even need to ask. We're here to build a quality encyclopedia, and that means FAs. Jimbo Wales:

“ Rather than getting another million articles, I believe that we need 100,000 more Feature-quality articles. ”

Quotation from and more info at Wikipedia:100,000 feature-quality articles. --kingboyk 14:36, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Given my aversion to mindreading, I have to ask: What exactly is "sobering" here? Better yet, why is it "sobering"? --Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 14:48, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Gosh, instead of wasting time on semantics, why not go improve an article? Perhaps I meant "crap". This project has 52,000 articles in scope and only 9 of them are Featured. That's "crap". --kingboyk 14:50, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I'm rather preoccupied at the moment; surely you have noticed that a fair amount of activity has been happening here. So, I'm not sure who is helped by your condemning rhetoric... --Cheers, Folajimi (leave a note) 14:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Nope. I don't visit portals, sorry. Thanks anyway. --kingboyk 14:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Back to the issue in hand. Anyone else think that this number of FAs is bad, and have any ideas about how we can encourage more people to work to a higher standard? --kingboyk 14:57, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

right, well in that case, instead of having a pissing contest let's pick an article to collaborate on towards FA status. anyone any particular preferences? tomasz. 14:58, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

(as an aside) A Collab of the Week? That wouldn't be a bad idea. --kingboyk 15:02, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

i seem to remember that it was the collaborative process that spurred us on to get Illmatic to featured status at WikiProject hip hop. i find the sense of involvement is a good way to get things done. i wasn't thinking "...of the Week" specifically, but hell, why not? tomasz. 15:10, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm interested, but where do we start? We've got no guarantee that any of the regulars would have any particular interest or knowledge in any particular article, it's such a sprawling field. Given the above discussion, we can't really expect everyone to go out of the way to do research either. (I guess we could guarantee that each collaborative article will be thoroughly formatted according to style by the end...) –Unint 21:47, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps someone could suggest a standard for inclusion in Category:Top-importance album articles (such as the top X number of albums on acclaimedmusic.net) and then we could pick weak articles from there. I wouldn't focus (at least not initially) on something covered by another WikiProject (e.g. any Beatles album). We could have some process of nominations for each week or month. I like the idea. -MrFizyx 17:05, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I'll help. Violask81976 20:52, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Why not focus on something that's covered by another WikiProject? If we get two projects working on the same article I think we have pretty good chances that the article will actually become a FA. Plus, all the Beatles albums or something like The Dark Side of the Moon already have a pretty high importance rating (and many of them are already in pretty good condition), so to me they seem like a natural choice for this. And it's not as if there aren't any good references for them. --Fritz S. (Talk) 08:21, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I think Unint summed it up pretty well. It sounds like most of us are better at formatting than writing. I can affirm that's the case with me. I've written several short articles, but each one was a struggle. Sure, we've got a hundred members, but there are tens of thousands of articles. And how do our music interests overlap? I don't mean to imply that such a collaboration is bound to fail - I'm only offering an explanation why I think the FA count is so low. I like the idea of a weekly collaboration. Maybe we can switch off between article collab and maintenance tasks? Maybe the first one should be to assess importance? That would give us a list to choose from. -Freekee 02:39, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I think we can help push articles to FA more effectively If we edit B-class and higher articles with a lot of good content already. The trouble with collaborations on articles like Revolver is that it needed a lot of new content, and only a small fraction of us would be able to offer anything useful. As an example, recently I've been working on Kid A, which was sitting at B class for months and contained about 70kB of content. It's now a GA Candidate. My point is that although I needed to do hours of work on it, I didn't actually have to write any new content.

Although it would be great to get all the most important articles to FA-class, I think we can promote several articles which are close. We have a few A/GA class articles which we can all work on, if only to copy edit/request peer review/correct style etc. At the moment, some of the following could be easily pushed to FA without much new content being added. There are bound to be many more sitting at B-class which can easily go to GA too...

• Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - A class, had peer review
• Chill Out - A class, Section-stub
• Autobiography - GA class, failed FAC (old), had peer review (very old)
• Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde - GA class, failed FAC
• Extraordinary Machine - GA class, failed FAC (old)
• Illmatic - GA class. Former front page FA, WP:0.5
• Impossible Princess - GA class. Old peer review
• Love. Angel. Music. Baby. - GA class. Failed featured topic candidate
• Music of Final Fantasy VIII - GA class. Featured topic
• Number 1's - GA class. Old peer review
• Ray of Light - GA, old peer review
• Show No Mercy - GA, old peer review
• Still Reigning - GA, old peer review
• Supernature - GA, 2 peer reviews
• Zaireeka - GA, 2 peer reviews

-Alex valavanis 10:08, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe your right, boosting GA/A to FA certianly would be easier. And certianly some of the above are worthy of our time. I still like the idea of targeting some weak articles from time to time too. We probably should be flexible and see what kinds of articles people actually are willing to work on. Should we shoot for weekly, bi-weekly, monthly? -MrFizyx 21:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd say weekly, just to try. If we cant' get it done in that time frame, stretch it out. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Violask81976 (talk • contribs) 22:03, 27 April 2007 (UTC).

From that list, Chill Out (KLF album) ought to be on FAC soon, but any help would be really appreciated (WP:KLF has lost it's way a bit lately). As for Beatles albums, please don't assume WP:BEATLES is any better than this project ;) If we wait for them to get articles to FA we may be waiting a very long time. --kingboyk 22:05, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm still a little apprehensive about having formal collaborations on individual articles, as it'll mean a lot of potential edit conflicts and generally people's interest will wane over time. Maybe if we just encouraged project members to "adopt" articles from the list above, and let them request help on specific tasks to push them up to GA/FA.

On another note, just about all of the tasks on the To Do list, and most of the project guidelines have the goal of pushing Stub Class articles up to B Class. Maybe could probably use a bit more information on the project page about how to get the rest of the way up the assessment ladder? That way, editors would be encouraged to improve articles further themselves. - Alex valavanis

We wouldn't be the only ones to do it. WP:ALM does it. Violask81976 23:14, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

No more than three albums per chronology

I think a user should always be able to navigate through an entire chronology by only navigating right or left from the first or last album respectively. I note that some album pages list more than three albums in a chronology, mostly because two albums released simultaneously are put in the same slot (example), and sometimes as a substitute for using multiple chronologies (example). I suggest we decide and clarify that no more than three albums should be listed in a chronology, and that multiple chronologies should instead be used if needed. Albums released on the same day could be ordered using the standard ordering of those albums, or alphabetically if no such standard exists. See Aw Cmon and No You Cmon for an example where I've done this. Any objections? --PEJL 16:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Ping. No objections so far. Does anyone agree? --PEJL 17:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Ping again. Unless someone objects, I'll add language for this in a few days. --PEJL 18:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. --PEJL 21:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Co-release(s) section in infobox

Maybe include in the infobox a "co-release" option or something? Like in the case of I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning have it indicate that its co-release was Digital Ash in a Digital Urn. Maybe like this:

{{Extra chronology 2
  | Artist     = Whoever
  | Type       = studio
  | Last album = —
  | This album = ''I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning''
  | Next album = —
  }}
{{Extra album cover 2
  | Upper caption  = Co-releases
  | Cover          = nocover.jpg
  | Type           = studio
  | Lower caption  = </small>''Digital Ash in a Digital Urn''
  }}

Of course, not quite like this, but it could be a Misc entry like that. What do you think or doing something like that? --linca^linca 06:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

That's a possibility, but I think that's actually an orthogonal question. There might be a fair use problem with including the cover of the co-release. See the section #Pictures in chronology above. --PEJL 09:31, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

No no, I wasn't saying to use a picture. I was just too lazy to code something else. I just mean something simple with "co-releases" as the header part and then a listing of them, kind of like Template:singles (talk · links · edit) does (but I can't change the header in that, so I didn't use that). So no titles, but just a list of co-albums. The only thing that may be an issue is the superfluosity of it. How many albums out there really warrant it. Now that i've thought about it, I can't think of many... Scratch that. i just thought of a bunch (such as White Elephant Sessions with If I Left the Zoo, Good Monsters with Little Monsters, both of which are by Jars of Clay, but i'm sure others will arise). Ok, I'm in for that. I could even code it, since it's not too tough. I'll only do it if I'm given the nod, though. I won't do it if nobody's going to use it. Plus, what would you want as (a) the template title and (b) the header part of the template. If you say yes, please provide a suggestion. I'm not sure that "co-releases" is the best way to put it (but I may be wrong).

--linca^linca 11:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think including a co-release(s) section in the infobox is really necessary. Like you said, co-releases are relativily rare. It's also not a very well defined concept. What is a co-release? Are all albums released by the same artist on the same day to be considered co-releases? I think it will suffice if the connection between an album and another album is noted in the text of the article, to the extent appropriate in each case, both for co-releases and other related albums. --PEJL 12:23, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed language change for external links

I propose to change the current stub text in WP:ALBUM#External links to the following:

Album articles may contain an external links section of links to relevant external resources about the album. Links to resources about the artist rather than the album do not need to be included here, as these should be linked from the artist's article instead. Appropriate links may include links to chords or lyrics for the tracks on the album. Note however that lyrics may be protected by copyright, and external resources that reprint lyrics may be violating that copyright, in which case they should not be linked.

Any objections? --PEJL 20:58, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Third sentence: "Appropriate links may include..." to fix the antecedent. Otherwise, please do. –Unint 21:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, please do. Be bold. Violask81976 21:03, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree MOSTLY, except that you should liberate the links. For instance, sometimes it may be appropriate to link to an artist's own album article (such as the thirsty merc releases page which indicates the band's discography, including track listings and links to individual song synopses) and oter links of the kind. I don't know how to phrase it, but I think the way you've worded it sounds a bit restrictive and may scare people off from putting these kind of links in (ironically, I've not used this link in TM's albums). Another thing is just the word "should" should be included in the link "should no be linked". Otherwise, I'm happy with it. --linca^linca 05:36, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. I adjusted the text according to your suggestions. Thanks for the feedback. --PEJL 18:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Bootlegs?

You guys don't seem to mention this at all in your main description page, but it seems implicit that this concept should be for official releases and not "bootlegs." I ask this because under the Coldplay albums listed someone put up a "fan made" compilation that takes tracks from official releases and puts them on CD, and if sold this would obviously be illegal.

My view is that these kinds of things should not be here, but nothing speficially says that it shouldn't so I thought I would ask. Any thoughts? MDuchek 01:52, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

You're right in that it's illegal. It's not illegal to make up your own running list, but it's far from encyclopedia and doesn't belong here. It's not all the way illegal, but it's a very dark shade of grey. --linca^linca 14:03, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Note though that some bootlegs are less illegal than others, and some aren't illegal at all. See Bootleg recording#Legal alternatives to illicit bootlegging. If we were to mention bootlegs on the project page, I think we should refer to "illegal bootlegs" or similar. --PEJL 17:16, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah well those aren't really "bootlegs" in the same sense, they just call them that. In any case, the key question is whether it's an *official release* OR something put together by fans or some other persons/company, whether profit or for not. It might be worth it to have something for non-official releases too, but not there. MDuchek 03:11, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I think notability decides this one. The Lillywhite Sessions, for example, received lots of attention, including press coverage. Castles looks to be only mentioned on message boards and such. –Unint 03:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

In that case I'd say you should make sure they are clearly marked as unofficial/bootlegs and have their own category. MDuchek 16:28, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A bootleg could have an article if it was notable enough, but that's rare. It probably shouldn't be included in the artist's categories or discography, but it should have a "see also" mention. -03:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Back covers again

Ok, whould this be notable enough to warrent a back cover? The Pink Spiders album Hot Pink is labeled out like it is a vinyl record, even though it is a cd. IT mentions needle times on the back and breaks the tracks into sides. It is notabel to show the back cover to show this? Violask81976 01:53, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It's a matter of discretion. I wouldn't say it was, and wouldn't post it, but by the same token, I wouldn't list it for deletion nor would I remove it if it were there, because I don't think it's unencyclopedic. Sorry if I'm no help, but if you did it, I wouldn't be against it. --linca^linca 11:55, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new template {{Rating-Christgau}}

I propose we create a new template {{Rating-Christgau}} to standardize the formatting of Robert Christgau's ratings in the professional reviews section. Personally I don't know how to create a template, so I haven't tried to do this myself. I propose we create the template with one argument which is a code like one of the following: "hm1", "hm2", "hm3", "dud". These should map to an appropriate output for each rating. The honorable mention ratings currently used, or used in the past, have varied formatting:

• (honorable mention **)
• (hon mention **)
• (hon ment **)
• (hon. mention 2/3)
• (honorable mention 2 stars)
• (**)
• (2 stars)
• {{Rating-3|2}}
• (2-star honorable mention)
• (** honorable mention)
• (** hon mention)
• (** hon ment)

as well as capitalized versions of the same and versions of the same using <small>...</small>. The dud ratings also use or have used varied formatting:

• (dud)
• (X dud)
• (dud X)

where X is one of at least two different bomb symbols, as well as capitalized versions of the same. We should collectively decide which formatting we want, and have the template output that format. I personally prefer (** hon mention) or (** hon ment) and (dud). Do other people think this would be a good idea? Does anyone who knows how to create templates want to give this a shot? --PEJL 13:49, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's too much of a protologism having that sort of a rating system on here. For this same reason, I'm advocating removing the XXL (magazine) rating. I'm not for it, sorry man. --linca^linca 14:06, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, Christgau's rating system is already in use on the hundreds or thousands of album articles that contain reviews from him. In my sample of about 1500 album articles there were recently 347 reviews by Christgau. I'm merely trying to standardize the formatting of them. As for XXL magazine, I think the ratings look a bit obnoxious in the infobox when they use those images (example), but I would be in favor of keeping them with text-only ratings like "(XXL)", "(XL)" and so on. --PEJL 14:42, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Is there an official text representation of Christgau's "bomb" icon? –Unint 21:34, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

See [1]. I consider "dud" to be the text representation of the bomb icon. --PEJL 21:54, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

It turns out creating a template wasn't so difficult, so I have created Template:Rating-Christgau. --PEJL 18:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Template looks good, but what about Christgau's other ratings like A+, A, A-, B+, "cut," "neither," and "turkey." The template is useless if it doesn't include all of his ratings. –Crashintome4196 04:37, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Useless, really? I added the ratings I did because those are the Christgau-specific ones (which excludes the letter grades) that were actually in use AFAICT (which excludes "cut", "neither" and "turkey"), and because those are the ones that currently need standardizing. But I agree the "cut", "neither" and "turkey" should be added, in case they are used anywhere I haven't seen or are used in the future. I'm not sure the letter grades should be included, because if we include them some people might use {{Rating-Christgau|B+}} for B+ ratings by other reviewers, especially if we format letter grades in a way other than the current. To avoid that, I defined Ratings-Christgau to be for Christgau-specific ratings. I also thought we might want to add a {{Rating-Letter}} in the future, which could be used by letter grades by Christgau and others, and avoid any overlap. --PEJL 08:47, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I've added the other Christgau-specific ratings to the template. Unlike what I proposed above, I've now made the template output symbols instead of text. Mostly because this is how the ratings are presented in print, but also because it becomes more obvious that a template is used (and should be used) if the template outputs something other than plain text, which will help the template being adopted. I made the symbols for the honorable mention ratings one, two or three black stars without any text, because that is how they are shown in print. Unlike the other rating stars these are black making them noticeably different, which I think is desirable because of their different meaning. What do people think? --PEJL 17:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Y Done. I've put this template to use in all the articles I could find with Christgau-specific ratings (slightly over 100 album articles) and mentioned it in the guideline. --PEJL 18:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Problem – From Category talk:Albums without cover art

A discussion has recently started concerning the above page and I wanted to call it to the attention of this project so it could receive more traffic, specifically from those experienced in dealing with these issues. Please visit the above talk page to get up to date. Leave any new messages on which ever page you feel. I believe that we can get this cleaned up very quickly. Sampm 03:00, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Internet Company using Wikipedia to advertise

If this has already been noticed, just delete and forget. I noticed on the page for Big Pun's album Yeeah Baby [2] the links to external reviews of the album for Rolling Stone, NME, Q and others all lead to this page [3] which is a page where the album can be bought from the company www.buy.com. Sorry, I don't have time to change them, I just want to notify people who are more dedicated that this abuse has taken place, and may also be taking place on other pages. It's a clever but parasitic and abusive strategy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.64.173.249 (talk • contribs)

This project used to have buy.com in our list of review sites; that may be the source of the problem. (Then, of course, somebody noticed the problem and took it off.) –Unint 03:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Note the links to buy.com have been in the first infobox example on the project page for a very long time. They used to point to review summaries of an album at buy.com but the structure of these pages has apparently changed. Jogers (talk) 09:37, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, buy.com is still listed in the list of review sites. Secondly, the buy.com pages still contain the review summaries, but you have to click the "Professional reviews" tab to see them. Personally I'd prefer it if we didn't link to a specific retailer like this, but the alternative is to have no link at all for reviews which can't be found elsewhere on the net. I don't know if that would be acceptable. --PEJL 10:05, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

My mistake, looks like. But Buy.com is getting these collections of (quotes of) reviews from Muze to begin with, so the links are a bit misrepresentational. (They provide publication dates, so why don't we just unlink them and provide dates for people to look up at the library?)

I'm still holding out hope for a collaborative project on print sources... like WikiProject Alternative music has implemented. –Unint 22:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Standards for upcoming untitled albums

Is there a list of standards or policies for creating articles for known upcoming untitled studio albums? If not, I think there should be. Articles like U2's 16th album and Robbie's forthcoming studio album don't seem to adhere to any type of standards, and I think that some standards should be set, at least naming conventions for starters. –Crashintome4196 21:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC) UPDATE: For naming conventions I think we should adhere to something similar to the following:

• A number should definitely be included to distinguish between "future upcoming" albums.
• Studio album should be included to differentiate from live albums and EPs.
• Proposed styles:
  • Artist's ##th studio album (ex: U2's 12th studio album)
  • Artist's untitled ##th studio album (ex: U2's untitled 12th studio album)
  • Artist's upcoming ##th studio album (ex: U2's upcoming 12th studio album)
  • Artist's forthcoming ##th studio album (ex: U2's forthcoming 12th studio album)

–Crashintome4196 21:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Deletion? –Unint 21:30, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I would have said the same at first, but the articles are properly cited, plus there are many more than those two. After looking at Category:Upcoming albums, I also found many others. Here are a few more:

• Apl.de.ap's solo album
• Britney Spears' fifth studio album
• Eminem's fifth studio album
• Forthcoming unnamed Smoosh album
• Delta Goodrem's Upcoming third album and Delta Goodrem's Third Untitled Album (two different articles, unfortunately)
• Jimmy Eat World's sixth studio album
• Madonna's forthcoming studio album
• Korn's eighth studio album
• Kylie's 10th Studio Album

There are many more, but you get the idea – obviously none of them follow a similar naming standard.

–Crashintome4196 21:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Once again we have the case where artist B's fans think they should have every wiki-feature that artist A's fans have created, it gets copied ad infinitum, and then we end up trying to accomodate something massive and unmaintainable. For starters, who will go around ensuring all the obsolete redirects get deleted once the albums are titled?

That aside, I'll concede there's some good material here. However, the whole reason why {{Future album}} was set to apply to sections as well as whole articles was that upcoming album information could be written in the band's main article. –Unint 22:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

If an album doesn't even have a name, then why on Earth should we have an article on it? --Mel Etitis (Talk) 22:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

It would actually be very hard to defend an unnamed album using policy against deletion. If you took the argument that albums should be included on stand alone notability, it would fail that because there are no sales or awards or reviews (let alone a name) to back it up. If you took the line that it's notable because any release by a notable band is inherently notable (much favoured) it falls down there too, because it hasn't, in fact, been released (let alone named). I'm not about to start deleting them, though. If it's what "the people" want, judge them on a case by case basis. And, for the sake of argument, maybe it should be Band's Nth studio album – B.hotep ^u/_t• 22:42, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't be opposed to deleting them (there are some really horrible ones out there), but if we're keeping them, I wouldn't be opposed to a standard. I recommend [band]'s upcoming [studio] album. Or forthcoming. The number doesn't matter, and it needs to be clear that the album hasn't been released yet. Or maybe "as yet untitled." If you just call it "untitled album" people might think it really doesn't have a title. Like Zeppelin IV. -Freekee 03:36, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

If they are to be kept (I'm not saying either way), I think standardizing the naming and other aspects of upcoming untitled albums is a good idea. It might not always be so straightforward to determine what ordinal an album would be. With that in mind, and since I doubt any artist has multiple upcoming untitled albums with enough info to warrant articles at the same time, I agree with Freekee that the ordinals don't need to be included in the name. One option is "Artist's future album", using the same terminology as Template:Future album. I don't agree with Freekee that using "untitled" is problematic though. It really is an untitled album, because it hasn't been titled yet. (Compare to how a newly created file or folder on a computer is called "Untitled" until it is given another name.) I suggest they be named "Untitled" with standard album disambiguation making it "Untitled (Artist album)". I think this would be most in line with current naming conventions for albums. We should also decide what should be shown at the top of the infobox and in the chronology. The articles linked above contain a mix of "TBA", "Unknown", "Unnamed", "Artist's ##th studio album" and similar. I think we should standardize on "Untitled" (but unitalicized, because it isn't a title). --PEJL 09:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Mel. I really don't see much value in an article like Kylie's_10th_Studio_Album. It would be remiss of us not to have an article on Chinese Democracy (album), though, and there are plenty of sources for it. Likewise, if I say so myself I think The Black Room, an article on a never-completed album, is a decent enough article. The difference, of course, with these two examples is that the albums got at least as far as being named and got enough press coverage to write a sensible article about them. --kingboyk 11:19, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that's what I was saying with the "case by case basis" thing. Some have received enough coverage to become quasi-notable in their own right, some are mere conjecture. Let's not tar all with the same brush, judge an album by its non-cover, and other such cliche. The question was: what format should they take, not whether they should all be deleted. – B.hotep ^u/_t• 23:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

We should keep going with this. Which of the proposed suggestions do people prefer? I prefer "Untitled (ARTIST album)". --PEJL 18:17, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Numbering is difficult, see the U2 upcoming album article. I'd reject anything which uses numbers. Your idea doesn't distinguish genuinely untitled albums from albums which are forthcoming and not titled yet but which may be... So, how about "Upcoming untitled ARTIST album"? --kingboyk 22:04, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

I am fine with kingboyk's suggestion, even though I don't really think we need to distinguish one type of untitled album from another in the name of the article. But if we do want to do so, another option is "Not yet titled ARTIST album". --PEJL 22:56, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Shorter=better, I guess :) --kingboyk 22:58, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Better than "ARTIST's upcoming unnamed forthcoming untitled seventh studio album" at least :-) --PEJL 23:13, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

The Album Project's collaboration of the week

We've talked about it before, but we haven't actually done it. Let's do it. Someone above put forth a list of A-class articles that need to be improved to Feature-class articles. Here's the first one from the list. Let's see how this goes.

Yankee Hotel Foxtrot Let's see if we can get it to Feature Article status. Peer review, January

Go team, go! -Freekee 05:07, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm busy doing the same thing with Kid A at the minute... just doing the some final copy editing before submitting for FA, but I'll help with this when I'm finished. - Alex valavanis 17:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Now That's What I Call Music!

There are quite a few articles about albums in this series, many of which consist almost entirely of track listings. Since they don't assert notability, they are in danger of speedy deletion. Any thoughts? Talk:Now That's What I Call Music!#Notability (John User:Jwy talk) 03:49, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The Now UK series is notable, whether or not the articles assert it. It's just about the most famous compilation series in this country ever. They really need to be cleaned and beefed up rather than deleted or, perhaps better still, merged into a smaller set of articles. --kingboyk 15:41, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Merging into a single mega-article would be a good idea, then the text can present an overview of the series, such as how it began in the vinyl era and so far endured through to the era of iTunes playlists. Ricadus 14:31, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale

Seems that the uploading instructions at Template:Infobox Album#Album cover are not good enough anymore. Album cover images without fair use rationale are targeted for speedy deletion by User:ESkog. I asked him to discuss the issue here. Jogers (talk) 20:13, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, image policy changed and now all image description pages need a fair use rationale, a licensing template, and a source. I have developed a format which could easily be used with any image which provides all the above requirements. Take a look at Image:Character digipak cover.jpg and Image:Orbit Dance album cover.jpg for examples of the format. Take a look and consider adopting it for this project, a template could be made of the format. --Leon Sword 00:41, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Nice. I'm going to add this to the images I uploaded. What is more problematic though is that the user argues that cover art which is not specifically discussed in the article should eventually be deleted anyway. If this is going to happen it would mean that adding the fair use rationale now is just a waste of time in the vast majority of cases. Jogers (talk) 13:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, User:Geni was arguing about the same thing some time ago. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Albums/Archive 11#Album covers and fair use. Jogers (talk) 14:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I still don't understand why the album cover template doesn't include the rationale. The rationale is pretty much the same for all album cover articles isn't it? Couldn't we as a project at least create some subst'able boilerplate text?

As for the notion that they'll all be deleted anyway, I find that prospect quite apalling. Free images are all well and good, but we at this project we have no choice: album covers are copyright and likely to remain so. If it does happen, I believe we ought to seriously consider taking our labour elsewhere. --kingboyk 15:39, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Whatever may happen, are album covers worth leaving over? –Unint 15:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't necessitate leaving, album articles could be worked on at a new GFDL wiki which allows fair use album covers, and forked back here without the artwork. Let's hope it doesn't come to that though and let's not worry about it too much unless it happens, but be ready to fight for album covers (and other notable pieces of art) to be excluded :) --kingboyk 16:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I would have no problem opening up an AlbumWiki. That would actually be pretty sweet. Violask81976 18:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Similar issues are highlighted in this week's Signpost, see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2007-05-07/Fair use. --kingboyk 12:04, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I think User:ESkogs main problem with album images is that too many people upload them without a fair use rationale and I agree with him. I myself come down hard on all these people who upload images without a license template, a statement of source, or a fair use rationale. If you include all those required things in the image description page your image cannot be speedy deleted for any of those reasons. I believe the entire situation can be solved by editors using the format I have developed, it features all the required items and even if the article in which the image is displayed does not talk about the image, the image description page provides a paragraph discussing the image. No images under my format can be deleted through the speedy deletion system because they will not meet any of the deletion requirements. Again take a look at Image:Character digipak cover.jpg and Image:Orbit Dance album cover.jpg for examples of the format. --Leon Sword 23:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I have no problem with adding rationale to few hundreds covers I uploaded but what are we going to do about thousands of images which uploaders may no longer be around? It would be a terrible waste if all of them got deleted. Jogers (talk) 10:14, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Adopt those images? --Leon Sword 21:57, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

They shouldn't even need a rationale, as it's always pretty much the same for every album article. There's only so many ways to justify the use of an album cover! --kingboyk 22:05, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

CfD notification

Category:Electronic albums by artist up for deletion. Do we want these genre subdivisions? –Unint 19:34, 5 May 2007 (UTC)