Wikipedia talk:WikiProject PipeOrgan/Archive 1

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Message from a new project member

Being a relative newcomer to the pipe organ, I will not be able to contribute the grand additions/revisions of some of the more learned members. I shall, however, continue to chip in as I have before. As a final note, yes, my account name was inspired by the article and my interest in the organ. Kudos to all who make this place go round.

P.S. I've made a userbox for this project. The link: {{User WikiProject PipeOrgan}} If you don't like it or would like to change it, feel free to make changes. Doublediapason 00:43, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Welcome. Thanks for the userbox, I've added it to the template section of the main page. MDCollins (talk) 09:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Organists categories

Before populating the full article list with organists, I was wondering if a category cleanup would be useful. There seems to be organists in lots of categories, but not with any logic. My proposal would be for every organist to be in at least two categories:

and

Then

I don't think that Category:Organists should be used at all, other than as a parent category.

In a similar vein, if populated correctly, List of organists would be redundant - it is a horrible looking red-linked page anyway!

Thoughts? MDCollins (talk) 10:15, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds a good idea to me to tidy this field up, especially (1) getting rid of individual names from Category:Organists and (2) doing something drastic to List of organists (although it might provide a useful reference for future project work). A few further thoughts.
  1. Delete the category of "Popular organists" - isn't there more than a hint of point of view involved in choosing who is "popular"? See discussion below MDCollins (talk) 14:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
  2. As for nationality, is there a Wikipedia policy on whether to list as "British", as opposed to "English" or "Welsh" (or Scottish / Irish, but there are no such categories in use for organists at present)? At present, "English" (117 names) and "Welsh" (5 names) are sub-cags of "British", but there are then 4 names in the British section. It makes sense to be consistent not only within "organists" but also, if possible, with other categories e.g. composers, if there is a policy.
  3. How about a Category:Cathedral organists for those who are, or have been, employed in that capacity?
Bencherlite 22:33, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Re: 1, I think this refers to organists in popular music (ie non-classical), rather than those liked by a lot of people (Rick Wakeman for example) - perhaps a rename of the category. See discussion below MDCollins (talk) 14:48, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Re: 2, don't know what the policy is, probably to use British but I don't know.
Re: 3, Yes good idea.
MDCollins (talk) 09:24, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Re:British, I agree that this category should be split into 'home nations' in order to avoid the british category getting too large (although I can't think of many non-english organists)! Beware that we may find some people putting Cornish organists (not that there are any here yet) in a seperate category - the correct category being 'English organists'. MDCollins (talk) 08:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Another thing...! I was a bit unsure as to the point of putting organ scholars, and cathedral organists in classical organists as well!
Therefore, I am moving these as sub-cats of classical organists so for example [[John Scott (organist) will go in Category:Cathedral organists, Category:Organ scholars, Category:English organists, whereas Piet Kee will go in Category:Dutch organists, and Category:Classical organists. MDCollins (talk) 09:39, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
See FAQs for summary of the above. MDCollins (talk) 15:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Now that I have finished my graduate recital, I am able to work in Wikipedia once again. I just put two organists successfully into their proper categories! I found them because other people tagged them as Category:Organists. While I was there, I noticed that Organist and Organ scholar are tagged as in Category:Organists... hasn't it been decided that this category isn't to be used at all except as a parent category? I wanted to make sure before I ended up changing it. —Cor anglais 16 15:11, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations! If you want some more to categorize, may I suggest you look at the (In)-complete article list and see which categories of organists (I think it is just some of the English and the French) that need adding to that list, as they are probably the ones that may need re-categorizing.
I think that Organist and Organ scholar can stay there, they aren't doing any harm and they can't fit in English organists or the like can they! On another note, would Organ scholar be better as a sub-section of Organist? It seems short, but can't think what else can be added. –MDCollins (talk) 22:38, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Popular organists category

This is a discussion about the re-naming of Category:Popular organists, extracted from above - struck out text is irrelevant to this discussion, and has been acted on. How about a category for non-classical organists? The likes of Reginald Dixon, for example? The Wurlitzer is, after all, a pipe organ. Guy (Help!) 16:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

  • Feh - my bad. Category:Popular organists—Preceding unsigned comment added by JzG (talk • contribs) 16:44, 4 March, 2007 (UTC)

Is this the best title for the category, does it suggest popularity?MDCollins (talk) 13:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed here as well: rename the category "Popular organists:" perhaps "Non-classical organists" or "Popular music organists?" I am woefully inadequate when it comes to my knowledge of Wikipedia conventions, and especially where to find them, but British sounds good to me. Category:Cathedral organists also sounds like a good idea. —Cor anglais 16 (talk) 11:50, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Anything to avoid the current confusion between "being popular" and "playing popular music" - "Light Music Organists"?. As for "British", the approach at Category:British musicians seems to be to have English, Welsh, etc as sub-categories of British. So, to conform, I suggest we aim to use English organists / Welsh organists etc rather than British organists, wherever possible. There's more about naming conventions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization I'll create Category:Cathedral organists and put John Scott (organist) in it for now - one of the "popular organists"! Bencherlite 16:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
'Non-classical organists' sounds the best so far (is there a bot we could use to change all of these?) I suppose it doesn't matter if not, because we need to enter each one anyway. MDCollins (talk) 08:46, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I have raised the Category:Popular organists problem at the WP:Musicians cat-sort project here, to see what they suggest. I think for now, we can continue with the category sort - leaving it as popular organists for the time being, then rename it afterwards! MDCollins (talk) 09:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Discussion now raised at Categories for discussion.MDCollins (talk) 15:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Discussion closed - decision rename, but to what? –MDCollins (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Cathedral organists

Discussion extracted from talk pages of Mdcollins and Bencherlite Hi. I noticed that you asked whether Dudley Buck was a cathedral organist or not. I have probably been going against my own rules, but have used discretion in cases like this and included organists of large-ish/ or many parish churches in this category as well, not just for cathedrals. I know this might create problems, but save another Category:Church organists it kind of seemed logical! MDCollins (talk) 11:52, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, not sure I agree that non-cathedral organists should be in the cathedral organists category. I think you then have a real problem of deciding whether someone played at "enough" churches or a "large enough" church to qualify, whereas "Did he/she play at a cathedral?" should be a straightforward question to answer. I don't think we need a "Church organists" category as well, though - "classical organists" doesn't have to be an empty category consisting only of sub-categories. Shall we move this discussion to the Project talkpage? Bencherlite 12:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Done- maybe you're right. Should be hard to check them, just have to wander through Cathedral organists and check the evidence. MDCollins (talk) 13:23, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Doh - forgot that Westminster Abbey isn't a cathedral, some to de-categorise there though. I thought seen as the is a complete list of organists for the abbey some nice succession boxes would go down well, so I've started on that. Seems a shame that those in such a prominent post have to stick to being Classical organists! –MDCollins (talk) 17:27, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Female organists

How about Category:Female organists? There aren't that many on here, but more than I anticipated. Would it be a useful category? MDCollins (talk) 15:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I was initially unsure about Category:Female organists but have checked and found Category:Women in music, with sub-categories including Category:Female guitarists and Category:Women composers. It would appear to fit nicely and (if created) should be added as a sub-category of Women in music too. Bencherlite 20:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Created! –MDCollins (talk) 23:40, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Baseball organists

I'm tagging the American organists at present, and beginning to think that we need another new category of Category:Baseball organists - still in the C section and found two already (Lambert Bartak and Ray Castoldi)! Bencherlite 20:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Not sure, maybe...When the popular organists category debate is finished and we have done all the sorting, perhaps some more sub-cats of Category:Popular organists would be apparent. MDCollins (talk) 13:12, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Have found another baseball organist - my tongue-in-cheek suggestion about Category:Baseball organists is getting less tongue-in-cheek now! )(Moved from below) - didn't initially mean it as a serious suggestion, but have found three so far and only up to G. (Aren't there sometimes organists at other American sports?) Agree that decisions can wait until later. Bencherlite 13:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Hammond organ players

Would Category:Hammond organ players be more consistent with other sub-categories if renamed Category:Hammond organists? Bencherlite 13:19, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Possibly... MDCollins (talk) 13:26, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Category:Hammond organists sounds good to me, and more consistent, though it's similar to the phrase "Hammond organ." —Cor anglais 16 (talk) 13:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Organists and composers in the North German tradition

Should Category:Organists and composers in the North German tradition be placed as a sub-cat of Category:Classical organists? My thought is that yes it should, removing individuals from the latter - unless of course there are some non-organist composers in the category. It is all in the wording. I'll check them as I populate the German organists list. Any thoughts –MDCollins (talk) 16:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed stub

I think we could do with an organist-stub. Before proposing one, I believe we have to see how many articles would require the tag. I am marking these on the article list page, and tagging all relevant articles with "Keyboardist-stub" - the closest I can find! MDCollins (talk) 10:19, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I have now proposed this stub, current estimate is nearly 100 stubs!–MDCollins (talk) 00:42, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
And created at {{organist-stub}} –MDCollins (talk) 00:44, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Speeding up a boring job for humans?

Fun though it is to go through every organist-related category, tag the talk page and check for disambig and redirect pages, can't we ask a bot-owner to do at least the initial tagging for us? How about User:WatchlistBot, for example? Bencherlite 21:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Maybe - but we've probably done most of it. I'll do the non-american organists for a bit! MDCollins (talk) 10:16, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Ok, and I'll do some more American organists. D and E, here I come... Bencherlite 10:24, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Also, it allows us to correct the categorisation as we go! See the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 March 11#Category:Popular organists and help me out! Somebody seemed to get the wrong end of the stick. MDCollins (talk) 10:30, 12 March 2007 (UTC) (Done Bencherlite 13:14, 12 March 2007 (UTC))
It looks as though WatchlistBot can be used to perform "maintenance" checking of the categories once a week or so, which would save us having to check for new pages in every category and tag them. Worth rememebering for when we've tagged every blinking organist/organ article?! Bencherlite 11:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Organist articles and categories

I've now tagged all the remaining organists on their talk page and added them to the article list, together with their redirects / disambigs. I finally worked out how to use Auto Wiki Bot to do that, which made life a lot easier! (I confess that once I had used AWB on other things, I was groaning at the thought of having to go back to adding PipeOrgan Project tags by hand!) All that needs to be done is checking the articles for obvious mistakes and category mistakes - Mdcollins seem to be doing that anyway, and I'll join in as and when I can.

One thing that worries me slightly, having spent a fair amount of time recently sorting out categories for other musicians using the standard guidelines, is our classification system for organists. For all other instruments, the standard categorization is nationality/genre/instrument e.g. "Category:American classical violinists". We've ended up with "nationality+instrument" and "instrument+genre", rather than all three elements together, which then means that organists don't fit into the existing structures used for other musicians. For example, Category:American classical musicians can't include organists, because not all members of Category:American organists are classical musicians. Any thoughts? My own view is that we ought to get it in line at some point, and it won't take too long compared to the job of finding all the articles in the first place. I'm happy to carry on with this in the background whilst we improve the actual articles. Bencherlite 16:31, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Re tagging. Good work mate. I've given up using AWB at the moment as it still crashes every 5 minutes (no idea why). Certainly the category checking is a lot quicker now. I'm intrigued as to how you used the bot to add the article list though...
Load category e.g. English organists. Right-click on the list and click "convert to talk pages". On "more" page, tick to enable Append/Prepend text, then add {{PipeOrgan-project-page}} in the box, click Prepend. Set other options and necessary and edit summary. Click start and off you go! Bencherlite 23:07, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
I can do that - crash permitting, but the inserting in the complete list seemed clever. Probably wouldn't be if AWB would actually work for me...–MDCollins (talk) 09:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
I still had to add the names to the article list, together with disambigs and redirects, by hand! That's the slow bit, as you know! Bencherlite 15:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
As for the categories, if that is the way things are going, then we should probably agree - it would reduce the amount we use by one too! Nice and easy with AWB I'd imagine - if it works! Presumably all/most of our main cats (Classical, pop, cathedral) just need sorting by nationality, then the English organists-type cats can be deleted. I'm assuming that the minor categories like Female organists and organ scholars can remain multi-national.
Lets complete the list/checking as it is then construct a new scheme. It will be easier to change them all if they are in the right (wrong!) place to start with...
By the way, the template now contains a "small" function so that we can fix articles such as Freddie Mercury - how did we end up with him? - where the template screwed everything up! –MDCollins (talk) 16:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
We ended up with him, and loads of other non-pipe organists, because we haven't restricted ourselves to pipe/classical organists. Should we? My inclination is that we should - my "expertise", such as it is, is more likely to be in this field than it is on commenting on the pop-music-playing organist of a band... Bencherlite 22:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Category for deletion discussion - Hammond organ players

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 April 21#Category:Hammond organ players is up for deletion. A chance for us to have a think about what to do with this category. Bencherlite 22:41, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I think if this is to be deleted, they should all be put in Category:Pop organists - personally it doesn't bother me, but the precedent might be useful. It depends on whether anyone has the expertise to deal with the non-classical organists anyway... However, I'd keep move the cat to a subcat of Pop organists or just the contents. Any thoughts –MDCollins (talk) 22:54, 23 April 2007 (UTC), –MDCollins (talk) 22:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
No, absolutely not a subcat of Pop organists! Please do not mix musician-by-instrument categories into instrumentalist-by-genre categories! There is a well-established categorization scheme for musicians at Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization; this project does not need to develop its own independent categorization scheme, and doing so will only result in confusion and conflict. If you have trouble understanding the existing scheme (and I admit that it can be a little tricky at first), or if you simply aren't sure how to deal with non-classical organists, I'm sure that people from the musician's workgroup (including me) will be more than happy to help. Please do not put any more organists in the pop organist category unless you are sure that they actually qualify as being in the pop genre (this means no rock, no hip-hop, no funk, no jazz, no metal, no punk, no folk, etc.). Pop organists should not simply be a reject pile for this project. If you aren't sure how to classify them, please leave them in Category:Organists! Or (looking at some of the category members) if it's someone who merely happens to play organ among other keyboard instrumentals, he may not need to be subcategorized into the organist tree at all. (A good example of this last would be Roy Bittan.) Or call for help, as I mentioned above. While I am not a member of this project, the project should feel free to call on me at any time for tricky categorization problems, as I spend a lot of time working on musician categorization. And if I'm busy, I may be able to recommend some others who do the same. Cheers, Xtifr tälk 12:05, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
I knew this would be a problem when Category:Pop organists was created. This category was renamed from Category:Popular organists to remove the unintentional POV related to this name. It was assumed that this category was for the non-classical organists which is where they ended up. If Wikipedia:WikiProject Musicians/Categorization wants to deal with this they are more than welcome (although they didn't seem to come up with any suggestions for the name change at the time) see this. As you probably remember from the CfD, which you commented on, here, this ended up being renamed to something even we weren't comfortable with. I agree that the naming for that cat is substandard, and we are aware of the need to bring our categories into line with WikiProject Musicians so help would be appreciated.
This all stemmed from the excessive use of Category:Organists (like your view on Category:Keyboardists and the need we felt in separating the pipe organ players from the rest due to the different styles and techniques involved. My view is that Category:Hammond organ players is actually a poorly titled instrumentalist-by-genre category however it looks. We do not want to cause problems with you or your project, of course we should work together. The organist category was in quite a mess until we started to deal with it, and we are in no ways complete. In fact, we do not really intend to mess with the non-classical organists, but will be happy to assist in sorting the mess. Thanks for taking the time to explain your views, can we try and agree on a way forward? –MDCollins (talk) 13:01, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I remember the history of the pop organist genre. The name itself is acceptable as a subcategory of Category:Pop musicians by instrument (to which I just added it), but most of the articles in there don't belong there. As for Hammond organ players, that is absolutely not a genre! Members of the category include Count Basie (jazz), Gregg Allman (rock), and Rod Argent (pop). I agree with, support, and am overjoyed at, your efforts to reduce the size of Category:Organists, which should, ideally, be empty, but the main problem I see is that you haven't made your tree deep enough, so you get distracted by notions like "type of organ", when, if your tree were fully populated, most of the categories would already be quite sparse. For example, Category:German classical organists should be a subcategory of Category:German organists by genre, Category:Classical organists by nationality and Category:German classical musicians by instrument. Each of those "by X" categories, in turn, should be a subcategory of a category with the same name, but without the 'by X". Category:American jazz organists, likewise, would be a subcategory of Category:American organists by genre, Category:Jazz organists by nationality and Category:American jazz musicians by instrument.
Note that once you have a tree this deep, subcategorizing by type of organ (which is already a subtype of keyboard) is really excessive. Which is why I argued at the CfD for removing the Hammond cat, and am against Electronic organist or Pipe organist subcats (though I'm least opposed to that last one).
If you just want to get articles out of Category:Organists (which is an excellent notion) and aren't sure how to categorize non-classical organists properly (the articles should contain useful suggestions for genre, thouugh I admit that I am frequently stumped as to how to interpret a described genre), then I recommend simply moving the non-classical organists into organist-by-nationality categories for now, Very few articles will omit the nationality, so that should be easy to do in most cases. The organist-by-nationality categories should ideally be nearly empty too, but that can wait until someone finds the time to create appropriate by-genre subcategories and diffuse the articles into them. Xtifr tälk 14:16, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your helpful comments, Xtifr. You may have noticed that I made the point about needing to classify by genre as well as nationality in a previous section of this talk page (and you'll see if you look at my user page that I'm doing this for plenty of instruments at the moment, including the previously unsorted categories of Category:Violists and Category:Oboists ). We (by which I mean MDCollins!) have nearly finished round 1 of the category sorting, and then I'll go through and add in the "classical by nationality" and other genre sub-cats. Perhaps we should have realised the problem earlier, but that's water under the bridge.
As for Hammond organists: (a) I agree that it's not an ideal category, although it's not as bad as Category:Steinway pianists would be! It might be better as a list, such as List of Moog synthesizer users and I'll suggest that; (b) my suggestion more generally is the people in that category, and also "Pop / Jazz Organists", are more likely to fit better under the "Keyboardists by genre/nationality scheme" (where we already have rock and heavy metal keyboardists) and we should keep Category:Organists for players of pipe organs rather than players of electronic keyboards. And for these purposes I'm going to overlook the fact that some "pipe organists" play electronic substitutes in places of worship or concert venues e.g. Carlo Curley and his travelling organ, or it'll get too complicated! Thoughts? Bencherlite 16:44, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Hmm...I'm a little dubious about the possibility (in practical terms, given the great mass of random Wikipedia editors) and the desirability of repurposing Cat:Organists (and its subcats) to cover only pipe organists. But on the other hand, I agree that most pop / jazz / rock / etc. organists tend to play keyboards in general, and at most a very few will be, strictly, just organists. So I'll reserve judgment on that part for now, and see how it plays out. And for everything else, I think we're basically in agreement at this point. Cheers, Xtifr tälk 20:46, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Good - I think we are getting somewhere! Thanks. I think I get it now too, very good instructions Xtifr. Just one clarification for me please, you say that if we don't know where to put the non-classical organists (ie those in Category:Pop organists you suggest we put/leave them in organist-by-nationality (for example Category:German organists) and then leave others to deal with finding Category:German rock organists type cats - is this right? Would it be easier for WP Musicians if all the Category:Pop organists and Category:Hammond organ players were all moved to Category:Keyboardists (and Keyboardists-by-nationality) for effective sorting? –MDCollins (talk) 22:32, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The answer to your first question is yes, that's exactly right. Although if you happen to notice that someone is really a keyboardist, and not just an organist, you can put the article in, e.g., Category:German keyboardists instead. As for Cat:Hammond organ players, I have listified the category at User:Xtifr/List of Hammond organ players. If the category is deleted, I can simply go through the list and put the articles in appropriate categories by hand. And of course, if we want to keep the list, I can move it out of userspace. So I now recommend changing your position at CfD to delete or listify and delete (your choice). And as for Cat:Pop organists, I'll simply go through that now and see if I can empty it. If so, we can just delete it; otherwise, we'll discuss it further. Xtifr tälk 05:09, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Recategorizing Category:Classical organists to Category:Fooian classical organists

I've made a start on Category:Classical organists, with the help of trusty AWB, and when that's done, I'll turn to Category:Cathedral organists and put names from there into Category:Fooian classical organists as well. Apart from that, I plan on leaving Category:Cathedral organists untouched - i.e. not deleting it from any articles, but not subcategorizing it by nationality either, since otherwise it is too much of a duplicate of Category:Classical organists. Any other views? Bencherlite 00:46, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Yep that's exactly what I was planning to do. The three categories Category:Cathedral organists, Category:Organ scholars and Category:Female organists don't need touching or recategorizing. I'll give some a go as well. Bear in mind the French still need checking, unless you've already done so! –MDCollins (talk) 08:14, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Nearly done. I've also delisted the pop/hammond organists from our article list and remove the project banner from the talk pages as well. –MDCollins (talk) 11:22, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the reminder about the French. Many, but not all, will be covered as we go through Classical organists, turning "French organists" and "Classical organists" to "French classical organists". We can then tidy up the rest when we weed out the "Fooian organists" pages one by one. Can't use AWB at work, unfortunately, otherwise I'd carry on now... Bencherlite 14:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Progress report - Category:French organists now empty, all moved to Category:French classical organists. Category:Classical organists is now also empty of articles, and just has its subcats. Bencherlite 23:20, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Progress report (2) - all members of Category:Cathedral organists are also in the appropriate Category:Fooian classical organists. That covers most of the work, I think - now all we need to do is check the members of Category:American organists, Category:English organists etc, pick up the ones we've missed and boot into touch (or into Category:Fooian genretype keyboardists, whichever is easiest) the ones we don't want! Bencherlite 00:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
All booted to keyboardists by nationality for now. Seems a good place to put the 'wrong' ones so somebody else spots it, and reclassifies. I was wondering what to do with the theatre organists, Reg Dixon and the like, because although 'classical' they are more light/popular, so I put them in the generic keyboardists for now until somebody else works out where to put them. The baseball organists were the same, in fact all of the hammond/wurlitzer types - guess its not really our concern! Is that categorization and linking and tagging complete then? A milestone reached if there ever was one. Can we do some real articles now?? –MDCollins (talk) 09:24, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
Hooray, job done and page updated to reflect the fact. Good work, MDC. What, real articles? Can't we just play with categories for ever?! Bencherlite 09:43, 27 April 2007 (UTC)