ChoralWiki talk:Requested articles: Difference between revisions

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{{Reply|by=[[User:Kkroon|Kkroon]] 12:12, 16 August 2008 (PDT)|text=
{{Reply|by=[[User:Kkroon|Kurtis]] 12:12, 16 August 2008 (PDT)|text=
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<p>[quoting [[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]]]:</p>
<p>[quoting [[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]]]:</p>
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{{Reply|by=[[User:Kkroon|Kkroon]] 08:51, 31 August 2008 (PDT)|text=
{{Reply|by=[[User:Kkroon|Kurtis]] 08:51, 31 August 2008 (PDT)|text=
I've moved everything I could find. While I was at it, I also added Request: to items in the new "Already transferred" section, as a crude way to determine if the request exists in the new system.
I've moved everything I could find. While I was at it, I also added Request: to items in the new "Already transferred" section, as a crude way to determine if the request exists in the new system.


Links that are blue in this section can now be deleted "at-will": items that are still red should be double-checked against the new system, then deleted.
Links that are blue in this section can now be deleted "at-will": items that are still red should be double-checked against the new system, then deleted.
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{{Reply|level=1|by=[[User:Kkroon|Kurtis]] 06:53, 11 October 2008 (PDT)|text=
I've changed my mind about deleting everything "at-will". Please see my thoughts in the next section.
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Revision as of 13:56, 11 October 2008

List still in use?

Could someone tell me if this list is still in use? It seems the great majority of requests are very old. There are many "requested" scores that are already available on CPDL, and there are many "completed" requests whose links seem to be broken. And what's the meaning of "pending" status? wouldn't it be better if the completed requests were removed or moved to other page in order to free space for new additions here? Otherwise this page will become too long and of difficult maintenance (it is already). CarlosTalk 16:11, 27 April 2008 (PDT)

This list is still in use, but hard to maintain. Ideally when a new work is added this list should be checked. To make this list easier to check if we put a link with the composer's page name with a link "X" after the work's name then it becomes one click away to check on whether the work is now "done". A good number of these requested works are now completed. ie "An Evening Hymn (Henry Purcell)" has been submitted. Otherwise keeping this list up-to-date becomes verry difficult and time consuming. (Ideally this operation would be automated... ) Johnhenryfowler 01:29, 8 July 2008 (PDT)
Hi John, thanks for your explanation. Looking at the requests, I see that most of them are 4+ years old. Do you believe that the people who made these requests still check this page after so long? They have most probably forgotten about it, and if ever come back to CPDL, they will use the Search tool to find the score they had in mind. If their request is now available, they will find it with the Search alone, without the need of this page. So, I believe we could completely remove from this list the entries with status "complete", leaving only those "requested" or with copyright issues. Can you tell me what's the difference between "requested" and "pending"? Thanks --CarlosTalk 18:07, 8 July 2008 (PDT)
Hi Carlos, Old as the entries are it is the only way a CPDL user can request a score. When I am contemplating what score I might do, I check the requested list, (usually for a Parry or Purcell work) and then do that work. When it is being worked I change "requested" to "pending" and put my name on the request page to show who it is that is working on it. In theory this is so some other well-meaning CPDL contributer does not start to work on the same score. (I was working on Brahms's "New Lieberlieder Waltzes" for over a year and a half !) When I'm done I move it to "Completed" where it stays as an indication of how well CPDL is doing on the requested stuff. Johnhenryfowler 01:41, 9 July 2008 (PDT)
Thanks, John, now I can see the logic behind what you're doing. In this case, what I propose is to break this page in 4-5 smaller ones based on an alphabetical sequence (say A-F, G-L etc.) so that when a request changes status it continues on the same page. If one of these pages ever grow too big, we can just divide it in two again (like, A-C & D-F), and so on. This page would function as a menu to reach the other smaller pages. What do you think? If everyone agrees on this, I can do the move. --Carlos huh? 10:23, 9 July 2008 (PDT)
Hi Carlos, Your proposal sounds logical to me. Johnhenryfowler 12:55, 9 July 2008 (PDT)
Permit me to wade in here. If I recall correctly from discussions a long way back on the old forums, we created categories Requests, Requested, Pending, Completed, and (more recently) Requests by composer surname. These were intended to supplant/replace the Sheet Music - Requests section of the present page.
The principal reasons for making such a change were precisely those issues raised by Carlos about the list being difficult to maintain, its unwieldy length, the matter of broken links, etc. It would seem that the time is ripe for the listing method to be deprecated in favor of the category method of tracking requests.
Unfortunately, there has been little help offered and suggestions made to users about how to go about requesting a score. Furthermore, the Template:Request is a bit awkward for new users to assimilate ... most of the request made through this mechanism were made from the old request database by Raf in 2006, and most of the rest seem to have been added by various admins acting on behalf of requests from individuals. There is a Sheet music requests and questions page on the Bulletin board where requests can be made - and then entered by someone (probably an admin) through the Request template and/or on the present page. But even this means most new requests would have to be "processed" by someone other than the person making the request.
The Request template is quite old (it was initially called an "attempt", long before people were aware of the ability to used named parameters), and has not been significantly modified since its inception. I'll take a longer look at the template and see if it can be extended (backwardsly compatible) or if a new template should be made for future requests - in either case in a way that is more user-friendly.
-- Chucktalk Giffen 21:51, 9 July 2008 (PDT)
Better yet, Chuck! Perhaps, then, entries here that have a Requests: page counterpart could be safely removed from this list, helping reduce its size. --Carlos huh? 02:30, 10 July 2008 (PDT)
Okay, I've implemented a score request mechanism on ChoralWiki:Request a Score. It uses an "inputbox" (type=create) to send the user to a page with a form (see MediaWiki:ScoreRequest and ChoralWiki:ScoreRequest). This needs some tweaking, but it's a start in the right direction. -- Chucktalk Giffen 08:13, 10 July 2008 (PDT)
Hey Chuck, you did a great work with this new form! I spent a good deal of time trying to understand how it worked :) You have probably seen that I tried to make the form bring some default values, but it didn't work as I expected. If only we could use javascript, things would be so much easier! Thanks --Carlos huh? 00:50, 11 July 2008 (PDT)
That looks great, Chuck. Thanks for all your hard work on this. I guess the next step is to update the help pages with details of the new score request system. I'd be happy to do that if you're busy coding something else! --Bobnotts talk 21:52, 11 July 2008 (PDT)

Consolidating open requests

  • Posted by: Vaarky 09:42, 11 August 2008 (PDT)
 Help 

As part of deprecating the score requests aspect of this page, it would be good to have volunteers systematically go through each remaining Requested entry on this page and either:
1. move the entry to the Completed section if appropriate; or
2. create a corresponding request at if one does not already exist, then comment out the request entry on this page for these requests (these can eventually be deleted if desired). In the meanswhile, I've started annotating the entry with XFR Complete.

This is a volunteer project that can be broken into components easily and added to the volunteers page. Even people who are not comfortable with wiki editing can still check all open Requests related to a paricular composer or set of composers--I can serve as e-mail recipient for their results to conssolidate and do the updates, and work on finding volunteers to do the look-ups.

Is there an easy way to take a list of requests we need to transfer, the proper Title (Composer) format, and feed them into the request intake form?

At some point, when all that's left is Completed pieces, it's probably worth transitioning those over to the method so the record of requests Completed gets consolidated too, but that's lower priority.

It's still worth keeping this page for article requests about general topics, and maybe having a score request here for things that aren't easily captured via the approach, such as "any barbershop music."

Reply by: Kurtis 12:12, 16 August 2008 (PDT)

 Help 

[quoting Vaarky]:

2. create a corresponding request at if one does not already exist, then comment out the request entry on this page for these requests (these can eventually be deleted if desired). In the meanswhile, I've started annotating the entry with XFR Complete.

I think it would be worthwhile to move these transfered items from the "Requested" section into their own new section ("Transferred to new request system") before commenting out and/or deleting them.

And I'll volunteer to do this so other volunteers can continue to work in just the "Requested" section, instead of having to edit the whole page each time.

What do all y'all (since "y'all" is singular) think?

Reply by: Vaarky 13:40, 17 August 2008 (PDT)

 Help 

Sound great--thanks for your efforts on this!

Reply by:Carlos mail_icon.gif 15:02, 17 August 2008 (PDT)

 Help 

Yes, I like the idea too. Good work!

Reply by: Kurtis 08:51, 31 August 2008 (PDT)

 Help 

I've moved everything I could find. While I was at it, I also added Request: to items in the new "Already transferred" section, as a crude way to determine if the request exists in the new system.

Links that are blue in this section can now be deleted "at-will": items that are still red should be double-checked against the new system, then deleted.

Reply by: Kurtis 06:53, 11 October 2008 (PDT)

 Help 

I've changed my mind about deleting everything "at-will". Please see my thoughts in the next section.

next steps for this document

  • Posted by: Vaarky 13:44, 6 September 2008 (PDT)
 Help 

KKroon did a fabulous job of putting these in request format so a glance can give a good indication of what does not have an existing page. I went through the red entries that did not have a matching page and found new-style request pages for most of these remaining ones, and moved the few that didn't have a new-style request to the section for those lacking one.

I think a good next step is to start creating new-style requests for the 40 or so that don't already have one, but first it's worth checking on the resolution to the question at Request_talk:Christe_Redemptor_(Adrian_Willaert) about why some requests created using the Request form don't categorize properly in the alphabetical lists.

Reply by: Chucktalk Giffen 15:04, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

 Help 

The question about the Willaert request mentioned above was resolved (it was a "curly braces" error).

Because of problems with the exceedingly long filesize (which was in excess of 110 Kbytes), I have created a subpage ChoralWiki:Requested articles/Transferred of the current page and moved the content of the section "Status: Transferred to new request system" to this subpage, resulting in two pages that are rougly the same size (but still in excess of 50 Kbytes. But, before doinbg this, I changed a few redlinks to bluelinks (the red having resulted from redirects being deleted as "superfluous" after moves to correct the titles).

Kkroon has suggested in a post in the previous section on this talk page that bluelink requests in the list of requests transferred to the new system could be deleted "at-will". I'm inclined to agree with this view, which would seem to imply that the subpage I created might itself be superfluous (since the links on the Transferred subpage are all now blue). However, I think we need a little bit of collective wisdom on this matter ... "advice and consent" - or dissent? ... so I did not simply delete all those bluelinks out of hand.

I wonder if perhaps it would be a good idea to make a "Completed" subpage and move the contents of the "Status: Completed" section there, thus further reducing the size of the current page further (to well under the recommended 32 Kbytes maximum). If anything, the completed requests information is also essentially archival. Maybe (with all completed requests being transferred to the new system) this "Completed" subpage (or contents of the "Status: Completed" section) could be safely deleted too?

In other words, have we reached the time where "obsolete" material (that has been transferred to the new system) can be removed from this page?

I'm amazed at the amount of work that several of you have already done to rectify the requests situation, and I commend all of you for your steadfast efforts.

I did some work these days about that, only on the new request system since it exists: to see if 'requested' were in fact completed, and now on 'completed' where 'Click Here' didn't lead to the scorepage. I thought that the whole obsolete page should be deleted, except for the entries that were not transferred. But I'm yet unable to know why they were not transferred. If a request has a title and a date, it's a request for the new system, no ? If a 'completed' can't be found on CPDL, it can be transferred to the neither-pending-nor-completed (new system) requests. If a pending one is pending since years, it goes directly to neither-pending-nor-completed (new system) requests. It's better to work on only one list than two. Just a suggestion : I think the list of requests by composer should be divided in the same four parts as the list by title (for the same good reasons). - Claude 15:47, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Reply by: Kkroon 06:51, 11 October 2008 (PDT)

 Help 

Quoting Chuck: Kkroon has suggested in a post in the previous section on this talk page that bluelink requests in the list of requests transferred to the new system could be deleted "at-will". I'm inclined to agree with this view, which would seem to imply that the subpage I created might itself be superfluous (since the links on the Transferred subpage are all now blue). However, I think we need a little bit of collective wisdom on this matter ... "advice and consent" - or dissent? ... so I did not simply delete all those bluelinks out of hand. End quote

Kurtis replies: I think that it's important to retain a history of Requested items -- but only usage statistics can prove that need. Do we (meaning: you Admin-type folks) know how many people (excluding us) have come to this article?

Quoting Chuck:I wonder if perhaps it would be a good idea to make a "Completed" subpage and move the contents of the "Status: Completed" section there, thus further reducing the size of the current page further (to well under the recommended 32 Kbytes maximum).

Kurtis replies: Done -- but please feel free to clobber it if the consensus rules it superfluous. (Creating the new page and transferring everything over only took about 5 minutes, so my feeling won't be hurt if it goes away.)