Contents 1 FLetter at ligatures 2 Chris proudly presents: 3 de-cluttering page rank info templates 4 Customizing Achievements 5 Images 6 AllMusic: new link format 7 Gracenote's horrible database - a proposal 8 Nostalgic intro, rhetotical experiment and positive suggestion 9 New project 10 Gracenote guidance 11 New Admins.. via you guys ;) 12 Trusting Users 13 Main Page 14 Christien LeBlanc 15 Yes:Roundabout 16 Censorship 17 DMCA Notice Received 18 Page ranking 19 Calling all Admins 20 Album of the Week 21 A pair of DMCAs 22 Echo Sierra 23 Gold albums 24 Where do our artists go 25 Problem pages 26 LyricFind 27 {{AlbumCollaboration}} 28 LyricWiki styling changes 29 Negativity

Archive Index 2009 October - 2010 April 2009 March - August 2009 January - February 2008 November - December 2008 August - October

FLetter at ligatures

What does Rikkert Zuiderveld:IJskristal get for fLetter? Symbol? I? IJ? - Chris 10:37, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

According to Wikipedia use of the ligature IJ instead of separate letters IJ is discouraged: "…even with Unicode available, it is recommended to encode ij as two separate letters." (The Dutch wp article agrees with this.) In that case the page should be moved to Rikkert Zuiderveld:IJskristal with I as fLetter (and an API-friendly redirect at Ijskristal). Otherwise, IJ would be correct as fLetter. What do the others think? — 6×9 (Talk) 12:42, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

Chris proudly presents:

The LW:PN template!

• this is some test => This Is Some Test
• tHIS iS sOME tEST => THIS IS SOME TEST
• THIS IS SOME TEST => THIS IS SOME TEST
• tHiS iS sOmE tEsT => THiS IS SOmE TEsT
• ThIs Is SoMe TeSt => ThIs Is SoMe TeSt
• ThiS is SomE tesT => ThiS Is SomE TesT

We could insert it into the link to the artist or the album in the {{Song}} template.

{{Song|This Is an Album for the Future (2008)|Mr brown|star=Green}}

could produce perfectly LW:PN conform artist- and albumlinks AND pay attention to the captitalisation of artists! That again means, that we can as well do away with sf.album parameter because the "better" capitalisation there isn't necessary, it can be done in {{Song}}. - Chris 21:25, July 28, 2010 (UTC)

P.S.: This could be realised thanks to the Loops extension. Well Sean, you really should've enabled it May 09^^

I like it! I've thought about something like that too a while ago, but without loops it would have been Bracket Hell. Unfortunately sf.album is still necessary – for those few albums with forbidden characters (#, <, [ etc.). — 6×9 (Talk) 14:48, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 A6 A7 A8 A9 A10 A11 A12 A13 A14 A15 A16 A17 A18 A19 A20 A21 A22 A23 A24 A25 A26 A27 A28 A29 A30 A31 A32 A33 A34 A35 A36 A37 A38 A39 A40 A41 A42 A43 A44 A45 A46 A47 A48 A49 A50 A51 A52 A53 A54 A55 A56 A57 A58 A59 A60 A61 A62 A63 A64 A65 A66 A67 A68 A69 A70 A71 A72 A73 A74 A75 A76 A77 A78 A79 A80 A81 A82 A83

Max. pagename length is 255 bytes, so I guess 83 words should be enough :-) — 6×9 (Talk) 14:48, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

Maybe a check for correct album link format (basically see if it ends with " (????)") might be a good idea too… (Both of these wouldn't be done in {{Song}} but in {{AlbumtypeSwitcher}}, keeping the vast majority of song pages out of the job queue.) — 6×9 (Talk) 14:48, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

83 words is enough, I think so, yeah :D Why are "forbidden" characters a reason for sf.album? We'll change a huge number of pages anyway, and the job queue is nearly at zero again (see webnumbr). We could finally edit {{Song}} and insert the parameter where it belongs (namely with "alias"). With Loops Extension we can "kill" the fa-number limitation and while we're editing the template, we add "albumname[#]" to it. - Chris 20:14, July 29, 2010 (UTC)

If an album were titled "a > b" the LWPN-conformant pagename would be "A Greater Than B"; somehow I don't think the search links in the footer would give many meaningful results for that term… We'll need to keep the alias parameter for the same reason (and for artists who recorded under various names so we won't have to create separate pages for each variation).

(Yet) another thing I'd like to include is a characters-that-mangle-display-text-replacer template so we don't have to use these annoying workarounds like with *NSYNC. — 6×9 (Talk) 18:46, July 31, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I do not speak of removing the possibility to define the displaytext for artists and albums. I just think that the displaytext-parameter for the album should rather be in {{Song}} than in {{SongFooter}} (so the link will be well formed in {{Song}}, too).

I suggest the following changes:

1. Include the LW:PN template to be applied on every artist and album link in {{Song}} (maybe fa, too? We'd need a parameter for fa displaytexts, but with Loops that code wouldn't be too messy...)
2. Insert a possibility to define the displaytext for albums in {{Song}} (which however will not be necessary for simple lowercase <-> LW:PN uppercase issues): Artist: [[{{LWPN|{{{2}}}}}|{{{alias|{{{2}}}}}}]] / Albums: [[{{LWPN|{{{1|}}}}}|{{{albumname|{{{1|}}}}}}]]
3. Use Loops to allow unlimited number of fa
4. Remove album parameter from {{SongFooter}}, because "s.albumname" does that job now.

Chris 20:33, July 31, 2010 (UTC)

de-cluttering page rank info templates

The Song/Album/Artist Info templates all contain several parameters that could be safely removed (see list below), since we have categories for quickly finding and fixing pages missing them. Is there a reason why we should keep them?

{{Artist Info}}

fLetter

(possibly artist – it's "not applicable" for 99% anyway)

{{Album Info}}

fLetter

artist

album

(some album talk pages also still list the obsolete released parameter)

{{Song Info}}

fLetter

artist

song

We could also add allmusic parameters to all three (and maybe musicbrainz to Song Info). — 6×9 (Talk) 18:57, July 31, 2010 (UTC)

Customizing Achievements

I recently turned on Achievements which are pretty fun :) ... one of the cool features is that we can change all of the icons and the names of the achievements. It's a bit challenging to find pictures which go well inside of the frames (it automatically frames the picture based on what 'level' the badge is). I guess the trick is to find one that's mostly round w/the good stuff right in the center.

Anywho... the page to customize achievements is only accessible to admins. It can be found here: Special:AchievementsCustomize. Any ideas for custom names? Maybe name the badges after songs or something?

I'll try to get my creative juices flowing too and try to think of things ;)
-Sean Colombo 22:08, August 7, 2010 (UTC)

Yay, I've earned 1 badge already! :-) With the monaco skin, they take up a lot of space in the right column (screenshot after resizing browser to 1024px width). With monobook they show at the bottom (which I think is better), but somehow garbled. Other than that, I like it! — 6×9 (Talk) 07:55, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Images

Is it just me & my connection, or does it take painfully let's-take-a-nap-and-then-brew-a-pot-of-coffee-and-then-see-if-it's-finished-yet long for image thumbnails to appear? Mostly affects new images, but happens for a few older ones as well. No problems with full-size versions though. — 6×9 (Talk) 11:22, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Thumbnailing is messed up wikia-wide. It's apparently known about and the ops guys are working on it. Sorry :/

-Sean Colombo 20:10, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

I shouldn't say that ;), but the worm of conscience is forcing me to make one remark here: the mess have happened exactly after Lwt's massive (over 1600) reuploading of most-oversized images, reduced to 500*500 px² (see here). --Senvaikis ^(talk) 21:08, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

Given the fact that we have got about 38,000 album covers, 1,600 covers aren't so much (about 4%)... - Chris 23:19, August 8, 2010 (UTC)

We recently re-wrote the thumbnailing system because it had hit a wall... the re-write wasn't much better unfortunately (it was just a temporary solution... they're working on a permanent fix now). It's surprisingly hard to thumbnail and serve images for a site with almost a billion page views per month ;) mad props to the ops guys if they can solve this quickly.

-Sean Colombo 05:23, August 9, 2010 (UTC)

AllMusic: new link format

Hi, looks like AMG has adapted the allmusic url design to the akuma page. The parameter is usually preceded with the title, but this is fortunately unnecessary. Parameter is the same as with Akuma, f. e.

• http://www.allmusic.com/artist/p347307 for Eminem
• http://www.allmusic.com/album/r1848320 for Eminem:8 Mile (2002)
• http://www.allmusic.com/song/t5876207 for Eminem:Lose Yourself

It can be gathered by following the current allmusic links (which are still working and redirect to the new format).

As we're currently editing all the templates anyway, shall we merge sf.akuma and sf.allmusic into sf.amgid (and for Artist and Album, too) and parse |amgid = p347307 to Akuma and AllMusic links? - Chris 13:44, October 14, 2010 (UTC)

I think we should remove the Akuma parameter completely and just use the existing "allmusic" variable for Akuma links. Actually, our deal with Akuma has lapsed, so we can remove those links unless we think they're helpful for their own sake to have them around.

-Sean Colombo 16:48, October 14, 2010 (UTC)

Gracenote's horrible database - a proposal

Hello,

every time Gracenote decides or has to block a page, they also put similar pagetitles on their block-/blacklist. This is sensible and reasonable, as long as the pagetitles are common typos, similar titles, aka-names for the songs, etc.

However, in recent history cases of absolutely senseless page titles have reached such a high level that it really hurts my forehead because I faceplam so often about the incredible page names. A few examples I recently saw, only to mention a few:

• Led Zeppelin:Led Zeppelin - Nobody's Fault But Mine for Led Zeppelin:Nobody's Fault But Mine
• Led Zeppelin-Cover:No Quarter for Led Zeppelin:No Quarter
• Led Zeppelin:Led Zeppelin - 09 - Your Time Is Gonna Come for Led Zeppelin:Your Time Is Gonna Come
• Led Zeppelin:11, Led Zeppelin:Track 02 and Led Zeppelin:Track 04 for ???

or from other artists

• Aerosmith:Sweet Emotion )Live) and Aerosmith:Sweet Emptin for Aerosmith:Sweet Emotion
• Wonder, Stevie for Stevie Wonder songs

This list could be continued into the thousands, just look into the recent contributions of GNB.

I'm really tired of redirecting dozens of pages to the one page that is in fact really meant to be taken down. It isn't only a lot of unnecessary work, it also fills up our recent edits, the revisions-table, and the whole database, but it does also look pretty ugly if A) Janitor adds the pages to the Other songs section or B) a user uses our "Browse all pages by X" link. Now here's my idea:

Sean proposed a new system of case insensitivity. The planned implementation includes the ability of the extension to prevent a user from creating a page (that only differs by the capitalization). Now couldn't exactly the same prevention mechanism be used to check a table of protected titles, = a list of all page titles that Gracenote added on the blocklist that were not created so far? This way, we'd not have the page in our visible database, but still prevent a creation. Adding and deleting from a blocklist was also easier then by simple SQL request for GNBot:

Insertion: INSERT $pagetitle INTO gn_blockedpages
Deletion: DELETE FROM gn_blockedpages WHERE gn_title=$pagetitle

Keeps us from a lot of useless redirects or empty-except-for-block-notice pages, ugly page names, block/unblock revisions, edits - and last but not least it saves me and all other admins a lot of work. So please, Sean, could we implement it that way? Pages that have been created on takedown-day are handled as usual; pages that have not been created are fed into the database and cannot be created - just as required. The block-extension/parser-hook could also throw a note why the creation is prevented, like the current template does.

I'd appreciate that solution very much.

- Chris 17:55, March 17, 2011 (UTC)

Actually, something like this should be possible already without any changes to the db schema or the mw software. You can protect a pagename just like an existing page – see Special:ProtectedTitles. — 6×9 (Talk) 18:05, March 17, 2011 (UTC)

True, but that'd not allow us to throw a specified message about the block reason or a separate listing specialpage, which might be desirable? - Chris 18:18, March 17, 2011 (UTC)

Nostalgic intro, rhetotical experiment and positive suggestion

Hi, admins.

Let's make a little experiment: check this page two days after date to count, how many admins have responded to this message. Do you remember days, then this number was over ten? I do. Now it's great to receive responses from two admins; three would be a real marvel (meaning The BM joined too).

What am I talking about? We need a fresh blood - a new, really active admin. I thought about Trainman, and wanted to ask your opinion. All of you, active admins :)

tia,--Senvaikis ^(talk) 21:02, April 19, 2011 (UTC)

I think Trainman would be great :) -Sean Colombo 02:29, April 20, 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, on all counts. So that's 75% in favour for Trainman already… — 6×9 (Talk) 04:33, April 20, 2011 (UTC)

LyricWiki is admin-draining: LyricWiki:Administrators. I update that list from time to time after recent edits, but I think now that I answered, that's actually it. Senv, 6, Sean and I - the four admins... Pro new admins, Chris 13:18, April 20, 2011 (UTC)

So, when Chris in a very sophisticated way also subscribed (imo) to my suggestion, and we have all 100% (from those accessible), may I ask Sean (or any other) to make an official offer to a new pretender? I'd gladly made that myself, but you know my English - it's definitelly too bad for such official celebratory speaches ;). Thanks, --Senvaikis ^(talk) 14:01, April 20, 2011 (UTC)

100% agreed with your opinion: "Pro new admins" I need a quotation template - will create one in a minute.

"I'd gladly made that myself, but you know my English - it's definitelly too bad for such official celebratory speaches ;)" - Nonsense . You used "sophisticated", is that what you call "bad English"? I think not, so from my POV you might as well be bold go ahead - Chris 15:58, April 20, 2011 (UTC)

+1 ... I'm cool w/Senv offering :) -Sean Colombo 00:10, April 21, 2011 (UTC)

@Sean: I asked Trainman what would be his reaction to such offer and seems he's ready to accept it. So, again - BM, please, be so kind to finalise this job, as the only active bureaucrat :). Tia.

@Chris:If you really want to get WP-Song check lists in nearest future, you'd be interested to bump BM, releasing me such way from 2 hours of creative torments, while writing an offer :). These 2 hours would be enough to rewrite Lwt, adapting it to your task ;). --Senvaikis ^(talk) 05:41, April 21, 2011 (UTC)

Quote by Senv: "If you really want to get WP-Song check lists in nearest future, you'd be interested to bump BM" No need to hurry - Chris 15:16, April 21, 2011 (UTC)

Ugh, sorry I've missed that this convo has been changing. I'm apparently not getting all of my watchlist emails :(

Anywho... have made the direct offer to Trainman and will follow up w/the changing of user-groups if he accepts.

-Sean Colombo 22:48, April 24, 2011 (UTC)

Trainman is an admin now! :D -Sean Colombo 23:12, April 24, 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, everyone -- as I've said to both Senvaikis and Sean, I can't promise that I'll have a lot of time to work on admin tasks (since I haven't even had as much time for editing as I'd like recently), but I'll definitely try to help out to the best of my ability. Even if I'm busy, though, I should always be reachable via my talk page here, or email, or Twitter. Trainman 02:54, April 25, 2011 (UTC)

New project

Based on the Stunningly Stellar Star-o-Meter I made up some coloured page ranking statistics. We definitely have too many green pages, which could be bronze. I'll comb through the green categories and upgrade the pages to bronze where possible. This will do for the rest of my life, I think . - Chris 02:07, April 22, 2011 (UTC)

Showoff! :-) Do you plan to do this automatedly? (Probably, since it's for the rest of one life only…) Because there are probably many pages that are "formally" correct, but have the wrong lyrics. Personally I don't think these should be ranked Bronze (though I've had an argument with Red and Humbug, IIRC, who disagreed). — 6×9 (Talk) 06:19, April 22, 2011 (UTC)

Quote by 6 times 9: "Do you plan to do this automatedly?" - I'm thinking about a cyborg tool, yes. It turns out like I'll need .NET for my apprenticeship, so I think trying to build anything like LWT is a good training in that language. And now for something completely different...

If you take a close look, the question of "wrong lyrics" does not belong into the field of star colour. The star colour refers (as you said) to the formal correctness of a page. Lyrical correctness is covered by the ranking aspect of certification, and does not become a factor for the star colour unless you want to upgrade a song to Gold. Maybe that's not sensible, but that's the way it is. There is no step inbetween "unverified" and "certified", which maybe was the one we'd need for Bronze. But there isn't anything like that, hence you have to differentiate between "star colour" and "certification" both being a seperate part of "page ranking" until it comes to the golden star.

You might want to debate on what "obvious problems" in "the lyrics show no obvious problems" refers to. I'm afraid that is the point that wasn't discussed enough when the page ranking was introduced.

So much for my essay, thanks - Chris 16:50, April 22, 2011 (UTC)

Now I'm not sure whether I wasn't clear or whether I'm misinterpreting you… If it's the former, sorry for making you write that essay! With "wrong lyrics" I didn't mean a couple wrong words or even lines, I meant a song page having the lyrics for a completely different song (as was the case with nearly every song from the first Supertramp album). That's a wholly different type of "unverified"! I don't think such a page should be ranked Bronze, and in some respects this is even more severe a problem than a missing template. — 6×9 (Talk) 18:40, April 22, 2011 (UTC)

I also meant that, "wrong" lyrics don't belong to that page (opposed to "inaccurate" lyrics). Yet I see lyrics completely unrelated to the star colour until Gold. As I said, that might be a mistake, but in fact it is set up like this, that star colour is for formatting and not some "overall" rank, which is uncommon but my understanding of the system that's described here.

Edit: Regarding unverified vs. certified:

• unverified = could be wrong, could be inaccurate, could be correct.
• certified = not wrong, not inaccurate, is correct.

Maybe there should have been a state for "not wrong, could be inaccurate, could be correct" as criterion for Bronze or at least Silver... - Chris 19:30, April 22, 2011 (UTC) P.S.: We're currently just 4 or 5 admins, maybe we should find a strict convention now rather than when we have 10 or 12...

Wanted to let you know

Quote by Lyricserver: "I may certify a song, add the ((WP-Song)) link to it, add the ((Youtube embed)) link, put the ((cover/cover2)) & all the other song badges, add the Credits section and complete the ((Star Box)) list so it's all done, the most ranking the song can have is a Bronze. All it would need is a "watcher" to make it a Gold. Bronze to Gold for just one criteria is a bit much, in my opinion, but that's what I've been doing so far. It's kind of disappointing to see all that hard work amount to a little reward.

I know you and the other admins have been talking about the page rankings. I personally like the inclusion of the unverified vs. certified ranking, but I don't know much about the implementation of it. And I just wanted you (all admins) about how I feel about the "watching" situation. I also know I'm just one person, but sometimes that's just enough. :)

Once again, thank you Chris for all the things you've accomplished as well as Senvaikis, 6x9 & all the other admins. All your hard work on this site shows.
/soapbox :)" ↑

Gracenote guidance

Over on the Job Exchange, Eeepy has submitted a request to have a number of Gracenote-takedown-obliterated pages for "Shake, Rattle and Roll" redirected to Bill Haley:Shake, Rattle And Roll -- which happens to have not been affected by a takedown.

I'm all in favor of sticking it to The Man, but redirecting all those pages seems like it's deliberately baiting Gracenote -- not to mention the various music publishers and their friendly lawyers -- and seems like it might be a fairly short step from there to creating pages with deliberately misspelled/mis-punctuated titles in order to get around takedown notices.

(If you're wondering, in this particular case, although a number of recordings of the song have been released credited to "Bill Haley" or "Bill Haley & The Comets," the correct page would be Bill Haley & His Comets:Shake, Rattle And Roll.)

Any thoughts? (Yes, I also see the Job Exchange request from a couple months ago involving "Guns and Roses," which I guess is a related can of worms.) Trainman 21:31, May 5, 2011 (UTC)

My position is: it's not our fault if their databases hold blocks for pages by the wrong artist but not for the correct one. Anyway I do not quite understand their system. So I'd do it. However this is just how I'd do it.

Even on closer look we're not doing something wrong. We only must not display the blocked lyrics and try to prevent to add them. But it's not forbidden to redirect to any similar page or even something completely different. This is what we do. I think, we might as well redirect all blocked songs to some random page N.B.: I like that idea, somehow^^ - Chris 22:06, May 5, 2011 (UTC) And one more reason to implement my idea.

New Admins.. via you guys ;)

Howdy, I was thinking that it'd be good to promote Hard4me, XxTimberlakexx and Eeepy to admins if they'd like.

But I've also noticed on several occasions that there's really no reason that I haven't made a few of you Bureaucrats by now (other than it being really difficult to spell bureaucrat!). Sooo... how about I make LWChris, Senvaikis, and 6 times 9 Bureaucrats? The main difference is that you'd be able to promote new admins.

If you're all game, then you guys could use the three users above as your first promotions if they make sense to you. Chris, Senv, 6... what do you think? :)

Thanks,
-Sean Colombo 19:16, February 2, 2012 (UTC)

As I suggest all this, +1 for all promotions from me. - Chris 19:29, February 2, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not about to complain either :-) Good luck convincing Senv though – remember how much wheedling it took us before he accepted his adminship? ;-) — 6×9 (Talk) 16:55, February 3, 2012 (UTC)

Relax, 6 - no need for wheedlings anymore: you have my +1. Speaking about a fresh blood for LW adminship, I'd recommend to keep an eye on User:Salandas also...--Senvaikis ^(talk) 10:08, February 4, 2012 (UTC)

Awesome! :) have made all three of you Bureaucrats & you can start admin target-practice on Special:UserRights with the other three ;). Thanks for everything! :)

-Sean Colombo 17:41, February 4, 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I just promoted xxTimberlakexx and hard4me. 6, Senv, if you want, it's your turn now to upgrade Eeepy. Sorry for "taking away" two, but as they are good friends and IMO equally skilled I found it awkward to only promote one of them at a time. Salandas' edits look great, Senv, good "catch". A bit too new to become admin yet, but certainly worth to keep an eye on like you said. Maybe if 6 and Sean agree, you (or someone of us if you don't want to) should tell him that he's observed for possible promotion so he has that aim in sight? - Chris 21:31, February 4, 2012 (UTC)

Ah, and I omitted the question on whether they want to become admin as they requested it earlier. You might want to ask Eeepy in the first instance though. - Chris 21:33, February 4, 2012 (UTC)

No worries. At least in one case the question would have been unnecessary anyway ;-) I've asked Eeepy man, that's weird to type :-)

Agree on Salandas. We might as well promote him to trusted status now. Also, if everyone agrees, I'd suggest the same for Sssh. — 6×9 (Talk) 10:24, February 5, 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I made a list on whom to "trust": Rossetyler, JonnyCraigIsAmazing, Sssh, Jomidi and Hornean. I'm not sure about PatrixIssy, he edits a lot and his edits seem to be policy compliant now. But as he was immune to feedback several times I don't feel like already mark the edits "autopatrolled". How about you?

Agree on all of the above. Had wanted to suggest Rossetyler too, but forgotten about it… old age. Gnu andrew too. — 6×9 (Talk) 18:41, February 5, 2012 (UTC)

Rossetyler, JonnyCraigIsAmazing, Sssh, Jomidi and Hornean have been promoted to trusted. — 6×9 (Talk) 13:20, February 6, 2012 (UTC)

For the logs:

• 6 times 9, LWChris, Senvaikis: +bureaucrat
• Eeepy, Hard4me, XxTimberlakexx: +admin
• Hornean, Jomidi, JonnyCraigIsAmazing, Rossetyler, Sssh, Gnu andrew: +trusted
• Salandas: watch.

What about Gnu andrew? - Chris 01:32, February 7, 2012 (UTC)

I was going to wait if there were any objections. I'll take your question as a "no". Trusted. — 6×9 (Talk) 07:06, February 7, 2012 (UTC)

Trusting Users

Upgraded I need a name to Trusted as well. — 6×9 (Talk) 17:42, February 13, 2012 (UTC)

Isn't it a bit too early to upgrade after not even 500 edits? I thought a good point to start thinking about trusting a user is after 2000 edits. Your opinion about when a user is trustworthy? - Chris 18:40, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

I don't think number of edits should be the main criterium – quality of edits is more important. Some users who do boatloads of edits are a bit shoddy occasionally (like redirecting to non-existent pages, posting lyrics in ALL CAPS…). INaN has been editing pretty consistently for 2½ years now.

Normally I wouldn't go ahead and promote someone to Trusted without asking other admins' opinion first, but this case seemed pretty straightforward to me… Looks like I was a bit hasty anyway. — 6×9 (Talk) 19:25, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

6 times 9: "I don't think number of edits should be the main criterium - quality of edits is more important." - agreed, but my question is: how many edits do you need to check until you can safely tell about their quality? In this case, I think 2½ years is enough to be sure, so forget about this one. Furthermore I don't know whether the edit-count dimension I think about - those 2000 edits - is appropiate anyway. That's why I am asking what you think a safe, appropriate editcount to start considerations on trusting someone. - Chris 20:00, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Next to 6 I also put more value upon quality, not quantity (I just hear your laugh now, considering my editcount ;)). That's why it wasn't necessary to wait for thousands edits to recognize potential admin in Trainman, or to "mark" for watching Salandas. Diligent mutt may be worse than brainy slugabed (did I hear a sniggering again?) --Senvaikis ^(talk) 20:21, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

If you'd press me for a number I'd probably suggest something with three digits just so you'd leave me alone :-) but it wouldn't necessarily be meaningful. For example, I'm averse to trusting PatrixIssy with his astronomic editcount, even if his recent edits all seem conistently good, for the reason you mentioned above; on the other hand, if you suggested promoting Salandas to Trusted status right now I wouldn't put up much of a fight, because it's fairly evident already he won't turn into a vandal any time soon. I wonder whether he didn't spend a few days studying our help pages before risking his first edit…

We'll also have to take into account the types of edits. Some user could make thousands of good edits fixing lyrics, then suddenly start on artist or album pages and make a huge mess because he doesn't understand a first thing about templates, our policies etc. (which he didn't need to just for correcting lyrics). — 6×9 (Talk) 21:07, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Again agreed, and again, I don't say that the editcount is an unerring indicator. In mathematical terms, I'm asking for a necessary editcount, not a sufficient one. It's exactly because of what you said: you can only safely rate what you've seen. If you've never seen that user doing album pages, you can only assume he'll not mess album pages up. But: after how many edits can you tell that the present flawlessness isn't pure luck? Maybe I'm just seeing "trusted" the wrong way; to me, being a "trusted user" is almost something like the preliminary state of possible adminship, because it's attesting that this user will very likely do the right thing even in tricky situations. Talking of tricky situations, that is "getting into an edit war" as well as content stuff like "songs by different artists who have the same name". I always thought the editcount is a pretty good indicator to tell which struggles of daily LyricWiki life this user has already been exposed to. Maybe I'm erring? And please don't get me wrong, it's not my intention to make a big deal out of trusting users, I'm just curious on your opinions, trying to level our view on trusted users – either by changing mine or yours. - Chris 21:39, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

Main Page

Hey, last weekend I sat down to tidy up the mainpage code. Just wanted to let you know that the box-style is now back in the Wikia.css and that the translation system of our translated main pages is back. - Chris 22:48, February 14, 2012 (UTC)

What about EditPreview css (still shows all dead-links in blue)?--Senvaikis ^(talk) 05:59, February 15, 2012 (UTC)

I could fix that, but usually I'd say that's a Wikia bug. But I guess it doesn't hurt someone to add that code, too. Done in a second, I don't know how long it'll take until the stylesheet updates apply to the page, though... - Chris 20:14, February 15, 2012 (UTC)

Christien LeBlanc

Hello,

I think most of us admins are involved in that argument with the above mentioned user. However I'd like to ask you to do me a favor and keep things cool, that is no warning or blocking. I'll now try to deal with it and explain everything once again to him. I know he's upset and maybe some of his accusions are extravagate regarding the netiquette, but I'll give it a calm try. - Chris 23:56, April 6, 2012 (UTC)

Fine with me, and you certainly gave it a good shot. I resent the "lame joke" bit though! ;-) I'm actually more amused than annoyed at the whole thing. At this point it seems fairly clear that he doesn't *want* to follow our reasoning. But since his last edit at least follows our rules, it might be best to just let the whole thing go (and occasionally keep an eye on his contributions). — 6×9 (Talk) 06:52, April 7, 2012 (UTC)

Okay, seems like there's nothing left to be done in that case... turns out all was based on some misunderstanding and different views on what the ideal formatting is. Looks like both positions are and remain incompatible and thus I can't do anything. He said he'll leave the project so there are no further actions to be taken. I think we can also accept that he deleted the discussion. I can understand he doesn't want them to remain and I think it's okay... - Chris 15:42, April 9, 2012 (UTC)

I'm glad that my vacation prevented involving me into this discussion - I'm pretty sure things could went much worse then - sooner or later I'd say what I think about this "educated" person ;). Thanks, Chris :). --Senvaikis ^(talk) 19:02, April 9, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought I'd maybe try to smoothen the waves as I'm "Chris aka the calmness itself". I hardly losing my temper (although you better take a step back when I do ). Welcome back! - Chris 20:34, April 9, 2012 (UTC)

Now, when my next vacation didn't save me from contact with this destructive guy, and looking at his friendly pitching with Chris on his talk page, I'm not sure already if XxTimberlakexx was so wrong, blocking his account :)

What I'm pretty sure, is that Chris' public "disciplining", addressed to XxTimberlakexx, was a mistake, interpretted by LeBlanc as some sign that his behaviour may be tolerated. It could be done here, Chris, without making that public. That's why I'm writing this note here, not on your talk page. --Senvaikis ^(talk) 08:35, June 12, 2012 (UTC)

Hi Senv, it might be even better to email me then. Yeah, I agree that it was not the best idea to post it there, but I didn't think of posting it here. Blocking his account was maybe not wrong, but it was done wrongly, with wrong options set and wrong duration and without a proper reasoning. And it was simply too late. I think it's simply not fair that an completely uninvolved admin blocks some user two weeks later only on assumption that user was flaming back then.

But I also realized by now it's quite hard to handle his temper, because it appears he does not accept compromisses regarding who is right and feels personally offended if you criticize his work or postings. The fact that he replies so ultra extended, over-explaining some things, and violating several formatting rules for good readability (all uppercase, & for and, separating sentences by underscores) makes it hard to read through his posts fully concentrated all along. So this time, I'll put a lot effort into solving it one last time. But the next time anything like this happens, I am with you, Senv. I've also tried to make that clear on my page. - Chris 18:28, June 12, 2012 (UTC)

Oh and I have to disagree on destructive. All in all his edits were productive, just that he of all users is involved into an edit war ongoing on The Dreaming is very unfortunate. I hope I could make him clear that we all, even I are annoyed by the way discussions with him usually went. - Chris 18:38, June 12, 2012 (UTC)

I doubt that after his latest diatribe anyone needs further confirmation that any attempt at fruitful discussion with this person is entirely pointless. He's as blind to his own flaws as he's willing to find them in (and point them out to) others.

I suggest we stop wasting our (metaphorical, unless anyone has gills on their fingers) breaths trying to reason with him; instead just keep an eye on his contributions, and at the slightest hint of misbehaviour, flaming, trolling or whatever slap him with a lifetime ban. — 6×9 (Talk) 15:10, June 13, 2012 (UTC)

To be honest, I'm not happy with this suggestion. I don't know if I am naive, but I still feel like this is a big confusion you have once in a lifetime. It's bad luck he misunderstood your comment on "endless repetitions", it's bad luck Salzion is that kind of guy who reverted his actually good edits. Christien seems to see sarcasm everywhere, and kind of easily misunderstands things. Like when I asked him to do me a favour and don't use "&" and "_" when talking to me, he did not realize I was talking about when he's writing with me. He exaggerated and acted as if I had asked the world to always write like I prefer. But that's there point where others turn and sigh, but I am very patient and explain to him I did not mean it that way.

About the versions: I'm a bit confused with all the edits and pages and what track is on EPs stuff and so on. Obviously, The Dreaming is a nasty band for a beginner, where sometimes EP versions differ lyrically, but sometimes they don't, sometimes the lyrics are the same but the track title changes. It's difficult for a new guy to find out where and how to use two pages, redirects, link texts or page annotations. If this confusion is made worse by an edit war, I can understand it gets difficult.

However I would like to try to tidy that page up with together with him, like you did. But for that, I will have some inventory-talking before we change anything, so I can explain where to do what with an example. Learning by editing according to previously made instructions, instead of learing by correcting mistakes. By now, I think most of his edit mistakes have been caused because he didn't know better or because he misinterpreted something. The EP version mess Senv was referring to was caused because I suggested to create different pages for the EP versions. I didn't know there were so many special cases when I suggested it. Additionally, he apparently doesn't know about the version history yet, because he didn't know there was a revert function. So he maybe didn't know some of the changes like the redirecting were made by you and thought it was the edit war, and he didn't see your comments and so on. Let me try it one last time. In case I fail and surrender, you may block him, or I'll do it. - Chris 22:42, June 13, 2012 (UTC)

Just don't know what to say, Chris. Truth to tell, I predicted such a final, though that's not a case when prediction coming to truth brings any satisfaction. I can apologize only that main strain of this trouble was loaded onto your young shoulders. I'm even asking myself if it was a right decision just to stop participating in this sick "discussion" and leave you alone; but each time after rereading all these beauties on your talkpage I realize that my participating could make things even worse. Seems even posting anything new on this page wouldn't be easy for me until its archiving... ;)

Anyway, you did all you could (and even more imo). So, take it easy, Chris - any experience, even such a bitter disappointment is usefull - that's exactly what makes us really adult :)

Once more - my apologies, and thanks for your efforts. - --Senvaikis ^(talk) 11:04, June 15, 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Just now I saw the last CL reply on your talkpage and thought you may want to repost my msg there (decide yourself)

All this reminded me a bit of the JimCubb situation a few years ago… not sure if you were around then, Chris. Anyway, I'm sure a ban is the best solution, since it would have been just a matter of time before he got into another flamewar with some hapless user who made the grave mistake of leaving a message on his talkpage. As with Jim back then, this decision would have been a lot easier if it hadn't been for the many, many useful edits :-| — 6×9 (Talk) 17:29, June 15, 2012 (UTC)

I said I won't reply, and opposed to him I really won't, although I really had some words to say about, for example that I wouldn't consider his opinion. But I'm done with it now and I think I will delete it. I don't want it to be in my archives, this is such a ridiculous discussion it's not worth to keep it in an archive, we've got the page history, it'll do.

To Senvaikis, I have to say I'm really not happy with your "soiled hands" comment, because that clearly gave him a point where he had a justifiable demand for an excusion. But as I already explained to him, I can understand even you lose your patience at some point, when you just try to tell him what's wrong, he interprets it as sarcasm and start on how rude you are.

To 6, I wouldn't have tried if I hadn't been sure that it's okay with me. He is just one of those very few persons on this planet that can make me lose my temper in written form. Usually, I never go mad at somebody when I write. I've tried to give him a chance to show that the progress of LyricWiki is more important to him than winning a pointless discussion. But he slapped away my helping hand, so I in turn pulled it back and let him alone in his rage and indignation.

I guess, what we've all learned from it, should in first place be to try to read our rules in other ways than they are meant when a user claims to pay attention to a rule when he doesn't comply with the intention. Links to rules might help a lot less than to examples. I need some time on my hands to finalize the YouTube tutorial idea.

Chris 20:05, June 15, 2012 (UTC)

I've already deleted it. I would've maybe kept it a bit, but after this I think he has no right to stay any longer on my page, because you can call me a lot of names and I won't get mad or even care about it, but I'm certainly not a fascist bitch. - Chris 20:54, June 15, 2012 (UTC)

Yes:Roundabout

Look man, I don't want to get into an argument. But I'm simply saying that it's silly to remove that portion of the lyrics because 1. They were certified yesterday by Smasher 101, and he added them for a reason, 2. Tons of other pages have those supposed "non-lyrics" and they were fine and never removed, and 3. Several people, admins included, certify songs including "non-lyrics" like so. Also, I checked the song help page and it says nothing about not including non-lexicable words sung in a recording. So, I don't understand why we have to remove them. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 16:52, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

And I think it's silly to add non-lyrics because 1. there's no benefit – people normally read lyrics so they can make out what the words that are sung, "da da da" is hardly ambiguous; and 2. some singers tend to insert lots of grunts, moans and/or drawn-out vowels – you'd have to transcribe those as well, which would make some lyrics near illegible.

That many other song pages have them hardly counts, because many more don't. Similarly, the help page doesn't say anything about including non-words either, so I could say I don't see why we should include them.

Since this argument might come up in the future as well, now might be a good time to get a consensus on this, so next time we can just point to the help page. What do the other admins think? — 6×9 (Talk) 17:37, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

Concerning including something like this in general, I'm more with Nic, pro inclusion. But in this particular case, I'm against full inclusion.

Reasons:

1. Too few variations. You don't need to read it to reproduce in your mind.
2. It's not substantial for the song, and the song is also not famous for this part.
3. It's at the end of the song.

Detailed reasons:

1. I include such parts if they are in the middle of a song and if they are not just "ornamental". Personally, I use these lines to track the position to know when the lyrics start again.
2. I include such parts when they are substantial for the song. Examples: Crazy Frog:Axel F, Scatman John:Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop) or Gigi D'Agostino:Bla Bla Bla; imagine these songs were released without these parts, it'd totally change them. Suzanne Vega:Tom's Diner ( Audio on GoEar) has something extremely similar to Yes:Roundabout, but the fact that this part out of all has been sampled so many times maybe rectifies the inclusion. I'm not too sure, though.
3. When they are just meant to be filling in the end, I'd rather transscribe them as "Da da da ..."

Well, if I was asked to take side for only one general rule that is to apply everywhere, I'd vote pro inclusion. I love it if LyricWiki has details that others are skipping as "trivial" or "too laborious". - Chris 18:22, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Chris. I just think that since we're LyricWiki, we need to provide the most accurate lyrics, so including all the non-lexicable vocals is necessary in my opinion. So should we add them back? XxTimberlakexx (talk) 20:16, October 7, 2012 (UTC)

Let's at least give the other admins some time to chip in before we decide on a guideline…

I noticed that I probably gave the impression that I'm generally against including non-lyrics. I actually (mostly) agree with Chris – if they're in some way integral to the song (e.g. if the song is named after them, or has gained notoriety for them… though it does look rather silly in the latter case) then we might or even should mould? shight? wait, that sounds wrong include them.

I'd prefer to handle this like our guideline about end-of-line punctuation: add it when there's a good reason to, else don't. I'd rather not have lyric pages that look like this. — 6×9 (Talk) 19:36, October 8, 2012 (UTC)

Well, looks like us other admins can go home now, since XxTimberlakexx decided for us. — 6×9 (Talk) 18:18, October 14, 2012 (UTC)

Sad to say, Chris, but seems that the term and the substance of administrating should be reexplained for both your protegees. --Senvaikis ^(talk) 22:14, October 14, 2012 (UTC)

Hm, I don't know, one week seems like a reasonable timespan to wait for answers to me. On the other hand, 6 is right, Nic. Next time, please wait until a public consensus was found, or post anything like "We waited for a week now, if there is no new post until tomorrow, I will change it back." Well, in the mean time, it doesn't really harm anybody if it's still there (while it could - very theoretically - be missing if it's not there ).

So what about you, Senvaikis? Do you have any opinion on the question whether those "non-lyrics" should stay? So far, we have these opinions:

• Nic: Pro inclusion, for LyricWiki should always try to provide the most accurate lyrics possible
• 6 times 9: Contra inclusion, except for cases where the song is famous for those parts or the non-lyrics are integrated into the song.
• Chris: Pro inclusion, unless it's just the background-vocals. For endings, especially when fading out, the preferred way is one line of the non-lyrics plus "..." in the next line below.

Chris 19:49, October 15, 2012 (UTC)

It'd be funny if weren't sad, Chris, - what are we talking about? Do you really treat this "issue" as the matter of discussion? No, - it's too clear, that the real number of options you've listed is 2, not 3, since last two positions actually are just different formulas of the same position, as 6 have reasonably pointed that already. And it's the only one acceptable, common-sense position imo. Now, when you know my opinion (wasn't it evident from my previous post?), I'd like to return to the real issue I've tried to moot.

So, admin 6 asks admin X to remove some "da doos". X disagrees and rises a discussion, and that's fine (though X is a real yardbird compared to 6...). Later admin C also points, that leaving full "da doos" would be redundant. Shouldn't that be enough for neophyte X? No. Seems he either misunderstands something or just ignores opinion of two older and more experienced admins, 'cause on the spot reverts 6' edition to version with full "da doos". Then maybe X has changed something after apparently negative reaction, expressed by S, an oldest of live admins? No. And that should be the real matter of serious discussion.

I'd keep the silence if that was the first time. But look what (and how) he've done with LrcDB: yes, site's dead and parameter may be removed. But how? Just remove and forget, or collect all lrcIDs before that, keeping in mind that I have a complete Lrc database, which could be used to restore lrc info if needed? Now this possibility is lost, thanks to X. Such behaviour is absolutely inadmissible for any user, but for admin - especially. Btw, don't know why, but looking at my last "discussion" with admin H, you may easily find some similarities in our young friends behaviour...

That's what I was asking you to talk about with H & X, Chris.

--Senvaikis ^(talk) 22:25, October 15, 2012 (UTC)

Just a shame to watch that. --Senvaikis ^(talk) 09:34, October 18, 2012 (UTC)

I sadly see and don't understand what's wrong with them. Trying to understand this and clear it up... - Chris 22:56, October 18, 2012 (UTC)

Censorship

• (moved from Senv's talk-page)

---

Looks like you'll have to blacklist certain images: [1] [2] We wouldn't want lwt to get banned… Now I can't help wondering if censorship of lyrics (or the dreaded PA template) will eventually make their comeback… — 6×9 (Talk) 18:12, November 24, 2012 (UTC)

Bad news indeed. If I've got it right and the content of images was a reason of violation, then even blacklisting of imagenames hardly may help here. As you know, lw:pn isn't applied to filenames, so actually the title of album with unallowable cover content should be blacklisted for cover uploading then...

But should confess I'm not even sure completely about the reason of violation: most of censored images (I could find only one feature, common for all them - an image of nude body) are public-available widelly (on dog, amz, lastFm, iTunes, WP etc). Why then image, valid for discogs, last.fm, or even WP suddenly becomes illegal on LW?

So, maybe not content, but some other Wikia's Terms of Use (the source image was taken from, providing a link to this src... etc.) were violated here? Could you please help me to understand better what was wrong with all these images? Only then we'll be able to prevent possible banning of our bots (and users too) (do you know how a sad smile emoticon should look like?). --Senvaikis ^(talk) 21:44, November 24, 2012 (UTC)

I doubt it's the source – as you noted, the only common theme between all deleted images is partial or full nudity. A more specific reason than "violation of ToU" would have been nice; the only relevant section I can see is "You agree not to use the Service to: […] Post or transmit any content that is obscene, pornographic, […]" I'll admit that the Avulsed images above are borderline, but something like this can't be considered pornographic by any stretch of the imagination. Makes me wonder if the other Wikia staff members agree or if it's just one lonesome crusader. I'm almost tempted to restore them and see what happens… *shakes head* ← An emoticon for that would be useful too. No animated gifs; that's cheating! — 6×9 (Talk) 22:08, November 24, 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I don't think these terms were meant to prohibit the upload of this kind of material when they made the terms. I don't even consider this pornographic, because to me, pornographic images means sexual content, and although there is a lot of graphic gore on the cover it's not like that I will never catch sleep again (actually I will go to bed right after saving this post), so it's not really disgusting/gross either. I am strongly against censorship. But maybe we should upload a pixelated version of it, plus a template on the file page that we mustn't upload the original because some might consider it offensive? - Chris 00:29, November 25, 2012 (UTC)

I agree with all your points. But I don't think we should start uploading censored images just yet. To put it bluntly, it looks to me like Sannse is imposing her view on what constitutes obscenity and pornography on the rest of Wikia. I could imagine some courts ruling the Avulsed covers as obscene (not pornographic), but the Perret cover? If we pixelate a (tastefully, at that) painted butt, where will it stop? We must have thousands of lyrics that are way more offensive, obscene or pornographic than that. Will we eventually have to "asteriskate" certain words or whole stanzas just so a page won't get deleted for violating ToU?

I think it's up to Sannse ot provide evidence that the images actually are considered obscene or pornographic under U.S. law and not just in her personal opinion. — 6×9 (Talk) 09:21, November 25, 2012 (UTC)

As you possibly know, remarkable part of my life went in SU, under censorship which (i hope) would seem too strict even for Sannse :). So, although I'm strongly against censorship too, but my ex-SU experience tells me that first of all I should think about my (Lwt) safety. In other words - tell us what image is illegal, and ve'll not (re)upload it. Just there should be some "flag", informing me (bot) about that. Pixelating itself may be acceptable for censors, but it does not protect me (especially - my bot) from unintended reuploading of image "with a better resolution", such way leading us into a risk of being banned. Thus I think that such censored image should be marked by a special template (maybe with including in a spec. category). And one more question should be answered then - would it be acceptable for censors if such censored image, according to current LW recommendations, was provided with a link to original (via {{Album Art}}.source)?

Anyways, whatever decision would be taken, I'll try to use all my ex-Soviet experience to stay loyal. But one thing I know for sure - I'll never start to teach Lwt pixelate or dress Venus de Milo in a brassiere :) --Senvaikis ^(talk) 14:04, November 25, 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a reasonable solution, but I wonder why you don't blacklist the album title for "cover works"? I know, there is a minor chance of that a blacklisted page gets moved and that way it's not on the blacklist anymore, but this happens maybe once a year, if it happens at all. Anyway, until any solution is found, how about we grant Lwt the admin rights, so you can do all edits under the Lwt account. So if any account gets blocked, it's the Lwt account, and it's easy to argument that the bot couldn't know what that cover was showing, which besides is also the truth for your account, but it's easier to reason when the upload was commited from a bot account. Furthermore, even if Lwt gets banned for whatever reason, you have your account as backup.

Btw, if you ever get banned, I will write the support and protest against it every day until they revoke the banishment! - Chris 19:17, November 26, 2012 (UTC)

Lol, thanks in advance, - I'm just thrilled to tears, Chris... :)

But seems to me, you still haven't got me right, though I was trying to say that as clear as I could (in my broken English):

• I'm not going to participate in creating any blacklists, based on someone's opinion. SU with its censorship was mentioned intentionally, in hope you'll understand better and forgive me this, I admit, slightly allergic, attitude.
• At the same time, I promised to try being as loyal as possible regarding all Wiki rules and policies. And granting admin permissions to Lwt may only complicate this task imo (see below).

Regarding Lwt "adminship", - we've been talking about that already, and you may treat that as silly/old-fashioned relic, but I still don't like this idea: in either case, regardless of grants given, responsibility for any bot action lies on its owner, doesn't it? I'm far from being so sure about infallibility of Lwt, and I really won't be happy to know one day that some page/file, created by other admin, for example, have been deleted by my bot. The same should be said about new song pages creating: now I may tell Lwt to find lyrics and create pages for some artist missing songs, without worrying about possible conflicts with GN - thanks to you, now all missing GN-taken titles are reserved and protected from such editors as Lwt, so - responsibility lies not on Lwt. That's exactly what I'd like to be realized under penalty of possible censorship attack: if that's inevitable - ok, let someone (who needs/like/must) make that dirty job (blackisting, reserving, protecting). Then all my "loyality" task becomes very simple - training Lwt not to touch any object, marked by censors :). And even then I shouldn't be nervous, knowing that Lwt's just unable to recreate protected file (the same way as now it's unable to create a new song page, protected for GN) :) --Senvaikis ^(talk) 22:19, November 26, 2012 (UTC)

You might both and anyone else who sees this of course want to look at this and this – just the first two links Google threw up for "sannse file deletions". Apparently the Wikia staff forgot to mention that their own personal definitions for obscenity and pornography apply to the ToU. (Including exposed nipples – no mention of gender, so I suppose male nipples are also taboo?) At least no mention of "but think of the children!" – so far…

Pity only a small percentage of albums has cover art on Wikimedia Commons, else we could simply link to that. Or maybe we should create a CENSORED logo and display it in place of any offensive album art; the uglier the better. Can you tell I'm just THRILLED at this new development? — 6×9 (Talk) 18:22, November 27, 2012 (UTC)

I'd love to reply to you two now, but I'm feeling guilty for overtaking Senv's talk page (again). Could me move this whole discussion to [a subpage of?] the admin portal first? That made me feel more comfortable replying... - Chris 20:41, November 27, 2012 (UTC)

---

Now you may feel more comfortable, Chris :) if that's possible at all... --Senvaikis ^(talk) 21:45, November 27, 2012 (UTC)

@Senv: It's just that I'm afraid we overtake your talkpage again.

Okay, now b2t:

@Senv: I'm sorry, I thought you were saying it's impossible to create a good blacklist because filenames may change, and I only saw you were against making Lwt blur pictures. Actually, I have never thought of the advantages that a non-admin bot has. I always thought if you need to get things done with admin-rights, you'll just run it under your account, so what's the difference?, but now I finally see the other point of view: it's impossible for Lwt to do admin things if it's not supposed to, because you'll run the task under Lwt account. All I could offer was a LwtAdmin admin-bot-account, to protect yourself from gathering more and more badges, if you want to. But that's something you have to decide on your own, I won't bother you with this anymore :)

@6: I am almost with you, but I need to say one thing: personally I don't believe it's Sannse deciding which images to delete. I haven't fully read those other discussions, but from what I got, it's more like several are reviewing them and Sannse is the one of those to take them down.

@Senv again: I guess a link to a page where you can find it, such as the discogs page, is perfectly okay with the ToU. A direct link to the image file might not, I don't know. We could introduce a special parameter to {{Albumcover}}, that holds the link to that page. If that parameter is present, we could style the template differently or include another template. That'd also be the wanted flag for your bot. Come to think of it, we should replace these covers with some white image and text on it like this:

(. )( .)

We name it Eyes.jpg, for we all know these are Homer Simpson's eyes.

Neverless, the arguments I read there are ridiculous and nowhere near the ToU. They said it was pornographic, obscene or profane content. I think this is just another case of "Welcome to America" where the FCC is actively censoring anything like this. Therefore I strongly disagree that America should be the guide line.

No matter whether pornographic, obscene or profane, all three are ridiculous, in most cases it's just nudity.

pornographic

Screenshots from a blue film, or at least showing of sexual itensions. Which pure nudity is not.

obscene

Offensive to morality, disgusting. Which pure nudity is not.

profane

Offensive towards god or sacred things, unholy. Which mere nudity can never be.

I feel offended and imposed by many of those deletions. - Chris 23:31, November 27, 2012 (UTC)

I had hoped it was only Sannse (because then we could have brought it up with the other staff members), but after skimming through the discussions I linked, it's become clear that this is general Wikia policy. IOW, we're screwed. (Pardon.)

I had a similar idea about a replacement image, only I was going to make it more *explicit* (gotta love the irony): like the one on the left, only done properly by someone who knows what he's doing, hint hint :-) (Or maybe leave it as is, so its ugliness adds to the statement?) Instead of a new template parameter, I'd add an explanation to the image page, along with instructions on where to find the albumcover – starting with the Footer links, but maybe also including links to sites like ecover.to. Or we could add a parameter to {{Album}} to display a link to the actual cover, in small text below the replacement pic. — 6×9 (Talk) 18:27, November 28, 2012 (UTC)

(Edit confict, but posting anyways...) While wondering why this discussion isn't interesting for any other admin, let me add a couple of notes:

1. Publishing of any blured/pixelated/retouched album cover art image isn't such "innocent" thing too - that may be treated as another kind of criminal, aka copyright infringements.
   • That's why I'd recommend to follow Lwt and not hasten showing any initiatives here
2. With all my respect to Sannse (she's just trying to do diligently her duty, as she understands it), I just can't believe that she represents the position of all Wikia team. So, I haven't seen yet any official Wikia document, confirming such "medieval" interpretation of pornography etc.
   • we should wait/ask for more official and specific elucidation of new Wikia's ToU interpretation, or just contact with someone from wikia staff for clarifications
3. Even if Sannse's interpretation occurred being approved by all wikia staff, that wouldn't mean we can't disagree with such interpretation and at least call to some discussion, preceding any final decisions.
   • One of arguments in such possible discussion is some lyrics.wikia specific, making it different from other wikias, where images in their majority are nothing more than some illustration to the article, so may be changed/edited without essential influence to the quality of article. Album art in our site is not just a picture - it's a part of album metadata, so it may be either published "as is", or should be not published at all, as incorrect metadata. So, any censorship of such kind should be applied here very cautiously, only in really extraordinary situation, when pornographic, offensive or racistic content of image is really obvious.
4. And don't hope that censorship'll be done with images only - lyrics surely is the next target...

List is far from being complete, but the main thing I wanted to say was said: I ask you to show at least minimal resistance to this sanctimonious extremism, if you want to retain lyrics.wikia and your self-respect.

--Senvaikis ^(talk) 18:56, November 28, 2012 (UTC)

@6: Hint perceived, I'll re-create that picture with equal line spacing etc... ::@Senv: If uploading blurred images is a copyright infringement due to unallowed modification, isn't censoring lyrics the same?

Some random thoughts from yesterday:

• It would appear only half as offending to me if Sannse/Wikia had notified us and asked us admins to remove content instead of silently doing this behind our backs. I guess this is also a major reason why many of the other Wikias are so angry and aggressive towards this. It's not like it should be, they ought to give us a heads up like "Hey, there's content we do not approve" and let us decide what to do, maybe while consulting them continously. By the way it currently is done, I can't help but feel like it was possible that (drastically spoken) tomorrow whole lyrics.wikia was deleted for any ambiguos ToU statements' interpretation.
• Wikia is a spin-off of the Wikimedia Foundation. How come it's perfectly okay with them if far more explicit images are displayed? Because they have sensible ToU. Only thing said about pornographic or obscene is:
  

Quote by Wikimedia Foundation, Terms of Use: "
[you may not engage in:]
Misusing Our Services for Other Illegal Purposes

• Posting child pornography or any other content that violates applicable law concerning child pornography;
• Posting or trafficking in obscene material that is unlawful under applicable law; and
• Using the services in a manner that is inconsistent with applicable law.

" ↑

• I wonder if Sean knows Wikia is silently deleting our contents. What would he say if he knew his former employer is cutting back his "baby"? Wasn't LyricWiki meant to be a bastion against censorship, and therefore actively replacing "b*tch f*cking n*gga" with "bitch fucking nigga" if the performer says it loud and clear?
• So far, I had always recommended Wikia to anyone who asked me for a corporation that is fair towards their users. The have lost at least a third of my trust now. I've been contributing to LyricWiki for a reason: I hate censorship! - Chris 23:46, November 28, 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been delinquent in paying attention to the admin talk page. Thanks to Senvaikis for pointing me this way.

However, I don't really have anything else to add. I do like the idea of using the "censored by Wikia" graphic together with a link to see the album cover on another site, although we might want to change it from "Wikia does not approve" to something like "Wikia management does not approve."

Actually, if we wanted to be really pointed, we might have the link be a Google image search for the album cover, the clear message being "Wikia management won't allow this image here, but dozens of other sites allow it." (Or maybe we don't want to be quite so pointed, if it might strain our relationship with Wikia management...)

I wonder if Wikia is perhaps being overzealous for commercial reasons, i.e., they're worried (rightly or wrongly) about selling advertising on sites that may have nude photos.

I think the fact that Wikia is commercial and the Wikipedia is nonprofit accounts for the difference in the terms of use, despite the common Wikimedia Foundation link between the two sites. Trainman (talk) 19:59, November 30, 2012 (UTC)

Happy New Year to everyone -- any updates on this situation? Trainman (talk) 02:10, January 4, 2013 (UTC)

Happy New Year! No news that I'm aware of... No change to the ToU to clarify what they understand as obscenity/pornography. No further deletions these last few weeks either (despite all images having been restored), but I'll definitively keep an occasional eye on the logs. — 6×9 (Talk) 07:59, January 4, 2013 (UTC)

DMCA Notice Received

Pages deleted for copyright violation? Pages that aren't on Gracenote's takedown list? Unless GNB hasn't gotten around to them yet… But wasn't the idea behind our deal with Gracenote that we license our lyrics through them (which cost us quite dearly, and I'm not necessarily talking about money)? So shouldn't any takedowns happen via GN and GN only? Colour me confused. — 6×9 (Talk) 22:24, January 5, 2013 (UTC)

Color me confused about a lot of things the United States government is responsible for, and I even helped elect a few of them.

As I understand the DMCA, Wikia is legally required to remove copyrighted material when it gets a DMCA takedown request from the copyright holder, and that would be regardless of whether or not it had been licensed through Gracenote -- and, in this case, it doesn't appear that this particular artist has been licensed through Gracenote anyway. (One would hope that a copyright holder wouldn't file DMCA takedown requests with Wikia for things they've licensed to Gracenote, and fortunately, I don't think we've seen that happening...)

A little odd that Wikia doesn't have their bot do to DMCA-deleted pages what we do to Gracenote-deleted pages, with the explanation for the takedown on the page, and the page itself protected.

(By the way, if I recall the situation, the site itself -- and Sean personally -- would have paid even more dearly if the Gracenote/Wikia deal hadn't been made.) Trainman (talk) 00:03, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the information! Some confusion remains though:

1. Not all song pages were deleted – sometimes differing only in accents (Ako Znas Bilo Sto vs. Ako Znaš Bilo Što).
2. Some (but not all) album pages got deleted as well – so are tracklistings copyrighted too? Do sites like MusicBrainz or Discogs get takedown notices? (Album art is untouched though.)
3. Even the artist page was deleted… and promptly restored by Janitor.

So I'm wondering whether Semanticdrifter got a specific list for takedowns, or just overlooked a couple pages. — 6×9 (Talk) 08:18, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

The DMCA is a perfect example for how the lobbyism has corrupted the whole American legislation. The big industries – be it music, technology, porn or whatever – have money, and they use it to influence the legislation to back up their interests with questionable laws.

Regarding paying dearly: Trainman is right. I recently valued the amount that Sean or his Motive Force LLC would've had to pay:

The lawsuit was issued in August 2009; in November 2009, LyricWiki reached the 1 million content pages (see here). So let's assume we had 900.000 pages in August 2009 (= 1 million minus the all the GNB protected pages minus the number of pages created in 3 months). Today, about 89% percent of the contents are lyrics (see here). Assuming the distribution was equal back then, that would've been 801.000 lyrics pages, which are definitely subject to the copyright infringement.

According to The Register, the lawsuit required him to pay the maximum fine for each "timely registered work" whose copyrights were infringed. That is $150.000 per work.

Now, multiplying 801.000 lyrics by $150.000, that is $120.150.000.000, or in words: 120.15 billion dollars. For Europeans: according to WolframAlpha, the exchange course USD to EUR in August 2009 was that $1 equaled about 70 Euro cents. That is, the fine was 84.105.000.000 €, in words 84.105 billion Euros (or explicitly in German "84,105 Milliaren Euro").

As a comparison:

• In August 2009, the United States federal debt added up to $11.91 trillion (WolframAlpha) and 307 million people lived in the US (WolframAlpha). That would be a debt of $38.795 per capita. The fine amounted more than 1% of the federal depts, i. e. 100 lawsuits of that kind would've solved the debt problem of the US.
• The richest man in the world in 2009 (Bill gates) had an estimated net worth of $40 billion (Wikipedia), so the fine was worth more that thrice Bill Gates' net worth.
• The richest man in the world during the past 12 years was Carlos Slim in 2011, who had an estimated net worth of $74 billion (Wikipedia). So the fine was still more than 1.5 times that net worth.

As a footnote, mind that the calculations were done only for the lyrics, i. e. not including the album arts.

The US laws made it possible to sue a single man for more than 1.5 times the net worth of the world's richest man in that decade. I think, there is no need to add anything to that. - Chris 10:25, January 6, 2013 (UTC)

Well, there's usually a big difference between the amount the plaintiff wants (or, in this case, what the plaintiff claims in their press release) and, after the suit makes its way through the legal system, how much the defendant ends up paying.

Anyway, as far as I know without being a lawyer, album and artist pages can't be copyright violations, since they're merely lists of factual information -- I think someone was being a little overzealous in claiming those as DMCA violations, so it might be worth sending a counterclaim to Wikia for those particular pages. Trainman (talk) 02:52, January 7, 2013 (UTC)

That's a whole lot of 0's! :-O -Sean Colombo (talk) 06:17, January 16, 2013 (UTC)

I contacted Wikia about the DMCA takedowns, told them about some of the things you guys mentioned that were a problem & tried to figure out ways we could make this smoother in the future. The guy who enacted the takedowns (User:Semanticdrifter) responded quickly & the answers were quite encouraging.

1. In regards to Gracenote takedowns vs. DMCAs... I think they also prefer using Gracenote, but a lot of the time they don't get forewarning and they just get a DMCA out of the blue. When that happens they pretty much have to execute it... then if we think that the person is faking it (ie: it's not the artist/publisher/rights-holder, it's someone pretending to be the artist, or something like that), then we can send a DMCA counter-notice and Wikia will put it right back up. Obviously, that's risky to send a counter-notice unless you're sure that's really not the rights-holder. Wikia's main stance seems to be that they have to act "mechanically" on this to keep their safe harbor. Takedown ===> take it down, counter-notice ===> put it back.
2. Regarding album/artist pages... he agreed, apologized, and said that was a mistake from being unfamiliar with the mass delete process. I'm not sure if that means we need to issue a counter-notice for those pages or not...
3. In regards to organization/messiness of carrying out deletions, I mentioned that we could possibly help write a bot similar to GracenoteBot, that was capable of doing a list of pages, or a bunch of pages. It would leave artists/albums in-tact and instead of just a page-deletion (which results in a deletion log when someone tries to see the page), this would replace the content with a message explaining that this was a DMCA takedown, and what that means (and we could even categorize it).
   
   He seemed very receptive to this and said "The bot you describe would be incredibly helpful if this happens again".
   
   I guess that part is up to us at this point... the DMCA takedowns don't happen that often, but if we were to write a bot (or special-page) like this soon, then it would be available when needed. Thoughts?

Cheerio,

-Sean Colombo (talk) 06:17, January 16, 2013 (UTC)

Page ranking

It seems that EchoSierra doesn't seem to like the way the bronze artist page ranking works. That issue aside, he has pointed out an anomaly that I've never noticed and I don't know that others have either. Help:Page_ranking/Artists states in the "In a nutshell" section that bronze artists have been checked by a human; in "The Templates" section that bronze artists need a watcher; and in the "Star Types" section that bronze artists need to have a header, footer and are correctly named.

So, do bronze artists need a watcher or not? If the answer is "yes", then there are a huge number of bronze artists that should not be bronze. If the answer is "no", then the Help:Page_ranking/Artists page needs to be changed.

Discuss. Eeepy (talk) 08:26, January 28, 2013 (UTC)

In this discussion it was decided that watchers aren't necessary for Bronze, no exceptions. So I guess we simply forgot to update H:PR/A… — 6×9 (Talk) 12:39, January 28, 2013 (UTC)

That leaves just a few more issues to straighten out.

• What is the minimum requirements for declaring Bronze? (Can this be spelled out clearly?)
• Is there a requirement that the ranking template must be filled to reflect the state of the Artist page, at the time it is being Ranked? What is the point of a unedited (default) ranking template in a talk page?
• Can an artist page with no album listing and just a OS list be Bronze?
• Are we not muddifying the distinction between Green & Bronze? I'm all for getting rid of one of the two, but when I see wildly varying quality at Bronze (Artist pages with severe OS list issues (3/3) are being ranked Bronze), and the talk page just has the split template! If that is good enough for Bronze, what is Green then? If the mere existence of AH & AF qualifies for Bronze, can we just spell it out? And if that is so, why not set the Janitor and the default template to just make Bronze artist from the start? Did Bronze become the new Green? Can the documentation spell out the distinction, assuming everybody agrees there is one?

cheers

-- ∃cho⚡ierr∀ ( ☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 13:09, January 28, 2013 (UTC)

These are very good questions. Even I would like to know the answer to some of them. In most cases, when I Bronze songs, I just make sure they have a decent amount of information, and don't have just an album and language. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 02:32, February 6, 2013 (UTC)

My opinion is that for an artist page to be Bronze, it should at least be obvious that a human did some work on the page, e.g., a header and footer with at least some of the information filled in, a decent attempt at getting albums listed, and an Other Songs list that's not overwhelmingly long (say, the 1/3 category, not 2/3 or 3/3) -- as well as an accurately filled out ranking template on the Talk page. I'm not sure exactly how you'd quantify all that on the Help pages, though. Trainman (talk) 02:50, February 6, 2013 (UTC)

We (the admin) don't know how the ranking system works, because it simply doesn't. However it is our job to lay out the rules and bash them to near perfection. As we see, everybody has their own definition when to up a green to bronze, the documentation doesn't have one either, it's just a puddle of mud. Obvioulsy this is not a job for humans anyway, our time is better spent coming with ideas. So for all of you to see how this new system works, here it is: post a link to an artist page, any artist page, already ranked or not, one you have worked on or not. Let the bot apply the rules defined within it. Then we can discuss the results. Pages to be ranked. thank you. --ES (Talk) 02:58, February 12, 2013 (UTC)

Hi Echo, you said that we admins don't know how our system works. At least regarding me this isn't true, and I am surprised you couldn't find it in the documentation. I used the usual way I'd expect every user to take: menubar > Help Out > Help Index > Policy / Page Ranking > Section "Stars". Also Help:Page ranking/Artists explains the differences.

A green artist is basically nothing else but an "unconfirmed" artist. That's why all new artists by bots are always ranked Green, except maybe for the ones that our cyborg creates, because it is supervised by a mastermind anyways . Unconfirmed artists/pages are those, whose existance hasn't been checked by a human being. Especially Janitor tends to create wrong pages (e. g. "Artist 1 Feat. Artist 2" after he found a song page "Artist 1 Feat. Artist 2:A Song"), but also new users (mostly for not knowing about LW:PN and therefore creating a second artist page instance or a new artist with a wrong name). Bronze is applied by a human being who has confirmed the page is meeting the technical LyricWiki standards, i. e. LW:PN and, when speaking of artists, a {{ArtistHeader}} and {{ArtistFooter}} with the minimum required information such as fLetter and so on. - Chris 21:50, February 16, 2013 (UTC)

So Chris, either from documentation, or your personal opinion... What is the MINIMUM requirements to upgrade an artist page from Green to Bronze? Please spell it out, because some human threw some parameter in it doesn't cut it :) (a car doesn't become road worthy just because it got human attention and it's tire pressure was verified, does it? Unless it was already known that everything is fine with the car except the tire pressure. Did I make a leap of faith?). At Ranking:Artists it states: "The grouping of page ranking templates is shown below. Portions shown in GREEN should be changed to correctly reflect the state of that parameter:" And below the text is the ArtistInfo Box with all params in GREEN and unknown. So it appears that in order for rank to be elevated to bronze all those params should change, no? And the change reflected in the Artist Info Box (what should really be called Artist MANIFEST, Because We already have another ArtistInfo box that goes above Artist Footer). I'd like to see a draft (since it doesn't exist yet) of a single page where it is clearly states what needs to be done to turn an artist Bronze. It got human attention is just piffle. I have worked on 1000's of artist pages (minimum AF & AH params filled, romanized, fletter corrected), so I suppose they should have all been ranked Bronze, right? Not in my books. I & three other admins have worked on multiple artist pages together, within a few hours, and neither of us upped the rank to bronze, and when at least one of the other three ups the rank to bronze, it wasn't based on the existance & accuracy of labels & params in AH/AF, rather the entire artist page was perfect top to bottom with OS=0, Artist Info (related/memebers) filled with proper refs. Those who throw a bronze at an artist page with OS>100 (admin, user or anon IP), and a split 3/3 on talk page are apprently using a loophole large enough to drive the entire woodstock festival thru. Can you show us where that loophole is and what are we going to do about it? Please do read again the questions I indicated in my first post on the subject, I am trying to avoid writing an essay here :) The documentation is muddy. Take the example of Violet stars, read the description and take a look at the Violet Artist category. Language issue (mangled accents) + violet star at artist&album pages became a non issue in 2009, LOL. Violet & language apply only to song pages. So I will just stop here and wait for your one page document on the official (and sane & logical) description of how Green Artist becomes Bronze artist. Please remeber that >%99.00 of all pages at LW have the correctly named header & footer, and >95% have the correct fletter, so should they be bronzed?! cheers mate! --ES (Talk) 17:02, February 19, 2013 (UTC) fletter (much larger than the artist1 feat artist2 bot created pages) & related (or is it sound alike artists in the related box?) (AIBox) issue in my next essay

Echo, do you have to pay a fee for each line break? My eyes hurt! Outdenting…

Let's try not to confuse this issue by mixing up current requirements for Bronze with what you think should be requirements, or we won't get anywhere. The loophole you mention doesn't exist: that would mean the rules allowed such a page to be Bronzed even though it shouldn't be, that the wording of the rules is not in accordance with their "spirit" (the way they were meant), but that's not the case.

Current requirement for Bronze: check required templates are present and pagename is correct. For artists, this indeed means that fLetter is correct and pagename doesn't violate LW:PN. These rules were developed when most of our sanity checks weren't in place, so they made more sense then than they do now.

To avoid further convolutions, it might be a good idea to do this in two separate steps: (1) discuss whether PR rules should be updated, with more human input required for advancing Green pages to Bronze – or maybe we're all in agreement and no discussion is necessary?, (2) then, if we decide in favour, agree which human input is required for Bronze.

So, are any of the admins against stricter requirements for Bronzing? — 6×9 (Talk) 21:04, February 19, 2013 (UTC)

Actually I think the current standards are fine, but I wouldn't be totally against changes if you wish to raise the bar for Bronze. I guess the big problem is that our page ranking is a wild mixture out of diverse requirement types. As we are seemingly heading towards a new ranking system, I think maybe my preliminary work might give a hint on what to consider during the design process. Ideally, the new system pays attention to all these requirements as well or names other ways to ensure that they are met:

Our current page ranking system handles four types of requirements

1) Technical requirements (operativeness)

These are related to the mere operativeness of a page in the LyricWiki page pool. They are usually imposed by our automated categorizing, and concern issues like that pages do have an fLetter, albums' page names end on (YEAR), or that the basic categorizing templates (header + footer) are present on the page; another thing might be illegal characters in the page name.

2) Standards requirements (conformance)

These are related to the various policies LyricWiki has. They usually concern formatting issues to ensure a uniform appearance and thereby establish a "typical style of LyricWiki content". Examples are LW:PN (which might also be considered a technical requirement when thinking of the API), rules on template use and their order, formatting (like the format for tracklists), but also more vague principles like "no duplicated content" or "when to include singles".

3) Quantity requirements (completeness)

These are measuring how much of the available information is already present on the page. It typically incorporates the meta data to the page's content: external links, album cover/genre/length for albums, credits for songs, etc.

4) Quality requirements (correctness)

These are trying to rate how good the content actually is. Currently, we have the system of certifying and watching, which are only partially linked to the page ranking system.

I think what confuses many people is that when they hear "bronze, silver, gold" they automatically associate it with awards. But actually, as we want to bring all pages to gold, our page ranking system is nothing but a to-do list in disguise. Currently, a page can be upgraded from Green to Bronze without any additional work. This obviously confuses people; how can a page be awarded anything just because it is existing? They are thinking about the quality requirements, maybe also about the quantity requirements, but they are forgetting about the other two aspects. A page is currently "awarded" Bronze for meeting requirements 1 and 2. This is nothing else than "it exists, our automations work, and we want content here".

Maybe we need a more modular page ranking here, one that rates the four requirements independently. - Chris 00:01, March 24, 2013 (UTC)

Calling all Admins

If there is sufficient interest by admins, let's try to redefine the whole ranking issue from scratch, but with a time limit and a deadline. So I'm suggesting that if we get enough votes here, we start on March 1st (in 2 weeks). I hope all those who vote aye bring some clear ideas to share. My vote is aye only if my collegues agree to participate, otherwise I have enough work in the LW basement to keep me happily busy for a few years ;) --ES (Talk) 03:41, February 14, 2013 (UTC)

• User:Eeepy
• User:XxTimberlakexx
• User:Senvaikis
• User:LWChris

  I'd love to see a new page ranking system which can later be calculated partially automated. I'd wish for smaller ranking templates, speaking as well about the source code as about the box itself. It could easily be achived if metadata was no longer part of the actual page, but could be transcluded from a Meta: namespace page. We could then acquire a system where at least the meta-data ranking stuff is calculated and transcluded in the ranking display. For more information, read T-Line/Metadata. If this sounds interesting to you, I can explain further.

• User:6 times 9
• User:Hard4me
• User:EchoSierra
• (read the page you ref'd) Seperating data from container is a Good Thing. Please elaborate, and where else besides ranking does the new scheme help, plz spell it out!

• User:Trainman -- Aye, although perhaps it would make more sense to do the work of implementing Chris's metadata namespace proposal first, before worrying about changes to the page ranking criteria? (Voted 00:25, February 21, 2013 (UTC))

Hi ES, the transclusion system in general will help to avoid duplicate or asynchronous contents, and increase the integration of related pages' contents into a content page. As an example, instead of having the tracklists for an album both on the artist and the album page, we will have it once as album page and transclude that list onto the artists page, so changes have to be made once. At the same time Transclusion makes it possible to show tracklists on song pages for example.

I've also got an idea for how a new ranking system could work. We should rate the four types of requirements I mentioned in my post from a few minutes ago (see above) separately with numbers. Then we use a system like the one that Windows uses to rate the hardware: the lowest score is the total score. Together with the metadata concept, we could automate a large part of the ranking fairly easy. - Chris 00:30, March 24, 2013 (UTC)

Album of the Week

So, lately Album of the Week has been very unpredictable. Some weeks we'll get nominations, and some weeks we won't. Ever since Hard4me and I consecutively took over, there's been some large gaps in updating, either because of his busy life, or lack of nominations. In my case, it's the latter. I encouraged Chris to put a little announcement on the main page to encourage users to add noms for AOTW, but it only sparked the fuse, if you will, for a short time.

I'll quote one of my talk page messages to LWChris to address some of the questions that I have with this.

Quote by XxTimberlakexx: "Well, what could it be then? Album of the Month maybe? Or should we just remove it altogether? I'm more for the former - but I am against removing it, as I feel if we just had Song of the Day, it wouldn't be enough. Even if we went for Album of the Month, that would screw up the archives for Album of the Week unless we make it a whole new project instead of renaming Album of the Week to that. The banner on the main page attracted a few noms at least, but not enough fuel to keep it running. We'll have to think of something with the other admins."

T'would be nice to see what you guys think, and I would definitely be interested to hear your thoughts XxTimberlakexx (talk) 02:32, February 6, 2013 (UTC)

Not an issue that I ever paid attention too, but I think a bunch of admins making most of the nominations is a little like the accountants cooking up the books If our contributors don't participate, maybe that is a hint to put our effort into something else? How about a (short run test of) artist of the week/fortnight/month? Given that I concern myself primarily with artist pages, shouldn't come as a surprise. Of course we can have a routine built into Lwt/janitor to randomly pick an album, check that it has no red links (Senv may approve!), rank it, and if it makes Bronze at least, submit it. Hope this will light a fuse -- ∃cho⚡ierr∀ ( ☏ • ⎋ • ⌫) 15:57, February 9, 2013 (UTC)

That does sound like a good idea! I'd like to see the opinions of the other admins first, though. I posted this literally a week from today and I'm shocked to see only one person has responded to it. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 21:47, February 13, 2013 (UTC)

If we should keep alive the albums, I'd vote for leaving the AOTW stuff as it is and create AOTM as completely new project.

Artist of the Month sounds more interesting though, because you can pick any artist you like a song from, opposed to a whole album. Plus it's easier to talk interesting stuff about a person than a compact disc. Plus more artists have WP articles than albums have. - Chris 23:54, February 13, 2013 (UTC)

So basically, you're saying to retire the Album of the Week project, stop featuring it on the main page (similar to Free Music of the Week) and create either Album of the Month or Artist of the Month? That would definitely work better. Heck, we could even do both of those if we had another user to take over Artist of the Month (I'll vouch to do Album of the Month, as I updated Album of the Week for a long time). Anyways, I want to see what Senv and 6x9 think, then maybe we could put this into action. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 22:08, February 14, 2013 (UTC)

I feel that we are not going to be more successful with an Album of the Month project. And there's a simple reason why we can't have both: the shortcut AOTM shouldn't be ambivalent. - Chris 21:31, February 16, 2013 (UTC)

Ah yes, very true. That would be rather confusing. I'm more for Artist of the Month now that I think about it, as you can talk about an artist as a whole in as little as a paragraph instead of just one album. I think it would be a good project. Again, if 6 and Senv have even seen this yet, I want to see what their thoughts are. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 14:17, February 19, 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Chris & Echo: if there's not enough interest in AotW, there's little point in forcing it to continue. Artist of the Month sounds like a good idea; it might even get more nominations that AotW did (not everyone listens to full albums). — 6×9 (Talk) 20:27, February 19, 2013 (UTC)

That sounds good to me. Should we wait for Senv's input before putting it in action? XxTimberlakexx (talk) 21:49, February 20, 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to steal Senv's chance to write here, but as I know him, I assume his opinion is likely "As I don't visit the main page anyways, I needn't take part in decision-making on what contents it has." Sorry if this isn't true, Senv, I'm just guessing your opinion to be alike that. - Chris 00:16, February 21, 2013 (UTC)

Well, we should at least see what his real opinion is, shouldn't we? Someone should contact him about this. I really want to put this into action soon. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 22:49, February 27, 2013 (UTC)

I say just do it -- if Senvaikis hasn't weighed in by now, I think it's safe to assume he doesn't particularly have an opinion in the matter. Trainman (talk) 23:15, February 27, 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, not much happens here that Senv don't notice. His silence on this subject can be safely taken as no objection --ES (Talk) 00:49, February 28, 2013 (UTC)

Alright, I see. Well, I'll need help from Chris to put this into action, as I can't do this myself. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 13:51, March 3, 2013 (UTC)

Anyone there? I wanted Chris to give me the heads-up that he was going to start work on this, but seeing as how it's been over 2 weeks, I'm starting to lose hope. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 22:06, March 21, 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, very busy atm. Working one hour overtime per day and studies have begun again. - Chris 01:59, March 23, 2013 (UTC)

Ah, okay. When will you be able to help out? It kinda bugs me that this section has been up for nearly 2 months now and we haven't even started on this project. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 20:07, March 25, 2013 (UTC)

Maybe this weekend. I have to get into how these projects are structured here before I can set one up. I have never done anything like that before either, these projects existed when I joined LyricWiki. - Chris 16:58, March 27, 2013 (UTC)

Oh, okay. Well, we seriously need to start on this ASAP. Maybe help from Senv or 6x9 would be appreciated, as it seems they're more skilled in coding. I mean, Album of the Week is starting to make it look like this site is never updated, as it's been stuck on Blood Pressures since January. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 22:20, April 2, 2013 (UTC)

Not sure you've noticed it already, but I've been spending one night up and it's implemented now. I also handed in my first nomination and hands down I'd be very, very proud if Joel was the first AOTM we'd ever have. I'd also happily throw in three last albums in AOTW that I recently rediscovered, so that AOTM can start on May, 1st. Is that okay with you? - Chris 22:11, April 8, 2013 (UTC)

That sounds great! I haven't noticed it though, would you mind linking me? I also have many ideas for some AOTMs. Once we set it up, we'll have to take down AOTW and say on the AOTW page that it's been replaced by AOTM. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 19:41, April 15, 2013 (UTC)

I put the last AOTW online here, could you link it everywhere please? I think we can keep it there for the rest of the month, doesn't matter. On May 1st I'll then put AOTM online with deadmau5, okay? - Chris 20:46, April 16, 2013 (UTC)

Alright, just did that. Added the template to the album page and added it to the archive. You might want to add a length and genre to the album, though, as it looks rather empty without them. And that sounds good! Why did you not link me to Album of the Month like I requested, though? I couldn't find it under LyricWiki:Album of the Month, so I had to hunt for it and eventually found it under LyricWiki:AOTM. May 1st sounds like a reasonable date. I have many ideas for nominations, and we should definitely promote it on the site like we attempted with AOTW. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 21:22, April 17, 2013 (UTC)

A pair of DMCAs

Wikia got DMCAs for Eve Bulloch and Charlene Ava. While these artists have so few songs that we could crank through them by hand, I think this would be a good time to deliver a bot to them to help do the takedowns in a clean way that works well with the community. I can write the bot later tonight, but I'd love feedback & could use some help with a template. Here are my thoughts:

• Bot would leave the artist page alone
• Bot would leave album pages alone
• Each song page would have it's contents replaced (like Gracenote takedowns) with a {{dmca}} template which categorizes the page & has an explanation of why the content isn't there & instructs users not to put content back.
• After adding DMCA template, page gets protected.

Any additional ideas/concerns? If you guys are up to it, could you take a crack at making the {{dmca}} template & I'll take a stab at the bot later tonight?
Thanks!
-Sean Colombo (talk) 20:11, February 21, 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sean

In the past 48 hours, two different users (one anon, and User:Deleteuser) tried deleteing Eve Bulloch's lyrics in a rather amatureish way, I restored the lyrics and artist page, blocked both users and put protection on Eve yesterday. It looked like vandalism from here...

As soon as someone cranks out the dmca notice, I will get to it. For now the lyrics of both artists have been commented out, Artist pages are intact, no album page exists. And I removed the user blocks. Waiting for the dmca template to appear... hth --ES (Talk) 13:41, February 22, 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, ES :)

I made the bot (was quite simple... most just copied from GN bot). Ran it on the artists, then removed the commenting-out part. Looks like it worked. I'll send this code to Wikia.

Thanks again,

-Sean Colombo (talk) 23:09, February 22, 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Lyricwiki. We have in fact received DMCA notices for these pages. Sean's bot is awesome, and we at Wikia definitely want to work on using it to keep things running smoothly. I have been dealing with Sean directly and he has been great. One aspect of this process that still needs work is that when Wikia gets a DMCA notice, we have to completely remove the content. To that end, I am removing the remaining snippets of lyrics from those pages, but leaving the artists and album pages intact. Thanks for working with us, --semanticdrifter (help forum | blog) 15:36, February 24, 2013 (UTC)

Echo Sierra

Hi ES,

I wanted to ask what's going on here. I feel like you're about to carry the ranking thing to excess if you threaten to block or ban a user because he doesn't clarify why he ranked a page Bronze.

Futhermore I don't see why this page wouldn't meet the criteria for Bronze:

Page Ranking Information: " This song has been given the rank Bronze. This means that a human being has seen this page and checked that the page name is correct and in accordance to LW:PN, all required parameters are correctly filled in, and the lyrics show no obvious problems."

1. NYCScribbler, as a human, obviously saw the page.
2. The song exists, there is a song "Pagan Man" by Skyclad, verifiable via the existing AllMusic and iTunes links.
3. The page complies with LW:PN.
4. The required parameters (for song pages: Song.2, Song.star, SongFooter.fLetter, SongFooter.language) are filled in correctly.
5. The lyrics do not show any "obvious problems", if the following issues are considered to be obvious (these are all I can think of, are there any others?):
   • formatting issues like additional markup, non-lyrics (information, credits) or copied external links in the lyrics box
   • missing parts ({{Partial}}, Category:Partial Lyrics)
   • broken characters ({{AccentedCharacters}}, Category:Requests For Edits/Accented Characters)
   • missing or broken <lyrics> tags
   • no lyrics because they were put between the <!-- -->

Why being so harsh to threaten one of our most active (#3 or 4 of the non-bots, depending on whether you call Senv's account a bot-account or not) and trusted users? I don't understand the sudden rudeness. - Chris 00:09, March 27, 2013 (UTC)

Hi Chris:

My mistake: the entry at mb and discogs and iTunes are in contradiction. [3]. Skyclad:Intro: Pagan Man vs. Skyclad:Pagan Man. Both of which are here, one in Orphaned pages, one on the artist list. Which one is correct? What should the rank be, if any? The contradiction would be one reason to refrain from ranking. Can a songpage be ranked without consideration of the artist/album or the fact that multiple instances of similarly named page exist in the namespace? --ES (talk) 00:38, March 27, 2013 (UTC)

Hi ES,

of course the wrongly named page of those two does not deserve to be ranked Bronze. That would be something NYC has to find out. Assuming he knows that "Pagan Man" is the correct name and "Intro: Pagan Man" is not (which has to be confirmed now), the page in question deserves to be Bronze; it is not required that duplicates are made to redirects to make a page Bronze. Three reasons:

1. As the name "page ranking" says, this parameter reflects this page's status, not the overall song status within LyricWiki. Wrong content on other pages doesn't make the correct content of the ranked page worse, does it?
2. Pages would have to be demoted when someone else later creates duplicate content. (Actually such conditional rankings based on other pages are a general problem of our ranking system. Ranking can never be more than a snapshot of the current state; see also "Gold artist requires all songs to be Gold." Add one song and the artist is back at Bronze.) Furthermore, the existance of duplicate content is not always as obvious as in this case, for example if a song got an "inofficial name" based on a chorus line.
3. Taking care of duplicate pages is part of the artist page ranking: orphaned pages are added to the "Other songs" section by the bot Janitor. Tidying up the "OS" section is required to upgrade an artist to Silver (see here), as well as a watcher who'd then be notified if new orphans are added to the list by Janitor (or manually).

- Chris 15:40, March 27, 2013 (UTC)

Sorry ES, I tried to be patient with your obsession about ranking so far, but this was the straw that broke the camel's back... what the hell is wrong with you!? You just blocked an editor with otherwise good edits just because he ranked a song wrongly? Seriously? This guy is here for 4 months now, and he makes beginner's mistakes. Just because you told him once five minutes ago that's not sufficient to block him the next time.

Furthermore, it's almost funny how you say "read the documentation" but your own block doesn't conform to our standards.

First, you did not include the {{BlockUser}} template, which had required you to give a detailed reason. "disregard for site policy" is a conceivably bad block reason: neither you name what policy nor do you state how exactly it was disregarded. A good block reason would be "Disregard page ranking policy by ranking malformed lyrics silver" or something. By the way he did not rank a page silver and added markups. In fact he removed the markup by replacing it with notations (which is allowed), and then ranked it Silver (which is of course the wrong rank, but for other reasons).

Second, you did not name the exact edit, which makes it hard to relate to that block. It could be any edit from maybe the last 2 weeks that you're referring to. Maybe it wasn't because of ranking but because of the markup here? Then it's okay to ask him to correct that, but certainly not with an instant three day block three minutes after the edit! To me it appears like he copies the lyrics, saves the page and then corrects the markups at some point later. You should rather require him to correct the markup before he saves the page for the first time. You go ahead of yourself with the block. This user is here for 4 months and has less than 850 edits. That is less than 7 edits per day in average. The recent average speed is maybe 20 edits per day. At this edit speed, he is not an imminent danger for our contents like a bot that vandalizes several pages per minute is. There is no need for an instant-block here, and even if, two hours or one day was enough to make sure he reads your message before he continues editing.

Third, you did not only hastily block him without proper reasoning, you also applied the IMO completely wrong options. Blocked users should never be disallowed to edit their talkpages. It is my understanding of democracy that one can answer back and explain. The only reasons why you would disallow edits there are 1) because of a spam bot that spams its own talk page, or 2) a user who is posting nonsense, insults or harassments there. What if he doesn't know which policy or which mistakes you're referring to (which is very likely if you don't name them)? He has to wait three days until he can ask.

I changed the block to 1 day and allowed talk page edits.

ES, I'm sorry, but this block makes me wonder what makes you so peevish. - Chris 15:30, April 13, 2013 (UTC)

This made me review the block log… Seriously? Blocking User:Teddybollocks for 1 year for "Inserting nonsense/gibberish into pages" just because they created a top ten list? Blocking several IPs for 1 month because they dared to use Wikia's adding categories feature? I think it's high time for you to review LW:AGF. — 6×9 (Talk) 15:53, April 13, 2013 (UTC)

Thanks guys. The better option is to let months pass, and edits with various issues accumulate, and just leave them on the pile. LW:AGF equally applies to all of us :) cheers --ES (talk) 00:23, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

I am assuming good faith for Linusnils, that's why I'm asking you what has happened that you block him quasi in passing by, like it's the most normal thing to do. A block should be used as a last resort, like the red card in a football game. You sort of showed the red card for maybe the third casual foul, and without a yellow one.

I am absolutely assuming good faith in your edits. It's just that the block was not the right answer to the mistakes he made in my opinion, that's all. I'm not asking you to wait months, but as I said, even 2 days = 30-40 edits are few enough so he can catch up and tidy up his mistakes. - Chris 03:17, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely right you are! And in case you see me make such a mistake again, go right ahead and unblock the fella (which I did).

Just curious, how many blocks did I apply over the past (4 months?) and how many were out of order? In an average year, how many blocks do you apply? I make as many mistakes in one day, that 9 editors & 6 admins (Not S!) make in a month. So it is imperative that you & 6 keep an eye on me, and set me good examples! Why do you think I paint 6 's talk page so much? ;) tia --ES (talk) 01:54, April 20, 2013 (UTC)

Gold albums

• (referring to this bit)

Well, partly albums, partly Gold in general. The policy and help pages aren't 100% clear on whether it's sufficient to complete the checklist (aka Info template) to rank a page Gold or whether one should go the extra mile and make sure any relevant info (credits, ext. links etc.) is present even if it doesn't earn an additional "done" checkmark on the talk page. I always assumed it should be the latter, but it's entirely possible I'm the only admin (at least among the still-active ones) who does!

Either way, the ranking docs (esp. for albums) could use some rewriting and making sure they don't contradict each other. Also, any wishlists for additional Info checkboxes (am/mb for Song, maybe credits for album)? — 6×9 (Talk) 19:35, April 2, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, ever since I learned about page rankings, I always just went by the "all songs being gold" code when it comes to Gold albums. Tons of albums on here are Gold without musicians and awards (examples: 1 2 3). I do agree that the policy should probably be clarified more if those absolutely need to be included for an album to be ranked Gold, but I'd rather wait on what the other admins have to say first, as this still perplexes me a little bit. Additional info checkboxes for the album would probably work well too (not sure about the extra Song checkboxes though), but then we'd have to go back to all of the gold albums without awards/musicians and downgrade them to silver. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 22:18, April 2, 2013 (UTC)

I'm equally confused by this. I thought the point of LyricWiki was as a lyrics site, and that we were leaving other info (musicians, awards, etc) to sites like Wikipedia, amongst others. I always thought the point of putting in links to Wikipedia and other music websites on the album page was so that if anyone was curious enough about musicians and whatever, they could click the link and go and have a look.

To me, this raises a different issue, beyond a wishlist for Info checkboxes. The home page says "We are a free wiki website where anyone can get reliable lyrics for any song by any artist." What is the actual intent of this site and the pages presented here? Do we need to redefine the scope of LyricWiki? Eeepy (talk) 21:49, April 4, 2013 (UTC)

Hey guys (and Eeepy).

As a programmer, I've always learned that sometimes it's not only necessary to think about the "how", but maybe also about the "why". Sometimes what seemed to be a good idea at first turns out to be difficult to handle, and you have to think about alternatives...

So actually it's like the more I think about it, the more I wonder: why do we have something like a "ranking system" at all? Some users and admins like ES are investing a lot of time to determine the correct ranking status for a page, reading up on dozens of help pages, pondering about special cases, comparing page ranks to the page contents. But what is the benefit from that?

What does it mean for a page to be "Bronze"? What does it mean to be "Gold"? Isn't the ranking just a summary of categories, a list of pages that are lacking certain information?

I see categories like Albums missing genre; isn't that what our "page ranking system" is all about, to get this type of categories empty? And if yes, do we actually need a ranking system to achieve that?

I wonder if it wasn't easier to simply define "Pages missing ..." categories for everything we want to have (genre, length, cover, ...) in which every page is put into by one "Page Status" template, unless some template defines some kind of "ParamXyzIsSet" variable. Together with a simple "Unwatched pages" category we could easily map the current star colours to the absence of certain "missing" categories and thereby project our complicated ranking system onto categories. And if we add a special "Complete pages" category, we have some category as reference of a good page, just like the "Gold" categories.

Currently the declared goal is to bring as many pages to "Gold" as possible. This is equivalent to declaring the goal of empty "missing" categories.

So after all this is a question of principle: do we need a ranking system? - Chris 21:03, April 5, 2013 (UTC)

(Scene from Blues Brothers) Chris has seen the light, CHRIS Has Seen The LIGHT! --ES (talk) 01:17, April 6, 2013 (UTC)

Unless I got Aquatiki completely wrong at the time, the idea was, like Wikipedia's featured articles, to have a set of pages as shining (pardon the pun) examples that we can point users to: "that's what you should strive for". This means (at least in my interpretation) that there's more to it than just removing them from "missing" cats. Which is why the idea of a Goldrush (bringing as many pages to Gold as possible) makes me cringe, as it inevitably leads to doing just the bare required minimum. That would indeed make this endeavour pointless.

It shouldn't be necessary to read up on "lots of pages" to determine on what the correct ranking for a page is; Help > Page Ranking > PageType should be all you need. Which is why they have to be waterproof. — 6×9 (Talk) 06:35, April 6, 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but what "more" is there to do? I don't see any criterion that is not mappable to that some work was missing, like "Songs without Credits", "Uncertified lyrics", "Unwatched songs", "Artists with unsorted discography" and so on... - Chris 22:06, April 6, 2013 (UTC)

Take song credits: Someone adds composer and lyricist and marks credits as "done". But the album might have somewhat different line-ups on each song, so credits should also include a list of musicians, with links to artist pages where applicable. But it's nonsense to require musician credits for *all* songs, because it makes little sense on albums that have little to no line-up/instrumentation variation. So no "Songs without Musician Credits".

Maybe we should get some more opinions, i.e. ask on the CP whether people like the ranking system the way it is or whether they'd like to change things (and what they'd change) or whether they'd prefer to get rid of it completely?

In the meantime, it would be nice if folks -- especially admins -- followed the current rules, hazy though they might be. This means, for example, not downgrading an artist from Bronze to Green just because there are a couple OS left. — 6×9 (Talk) 20:03, April 8, 2013 (UTC)

+1 on the CP, as all theoretical systems might still not be what our users might like.

Furthermore +1 for not demoting anything that is Bronze. IMO the criteria for Bronze is so incredibly low, it should be really hard to make a page that fails them without being stuck in some category that is wiped out by our cool cyborg or our lovely Mrs. Admine every other day anyway. And OS aren't part of the PR at that stage yet. - Chris 22:30, April 8, 2013 (UTC)

Let's look at it from another direction: How many pages do people think will ever make it beyond Bronze? Currently we have more bogus (violet) artists than Gold & Silver combined. Currently on my worklist I have more dupe artists to eliminate than Silver & Gold combined. Years after the inauguration of the ranking system, we have ~100 Gold & Silver out of ~68000 artists. 1/6th of a percent!

So all the pages that made Bronze with an fletter and a sh.alb, when will they make Silver? If we admit that Bronze is so incredibly low, why not eliminate Green? (asking again 2 months later)

Are you talking to me? (featuring Robert DeNiro): How do we bring to the attention of artist fans that the page they bronzed (and will most likely never go further up) that their page contains ambiguios tracks that don't belong there OS? Post a message on their talk page? If ranking is derived from data on page (not the song credits per 6's clear description of stratospheric golden arcana), then editors will have to do the work to make the page earn the rank. As it stands now, an fletter correction will bronze anything including a pile of soggy cat food.

Ranking usage: Who is using ranking anyway? Tons of editors work the pages and leave them green, is that bad? Isn't it better to derive ranking from data on page? Such a scheme would be useful to everybody, I'd like to hear the contrary opinion. Ranking should be like a thermometer, not subject to rigging by editors with a paint brush.

imho, The main issue to address is the border between Green & Bronze, which looks as wide as the border btwn Canada & Mexico. --ES (talk) 14:16, April 9, 2013 (UTC)

Quote by EchoSierra: "As it stands now, an fletter correction will bronze anything including a pile of soggy cat food." If this wiki was about soggy cat food, it would, yes.

Quote by EchoSierra: "editors will have to do the work to make the page earn the rank" The whole point of Bronze is that it is not meant to be earnt by something. It is a status, like a postmark on a letter. It states that something has been looked at with human eyes. Page"rank" Bronze = the "ranked" page has a reason to exist and it is not broken.

I never understood why new pages are "Green" by default. I think that is a mistake. New pages should be Bronze by default, and only bots should use "Green" when they create a page automatically, because that is what the differentiation between Bronze and Green was meant for. The whole point of the extra status for bot-created pages is lost when also the human-created pages are ranked like the bot-created pages until someone "corrects" the status.

Quote by EchoSierra: "Tons of editors work the pages and leave them green" But only because they don't do anything about the ranking. They'd also leave a page Bronze if it was Bronze.

I think, this is absolutely wrong. The relation of Green to Bronze should be 1:1 if not 1:2. - Chris 19:25, April 9, 2013 (UTC)

@Echo: we have {{split}} to alert editors of OS. Even if we changed Bronze requirements, it would at most be something like "not all songs may be listed under OS". Either way, Björk has more than earned her Bronze rank. As for low number of Ag/Au artists: hardly surprising, considering the requirement that ALL songs and albums have to exist and be ranked Ag/Au first. For artists with more than a few albums that's enough to make Sisyphos weep.

@Chris: Bots are actually better at requirements than casual users -- just look how many pages are created by organic lifeforms each day with "Symbol" as fLetter. So just pretend "checked by a human" really means "checked by a human with basic knowledge of LW's inner workings". — 6×9 (Talk) 18:36, April 10, 2013 (UTC)

@Echo: [Drowning Pool] has been downgraded from Bronze to Green for what reason? Just because you don't think that artists should be bronze is not a reason. This is getting out of control. Eeepy (talk) 10:19, April 11, 2013 (UTC)

So who is using ranking? and for what purpose?

@6: Given the hazy rules as they stand I take the high ground (not the two param soggy cat food bronze), like the other three admins who haven't said a word about the subject but make darn good bronze pages that as aqua said shine thru as good examples of Bronze. Bjork's OS=23 is NOT a shine thru example of Bronze, see Rush.

@Chris see the illegal silver & gold pages list that our silent cyborg generated. :))

@Eeepy, it's in the edit summary, in history.

@Trainman @ XXTXX, keep up the good work guys

@ Everybody, What we need is a lax ranking system (current one seems to fit fine, nobody complained till I came back and tried to clarify the mud) and another system as chris described which defines where work lurks.

Good luck with discussion in CP! That's how we got here! How many regular editors have the whole site in mind?!

--ES (talk) 13:40, April 11, 2013 (UTC) the mindset that got us in this mess is not the mindset that will get us out

Once again, and hopefully for the last time: until the ranking rules are changed, we follow the current rules. Yes, some aspects are hazy, but that doesn't mean you can ignore the parts that are clear as day. OS don't play into whether a page is Green or Bronze. Björk could have 230 or 23,000 OS and still be ranked Bronze. — 6×9 (Talk) 14:46, April 11, 2013 (UTC)

ACK. Echo, please, just accept that currently the number of OS is not relevant for Bronze. It is for Silver, it is for Gold, but not for Bronze. I don't understand why you still couldn't cope with that. Downgrade a Silver to a Bronze when OS contains a lot of duplicates, and likely nobody will complain. It contains two? Then save your two edits do downgrade on artist and talk page, and rather fix the duplicates with those two edits.

Anyway I think it has become evident that – in case the CP poll result is "new ranking system" – we should definitely aim for a system that calculates the apropiate rank. No subjective ranking means no space for discussions. If everything is hard-coded, the ranking is either accepted as is or the code has to be modified until all [admins] are happy with it.

A short prospect: I've made detailed plans of how to implement an automated ranking system I had in mind; I'm confident that the techniques I'd use there are compatible to most of the ideas that will be shared, so I'd like to incorporate that automated ranking system into T-Line if necessary.

But for now we need that poll, right? If I haven't missed something, there is no poll yet. Does anybody mind if I set up one during this or the next week? - Chris 15:27, April 11, 2013 (UTC)

I was hoping you'd ask :-) IOW: yes, please go ahead. — 6×9 (Talk) 17:04, April 11, 2013 (UTC)

Go far it, it's been a long time coming ;) --ES (talk) 17:15, April 11, 2013 (UTC)

Oh wow, I missed quite a bit. I read a little bit of it but don't have time right now to read everything. So could somebody summarize what's been going on? What did we decide to do with page rankings? Can R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People be Gold now? What is an "OS"? XxTimberlakexx (talk) 21:26, April 17, 2013 (UTC)

We cleared up that the OS of artists are not relevant for the Bronze ranking, but as not all of us are happy with the current system, we decided it might be time to re-consider the ranking system and -rules. We agreed on that it shouldn't be us but our users who are mostly ranking stuff, so it should be their decision whether we want to implement a new one. Therefore I'll start a poll on the community portal, which I am working on atm.

@All: do you think I should make a simple "New ranking system? - Yes/No" poll, or should I rather set up a more complex survey system where we can ask with multiple choice questions like "How often do you use the ranking system"? I knew how to do the latter (template based), it just takes a few days to set it up. - Chris 15:59, April 20, 2013 (UTC)

And the distinction between Bronze and the rank between Bronze & Violet? ...that makes up 90% of the site? Spell it out please! --ES (talk) 22:13, April 20, 2013 (UTC)

Green: Created, the page exists. Bronze: Page was checked by someone who knows what to check: header and footer templates are present, page title is LW:PN conformant, page technically not broken (e. g. because of missing brackets or tags, or wrong fLetter). - Chris 04:33, April 21, 2013 (UTC)

And by that definition, how many pages are not green?

1. Broken Header/Footer = Zero
2. LW:PN compliancy: See the lists at User:Senvaikis/Stat broken down by page type. largest type? ~1950 songpages ending in a dot. Second largest? X Feat. Y Songpages
3. fLetter: 99% of fLetter errors are CJK/Cyrillic pages in the last 3 pages of Category:Songs_Symbol (less than 600)

Conclusion? Expecting the general population to do what is admin's job to do is wishful thinking (took nearly 4 years for the general public to make 10% of songs Bronze, so we need another 30+ years!) Despite the fact that the Bronze definition was made as low as possible!

A very Large Majority of the public and a teeeny minority of admin think of lw as a mere lyric site, that is their right.

btw: in how many languages do we have the ranking docs, besides English & German? --ES (talk) 14:52, April 21, 2013 (UTC)

Where do our artists go

From time to to I update the statistics about LyricWiki in other projects. This time I noticed a massive "loss" of artist pages.

October 10, 2012, based on Wikipedia

Artists: 70,000

Albums: 90,000

Songs: 1,250,000

April 14, 2013, based on current Special:WikiActivity

Artists: 68,000

Albums: 100,000

Songs: 1,280,000

Where did the 2,000 artists go if everything else expands? - Chris 13:47, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

When I started combing thru artists (Jan 26, 2013), we had ~69100. So correct, ~1000 artists were eliminated since then. Feat. artists, misspelled, Uppercase/Innicap (GPS/Gps), dupes due to sloppy disambigs Artist (Ger) = Artist (DE) = Artist (Rap) collaboration of X & Y on 3 pages (X, Y, X&Y), you name it, we have it. The history of User:Kingnee1114lyrics/Sandbox/Articles_to_be_merged explains most of the artist merges since 2008, and I was involved with most of them, also review the page itself. See also Artists section. naturally merged artist pages means the songs within were redirected too.

The Unknown Hometown Artists (still slightly over 50% of our current artist total) will yield more redirect targets.

The October 2012 to Jan 2013 reduction of 1000 is a total mystery (to me anyway), either the stats are wrong, or Senv knows what went on. Special:ArtistRedirects should be a good place to look, but I never made sense of it.

I don't see any stats on Special:WikiActivity I always look at Category:Artist for the number.

I'd love to see month by month stats of artist numbers, from as far back as they can be found. --ES (talk) 15:31, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

P.S. according to Wikipedia, MetalArchives had 170,000 artists at 2010/07, but according to MA itself [4] on 31/3/2013: We have now reached an incredible 90,000 bands listed in the database! Surely wikipedia's numbers are incredibler :), or MA Lost 80,000 artists in 3 years (more than we ever had!)-es

Special:WikiActivity - bottom right, community corner, fun random facts, which are not really fun nor random - Chris 21:01, April 14, 2013 (UTC)

Earlier Senv & I cleaned out lots of orphaned artists that had been created by Janitor for lyricless Gracenote placeholders; they became orphaned when those placeholders got deleted, and there was no reason to keep those with little to no metadata around. That might well have been > 1000 pages. Of course, when I write "Senv & I" I really mean he did around 95%... — 6×9 (Talk) 17:59, April 15, 2013 (UTC)

@ES: regarding the number at Wikipedia: opposed to the MA, Wikipedia's stats on LyricWiki were correct as I added them personally and I know which number goes where, whilst some others do not (he confused #total with #songs).

@6: of course... - Chris 19:29, April 16, 2013 (UTC)

Problem pages

Thanks to Senv as usual, here is where all the pages that disappear (--> redirected) can be found, and why they get redirected. You can also find other useful (non trivial) trivia about illegal ranking, lyricless albums etc.

If anyone can think of other page problems on lw, please post the issue here.

• User:Senvaikis/Stat

--ES (talk) 11:09, April 19, 2013 (UTC)

LyricFind

Did I miss something? What is it for? Who(se) is UserBot who created all these pages, and why don't they show up in his contributions? And can we block him for violating LWPN? Why is Category:LyricFind Lyrics empty? Why do they clog up Special:DeadendPages even though they contain blue links? And how are we supposed to get them out of the orphanage?

OK, apparently they're taking over licensing from Gracenote (or something): http://www.lyricfind.com/gracenote-larry-marcus/ At least this time they've done it "properly" and disabled moving/deleting as well. — 6×9 (Talk) 10:19, April 25, 2013 (UTC)

C:LFL now tops Special:WantedCategories with 3,252 members but still appears empty: 0. — 6×9 (Talk) 18:46, April 25, 2013 (UTC)

I guess the the categorizing will only be done when the pages are purged. Although I don't really mind what the name of our licensing organization is, I once again feel left out; I think we have to make it clear to Wikia that we want to be notified about such changes in the future some weeks beforehand. It mustn't be that we are always the last ones to know what is happening to OUR wiki! The same thing like when they deleted our album covers without a notice (not even afterwards), instead of asking us to remove the covers because of this and that. - Chris 20:08, April 25, 2013 (UTC)

40,276 pages now according to S:WC. Loads of duplicates differing only in capitalisation. Oh well… — 6×9 (Talk) 08:38, April 28, 2013 (UTC)

{{AlbumCollaboration}}

Yep. @Chris: Before you ask, I didn't use a loop because (1) the places where we'd really need loops are also those where we're most likely to run into the 100-per-page limit, and (2) I avoided nesting, so it's no more complex than {{Covered}} and easily expanded if necessary. — 6×9 (Talk) 08:38, April 28, 2013 (UTC)

Is it a requirement that {{SongCollaboration}} be used for songs of Collab albums, or not? --ES (talk) 00:51, May 2, 2013 (UTC)

LyricWiki styling changes

Hello guys and Eeepy,

I'd like to ask you what you think about the current LyricWiki design... To be honest I don't think it's very great, because although for example the background uses orange and blue as "corporate design", I think a lighter background would comfort the eyes a lot more. I also do not like the dark main page boxes. The gray shading of the boxes appears to me like nothing but CSS3 showoff stuff; it's not really needed.

I've been usign my own CSS rule set for a very long time now which modifies the looks of LyricWiki into a look that I like, less bright colours, more clean grayshade areas. I know this is not everyone's favourite style, but I wanted to ask you what you think of it, whether we should adapt it as official LyricWiki design.

• Current main page at 1680x1050
• My main page style at 1680x1050

Chris 00:21, May 2, 2013 (UTC)

Certainly your version wins over the B&O. --ES (talk) 00:53, May 2, 2013 (UTC)

Hmm...I'm not sure if I like this or not. Then again, we need as much room as possible for Artist of the Month since those nominations will be considerably longer. XxTimberlakexx (talk) 01:04, May 2, 2013 (UTC)

The sorting is independant from the colour scheme.

I already re-arranged the main page because otherwise the right column would've been significantly longer than the left column and that made the page look ugly. - Chris 01:35, May 5, 2013 (UTC)

Negativity

I edited Placebo, putting in ordered lists for bonus tracks, as per instructions on the artist help page. I know that a lot of people don't use ordered lists because they find them too complicated to understand, so they just put comments for the bonus tracks instead.

EchoSierra reverted my edits within 15 minutes, removing all the ordered lists, and just putting comments for the bonus tracks.

This destructive edit is just another in a long line of nonsense. I'm getting really sick of Echo stalking all my edits, and his constant whining and negativity on my talk page, with no attempt at being constructive.

I'd leave if I hadn't been here so long. How many others has Echo driven off with this sort of pettiness, never to be seen again? Eeepy (talk) 08:07, May 17, 2013 (UTC)

I see what you mean. ES, what is wrong with this edit? You reverted it, you warned the user. Why? Maybe a few related artists too much, and he forgot the pipes in front of the template, but regarding everything else this was a good edit.

• You may enhance OS with additional information
• {{ArtistInfo}} is one of the most basic templates
• He did not add blacks or redlinks
• The structure was good
• All genres are correct

May I remind you of one very important policy of LyricWiki: Improve over remove, insert over revert. That means: instead of removing non-perfect content by deleting a new page or reverting an edit, you should try to improve the content by inserting the correct content. So would you please stop your endless circle of "observe edits, revert edits, lecture user"? Thanks. - Chris 17:46, May 20, 2013 (UTC)

After multiple notes about ranking and to check the documentation, on ranking, I inserted the relevant portion of the docs on his talk page, then he promptly removed it from his talk page, I noticed. Wasn't that enough, Or do we need those docs translated and lectures and videos added? --ES (talk) 18:12, May 20, 2013 (UTC)

What do any of these have to do with reverting a good (except for a missing pipe) edit? — 6×9 (Talk) 19:32, May 20, 2013 (UTC)

The point of all this was....So he learns to do it right? right? He put the same edit on the same page twice without looking at it in preview. An editor learning is more important or a revert to get their attention? --ES (talk) 19:57, May 20, 2013 (UTC)

P.S. All of which has so far failed so far.

What was he supposed to learn from reversion of a good (except for a missing pipe) edit? To not bother? — 6×9 (Talk) 20:39, May 20, 2013 (UTC)