Hi Futureclass,
This is a collective Welcome! to you all. Your project sounds very interesting and has the potential for being a big help to Wikpedia too, once you all learn the ropes. I stumbled upon your group because I'm a member of the Wikipedia Opera Project. We have an automatic robot ('bot' in Wikispeak) that each day provides a list all new articles that might possibly be opera related. The Classical Music Project has a similar list. We tag the article's talk page with the appropriate project banner, add category listings (if they're missing), and flag up any issues with the articles that need to be addressed by future editors.
Wikipedia has loads of help pages, but I think these two are particularly helpful to newcomers:
Wikipedia also has a New contributors' help page where you can ask live questions
Some of you may find that your articles or contributions get flagged with various types of clean-up tags. The tags are there to help alert other editors, who can visit the article to improve it. So don't get discouraged if it happens to you. It's all part of the learning process, and just about every editor makes mistakes at first, even some quite eminent people. I'll just list here some common mistakes that are important to avoid so that you don't lose a lot of your hard work:
1. Copyright violation – Don't be tempted to copy and paste material from other web sites (or published books and articles) into an article, even if you plan to re-write it in your own words later. It's considered copyright violation and can cause Wikipedia (and you) a lot of hassle. Wikipedia administrators, experienced editors and a robot (CorenSearchBot) now watch out for this very carefully and on a daily basis. If found, it can result in the article being reduced to stub, or the whole article being speedily deleted. If you do find material that you want to use, copy it into a word processing file (or draft email) and re-write it there before putting it into the article. Essential guides are Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing and Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright.
2. Conflict of interest – Be especially careful when writing about people, musical groups or organizations with which you have a personal connection. It's a conflict of interest and makes it awfully hard to produce or edit an article with a neutral point of view, one of the Five pillars of Wikipedia. A conflict of interest also makes it difficult to stand back and decide dispassionately whether people, groups or organizations with which you are affiliated (or know personally) actually deserve an article, according to Wikipedia's standards of notabillity. If they don't, the article can be speediliy deleted or taken to the articles for deletion page to be discussed before action is taken. Here's an example of the process. Here are some notability guidelines for articles about musicians, musical groups,composers etc. and academics.
3.Poor or no referencing – Referencing is key. All articles need to have verifiable and reliable third-party references (not simply the web site of the article's subject). Unreferenced articles that appear to be personal essays or are about people or groups with doubtful notability are much more likely to be deleted. The references are needed to verify claims in the article, establish the notability of the subject, and help the reader find further reliable sources on the subject. They need to be stated in the article, either as inline citations or in a 'Sources' or 'References' section. Recent changes to Wikipedia policy mean that any new unreferenced biography of a living person will be automatically proposed for deletion. Here are some examples of referencing in music-related articles (some better than others, but all reasonably adequate):
Once again, a warm welcome to Wikipedia and I hope you all enjoy your time here. All the best, Voceditenore 08:21, 10 November 2007 (UTC) Updated - Voceditenore (talk) 08:33, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Another suggestion is for each of you to create your own personal sandbox. This allows you to work on an article before you actually publish it to the encyclopedia and keeps it separate from your actual user page. A personal sandbox lets you get your article into good shape before publishing, without the pressure of other editors tagging it or making changes, and it allows you to ask for 'second opinions' from others before you publish. Another bonus is that it preserves your work in case the actual article gets deleted, unlike the general Wikipedia:Sandbox which is emptied every 12 hours. But note that like all pages in Wikipedia, a personal sandbox or user page cannot contain copyright text.
To start your personal sandbox, log in, then click on "Sandbox" at the very top of any page. (It will come right after the links to your user page and talk page). Make an edit and click save. Here's my sandbox User:Voceditenore/sandbox. – Voceditenore (talk) 13:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Futureclass, I'm wondering if our Opera Project "Singers of the Month" for December 2007 might interest some of you. The theme was New Music Divas. We still lack articles on:
If any of you want to create an article on one of the 'red-linked' singers, the article on Jill Gomez is a good model to follow.
Other places to get ideas for article topics are
Best, Voceditenore (talk) 12:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC) Updated - Voceditenore (talk) 08:15, 18 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Since they seem easy to compile, it can sometimes be tempting to create new lists instead of a creating new articles and/or expanding the text in an existing article. But there are some important things to bear in mind before creating a stand-alone list. A good one that doesn't risk deletion is actually a lot of work.
– Voceditenore (talk) 15:05, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Contemporary classical music and contemporary music, which you highlight as needing lots of work, were merged on 18 October 2009 by me. The single article Contemporary classical music still needs work though. --Jubilee♫clipman 21:45, 21 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]
{{EducationalAssignment}}
Be sure to click "save page" afterwards. There are further options for the template such as adding the date the assignment will end or a link to your project's write-up at Wikipedia:School and university projects, if you have one. There's more information at Template:EducationalAssignment.
Just some feedback concerning this year's crop of articles which may be of help to you and to future students in this class.
Voceditenore (talk) 10:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As many of you may be creating articles on living people or 20th century figures, illustrating them can prove daunting. Wikipedia does not allow the use of images of living people unless written permission from the copyright owner has been provided to release it under a free license. Under this arrangement the holder (who would be credited) retains the copyright of the work, but grants permission to others to freely use and publish the image, even for commercial purposes. See Wikipedia:Requesting copyright permission for more on this. Note that this process is fairly complicated and must be followed to the letter, or the image will be deleted. If you took the photograph yourself, you can, of course, upload it stating that you took the photo and are releasing it under a free license. Remember that the copyright of an image is almost invariably held by the actual photographer, not the subject of the photograph, or the owner of a copy of the photograph.
In the case of a deceased person for which no freely licensed image can be found, an image may be used on a "fair use" basis in their article as there is no longer a possibility of providing a free equivalent. But note that according to Wikipedia:Non-free content, images copyrighted to press agencies such as Associated Press, Corbis and Getty Images may not be used. When uploading an image under "fair use", a detailed fair use rationale and detailed information as to source and probable copyright holder must be provided as well as a suitable copyright tag, such as {{Non-free historic image}}. Fair use images and (other media) cannot be used for purely decorative purposes and they must be closely tied to the article text. See File:Richard Versalle as Tannhauser.jpg for an example of appropriate fair use and how to write the fair use rationale.
– Voceditenore (talk) 08:30, 12 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia has recently deployed a new editing interface called VisualEditor. The goal is to allow users to edit without learning basic wiki markup. It currently has a lot "bugs", is significantly different from the normal Wikipedia editing interface, and lacks many of its features and capabilities, although it is still under development. If you click the "Edit" tab at the top of any page in article space (e.g. Wolfgang Fortner) or user space (e.g. User:Ijmusic/Futureclass), you will be taken to the Visual editor. If you prefer to use the normal Wikipedia editing interface, click on the tab labelled "Edit source". Note that the Visual Editor is not available on talk pages and pages prefixed with Wikipedia:. On those pages, clicking the "Edit" tab will take you to the normal interface. You can read more about the VisualEditor at Wikipedia:VisualEditor. There is a guide to using the Visual Editor at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide.
Note that VisualEditor is disabled for the Internet Explorer browser. If you are using IE, clicking the "Edit" tab will take you to the normal Wikipedia editing interface.
Voceditenore (talk) 13:17, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are three ways to create a new article:
1. In the search box near the top right of a page, type the title of the new article, then click on the magnifying glass icon. If the Search page reports "There were no results matching the query. You may create the page...." followed by the article name in red, then you can click the red article name to start editing it. When you are done, press "Show preview" to take a look at how the page will appear. Try to fix any formatting errors, then press "Save page". Your article is now part of Wikipedia and may be edited by anyone.
2. Create the article by drafting it in your sandbox. When you have finished creating it (typically after a lot of repeated editing and saving), move the article from your sandbox to the Wikipedia mainspace (where the real articles are). Alternatively, if you are the only person who contributed to the draft, you can follow the procedure in 1., paste the contents of your draft onto the page, and click "Save".
3. Create the article using the Article Wizard. If you choose this option, you can decide to create the article directly (click the appropriate "button") or create it as a draft. If you choose that one, your article will need to be reviewed and approved at Wikipedia:Articles for creation (AFC) before it goes "live". This has the advantage in that if it is approved, you can be fairly sure that it won't be proposed for deletion once it goes live. There are couple of downsides to this method, however. One is that there is often a backlog at AFC, and it may take quite a while for it to be reviewed. Another is that some of the reviewers there are quite inexperienced and may reject valid articles or accept ones that are still very problematic.
Voceditenore (talk) 14:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Longy students! I just wanted to leave you some tips about choosing and writing on your topics this year.
1. Make sure that your topic has plenty of coverage in reliable sources. The coverage should extend beyond the Greater Boston area, especially in the case of organizations, ensembles, and individual musicians. This is the "Golden Rule". There are supplemental notability criteria that can be used for musicians, ensembles, organizations, and academics in lieu of extensive coverage. You'll find them at:
Note that the subject only needs to pass one of those supplemental criteria (supported by a reliable source which verifies it). However, generally speaking, if they pass one of the musician/composer criteria, they also tend to have significant coverage. Remember that Wikipedia's purpose is not to give the unknown or "up-and-coming" a higher profile. It is to write about people/things who have already "arrived" in the sense that independent reliable sources have written about them in a fair amount of depth.
2. When choosing which sources to verify your content and attest to the subject's notability, stick to the very highest quality ones—mainstream newspaper and magazines, books, and academic journals. This is essential if you are writing about a living person. As a rule of thumb, you should probably aim to have at least three such sources in your article. Don't use blogs or self-published/amateur websites, although some self-published sites can be used in the external links section of the article.
3. Because you will be writing in Wikipedia's voice, make sure you keep the style of writing as neutral and "boring" as possible, no matter how respectful or enthusiastic you feel about your subject. This is a common pitfall for students and beginners in general. This is the first version of my very first article on Wikipedia back in 2006. Way too much of my personal enthusiasm and respect for that singer showing in the article. Rockwell Blake looks much better now that I've learned the ropes. The main reason I'm telling you all this is that Wikipedia has changed a lot since I started editing here. Unfortunately, we have been invaded by public relations people and paid editors in their hundreds who are creating articles to publicize their clients. Editors who patrol newly created pages have become very wary of these editors and crack down hard when they find an article which appears to be paid-for promotion. Sometimes they mistake the enthusiastic writing style of a new editor for the deliberately promotional style used by PR people and can wrongly assume that you are writing with a conflict of interest. So make sure your writing style doesn't give that impression.
All the best, Voceditenore (talk) 09:17, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
