Talk:China National Center for the Performing Arts Orchestra

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Ykzhao91.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:59, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Yankun's Review

Hi, Xinqiao! It's a very nice article and I can tell you put a great effort into it. I really like the way you organized the musician and references part, making the page look pretty neat. I was thinking is that possible to find some link page of the musicians or conductors, since it maybe hard for the US readers to really know whom they are. I think you used the right tone for wikipedia and I just made some minor change of the grammer. Everything else looks in really good shape. I will be exploring more into the resources of this topic and see if I can offer more info for you. Ykzhao91 (talk) 05:00, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

General comments

Contrary to the above comments, unfortunately, most of the tone of the article was not really proper for Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a forum for public relations for any organisation, no matter how nice it is. The purpose of Wikipedia is to be a non-partisan forum that presents 'just the facts' on a given subject. The previous versions of the page were much too partisan. Please do not revert to the old version. I have years of experience of editing on Wikipedia in a non-partisan manner. I know what I am doing. DJRafe (talk) 23:39, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you so much for the comments @DJRafe:! I love the current version so much that I will not revert to the old version. Maybe I failed to handle the tone well, but I did check the WP:PUFFERY, and I did not intentionally have it comes across the policy. As you can see in the history, I tried hard to just list facts, and every quote has reliable sources that can back it up. Anyways, thank you for pointing out the problem of my article. Hope we can make it better together! --XinqiaoCheng (talk) 03:59, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

@DJRafe:There were just a few things that I am confused about. I noticed that you deleted some works in the Orchestra's repertoire I mentioned in the article, and I think they can help readers have a better knowledge of what kind of works they played. Maybe it is not appropriate to list them in the lead section, but I am wondering if it could be demonstrated in any non-lead section. Also, there were several sentences regarding their dedication to education and other non-profit act, which makes the Orchestra different from others. I am wondering why it can not be included since it helps readers to have a comprehensive understanding of the organization. Last, the Season section was deleted as well. As a unique plan they carried out every year, it also didn't make sense to me that the seasons have to be deleted. Hope you could help me more on issues above. —XinqiaoCheng (talk) 03:02, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi Xinqiao Cheng: thanks for your comments above. First, I must apologise to you that my tone in my comment above was perhaps a bit too strong. I did not realise that this page was part of a community-building project for you on Wikipedia. The reason that I sounded a bit strong was because other wikipedians tend to put puffery-like text on similar classical music pages, which very much bothers me. I have the general thinking that one must write a Wikipedia article like a scientific publication, to be very objective, non-partisan, and neutral in text and tone. I hope that my comment did not bother you, and I again apologise if it did.

On your question about works that the NCPA performs, my general comment is that for any orchestra, it is not so important to mention the repertoire that the orchestra plays, for opera, ballet and concerts, especially if it is the standard classical core works. All over the world, the core works tend to be the same (Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, etc). If you do want to mention particular works that the NCPA Orchestra performs, my opinion is that it would be better to mention works where the NCPA Orchestra gave, maybe, the world premiere. For example, if there are specific Chinese orchestra works or operas that the NCPA performs that no other orchestra around the world has done, those would be very much worth mentioning. So you could perhaps restore part of the text on The Chinese Orphan, Rickshaw Boy, and very China-specific works. My own opinion would be to write a paragraph that says something like:

'In addition to performing core repertoire operas by European composers, the CNPA Orchestra has accompanied productions at CNPA of Chinese operas such as.....' (Note: you would also want to include the names of the composers of those operas, as Western audiences will not know about those composers, most probably.)

For education, whilst it is very nice that the NCPA does educational work, the general situation is that most Western orchestras also do similar educational work. So the NCPA Orchestra is not unique in that way. However, that is simply my own opinion, and I am just one person on Wikipedia, of course.

This is a nice discussion and I hope that you will be able to continue to contribute to Wikipedia, and to have fun whilst doing that. Best wishes, DJRafe (talk) 15:15, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you so much DJRafe for the clarification! I really appreciate your suggestions on how to make this article more wiki-friendly. You, a very experienced editor and classical music anorak, have taught me a lot about what the norms are when it comes to constructing classical music related wiki articles. I will definitely keep modifying this article based on your suggestions and making contributions on Wikipedia on other topics. Hope I can do a better job next time and you will not have a chance to be mad at me again. :)) —XinqiaoCheng (talk) 22:37, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

List of members?

@DJRafe: Is it normal to have the list of members in articles like this? At the very least, this seems at risk of going at out of down date and it seems like detailed minutiae that might be not be appropriate. That said, I've not worked on similar articles before so I don't have a strong sense of how welcome this would be. Thanks for your work to improve this article. —mako๛ 23:53, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

@Benjamin Mako Hill:: thanks for the question about the list of orchestra members. To be honest, in general, my own opinion is that orchestra pages on Wikipedia should not have lists of the musicians. The orchestra's own website is the best source for such a list. These kind of lists take up too much space in a given article that should be devoted to more general information, like history. I agree with your idea that this would fall into the class of detailed minutiae. Cheers, DJRafe (talk) 17:56, 4 December 2016 (UTC)