Talk:Perspectives of New Music

Laundry list

I should explain the purpose of my recent extensive addition to the "Further reading" section. One of the current editors of PNM requested some time ago that I bring this article up to date (it currently stops more or less at 1972) to indicate better how the journal has evolved over the intervening decades. At that point, I was hampered by a lack of reliable sources, even though after sixteen years past employment with the journal was fairly up-to-date on the facts. I was assured at that time that the Fiftieth-anniversary issue would contain a collection of articles and reminiscences pertinent to this endeavor. Now it is on hand, and has been added to Further reading (the untitled interviews are all to do with the interviewees' experiences with the journal). My intention is to move these items to the References as their content becomes applicable. While on the subject, I find it ironic that an article on this particular journal should use footnote references, since PNM itself has had (at least since 1984) a strong preference for parenthetical referencing.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:34, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

• @Jerome Kohl: We really have no obligation to follow up on requests from journal editors. If you have been employed by the journal yourself as you seem to say above, you may need to read WP:COI again. If these interviews and such are more than name-dropping and actually provide interesting encyclopedic info, then that info should be added to the article and these interviews used as references. That should be done with some restraint, though, because obviously these are not independent references. The current list with 33 entries is absolutely undue. Instead of edit warring about inclusion of the list, I strongly suggest that you revert yourself and only re-add the most important ones as content, not an indiscriminate and promotional "further reading" list. Thanks. --Randykitty (talk) 15:48, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
  • @Randykitty: It is difficult to imagine how the development of a journal like this could be documented without recourse to "internal" sources, and one of the items you deleted is an independent reference (Graber's DMA dissertation). While it is true that I was employed by this journal up to 2001, though a great deal has happened since I left, and many of these articles deal with that period. I have not gotten back to this project, as I meant to do. You are not telling me anything I do not already know about what should be done here, and of course I would appreciate any help you can provide in sorting out just which of these articles contain the most relevant information to the project at hand. As it stands, the article still suggests (without actually saying it) that Perspectives of New Music ceased publication or at least stagnated in 1972. Surely Wikipedia readers deserve better than that. As for edit warring, your own edit appeared very much like a "drive by", since you gave no indication you had checked this talk page, to which the editorial comment at the head of the Further reading section pointed. If my summary reversion (with an editorial explanation) seemed abrupt, then I apologise, but we have at least now begun duscussion. Can we now sort out these sources, most of which I believe are relevant to the task at hand?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 16:13, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• Drive by? Check the edit history, I tagged this section as a "laundry list" almost a year ago. And yes, "internal" references are acceptable, but 23 (twenty-three!) "untitled interviews with Rachel S. Vandagriff"? Seriously? My one revert of your revert had a clear edit summary, detailing the problem. Your second revert did not have an edit summary at all, as far as I can see. There's nothing wrong with a stub, and as 30 (thirty) out of 33 items in this list are from the journal itself, they can easily be found by anyone interested in expanding this article. I propose to remove all "further reading" items to the journal itself and leave the article in Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, the book, and the (unpublished?) DMA thesis. That would leave a much more reasonable article for our readers. In addition, anybody reading this talk page and wishing to expand the article, can easily recuperate the 30 listed articles from the journal itself from the article history. If we do this, we finally can get rid of the laundry tag. --Randykitty (talk) 16:32, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• PS: another solution would be to reduce the 30 articles' list to "Perspectives of New Music 50, nos. 1 and 2 (Winter–Summer), 2012". That includes all of them. --Randykitty (talk) 16:37, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• I like your last solution best. In fact, I had come here just now to suggest this as a compromise. One thing that has contributed to my dilatoriness in dealing with this history is precisely my COI status. I kept hoping another editor, independent of the journal, might come by who would appreciate knowing that these interviews are available. Hidden away in the edit history, they would be much less accessible. I would suggest a slightly different format, however, since these items constitute less than half the contents of that volume: they do fall under a collective heading, "A History of Perspectives on the Occasion of Our 50th Anniversary". It is a little more difficult to know what to do about authorship. Although there are many interviews conducted by Rachel Vandagriff, there are also several independently contributed items (as you can see from the "laundry list": items by Boretz, Barkin, Rahn, François, and a short item by Vandagriff herself). Perhaps an author name isn't necessary in this case?—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:38, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

• Looks good now! I have removed the template. As an aside about the author names: the way it was phrased before, I had interpreted this as 23 different persons all interviewing Vandagriff, instead of the other way around... :-) --Randykitty (talk) 11:44, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

• Excellent. I can see how the format was misleading. I am accustomed to seeing such items listed by interviewee first, interviewer second in the author entry, then the year, title, etc. I'm not sure why I typed these in the way that I did—probably proleptic fatigue at the prospect of all the repetitious work!—Jerome Kohl (talk) 17:05, 27 March 2014 (UTC)